Assorted Random Stuff For Week Two

 

Just stuff crossing my mind... I didn't get to watch much Week One action but I had RedZone on for most of this past Sunday and it was just frigging crazy! Even in that late window with just a few games going on Scott Hanson could barely keep up with the goings on. I don't think I've seen a 'quad box' on RedZone before but as the first games would down they had four different games with big plays happening at once. 

We had a taste of that ourselves on Monday night. Josh Allen pushed the Bombers past the Pirates but with Dalvin Cook going in the 'second' MNF game you'd think a small lead wasn't safe for Bobby. But Cook came up small and the Bombers got a one point win...meanwhile I figured I'd get passed by the Rbacks with Justin Jefferson going in that late MNF game but he was smothered all night and his 12 targets didn't add up to nearly enough points for David. Had me up watching until the last minute for sure...none of our other games were particularly close.

Speaking of me...I'm either way out of touch when it comes to waiver prices or some of you are! LOL My bids got CRUSHED last week. Maybe that was for the best... We've got four 2-0 teams, four 1-1 teams and four 0-2 teams. I still don't see anyone emerging as a heavy favorite for the title right now.

 

You probably saw my email from earlier this evening. I'm trying to track down a site issue that crashes the front page scoreboard when a team is clicked. Doing that is supposed to bring up a popup of that team's scoring. It works sporadically, some team 'clicks' crash it, others don't. Changing the settings to have it appear at the top of every page fixes it but I don't like having it set up that way.

I can 'clone' our league and work on things but I don't always remember to delete the owners email addys from the clone league so odd stuff may get sent out. Bear with me. I'm likely going to end up stripping out some functionality from our site to speed things up. The guy who writes most of the scripts that provide whistles and bells (like that scoreboard) said our site is very slow to load compared to some others.

I'll try to get things squared away this week. 

And finally...

Guess who is turning a year old on Wednesday, September 21st? That's right, this adorable little pixie!

 

 

 It's hard to believe it's been a year since she arrived. How did I live without her?

 Feel free to wish her the happiest of birthdays!

 

 

Weekly Waiver Timeline

 This may help anyone who had an issue understanding our weekly waiver sessions. Or maybe it won't. 

Hey, how 'bout a little Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler? Okay? Okay!

Week One Is Done

 

Okay, so we have Week One of 2022 in the books and it's time for my annual 'You're Not As Good (or as bad) As You Think You Are After One Week' warning. Maybe that should be my next statistical rabbit hole...how many teams have had a big first week and then gone on to win the title. Or the opposite.

Patterns will emerge over the next few games but one thing we are already seeing is a bunch of injuries. When I saw Dak Prescott go off with his hand injury I was thinking 'man, he sure is injury prone!'. But I looked it up. Other than his 2020 injury he's played every game of every season he's been the Cowboys' starter. ¯\_㋡_/¯

Monday Report-- If you checked into the league site yesterday (and why wouldn't you?) you might have seen the Monday Report module front and center. Each Monday it'll be there with a summary of our games and you can see where every game stands going into MNF. Best part of it is that it goes away on Tuesday and I don't have to do a thing.

Myfantasyleague Apps-- Last week one owner had an issue making a waiver move using his phone. It wasn't letting him sign into the league. My suggestion to everyone is to use one of the two available apps. Search your app store for "my fantasy league" and you should come across MFL Mobile 2020* and MFL Platinum. Both work equally well and allow you to submit lineups, place bids, etc. There is a third app, MFL Lite but while it's looks really nice I have yet to figure out how to submit a lineup with it. I suspect it is simply scraping the league pages for info (rosters, schedule, etc) and doesn't have any real interaction with the system. 

*=it uses 2020 in the app name but it works perfectly fine for 2022.

MFL Manager-- Here's a neat thing to use if you have teams in more than one MFL league. Using the URL below you will (once you've logged in with your MFL username and password) go to a page with your leagues listed.:

Click 'My Scoreboard' at the top and you'll see all your games:

Clicking your team brings up this menu with links to all the owner tools you likely need. You can move the blocks around to suit your preference as well. Just use the edit (pencil) icon at the upper right.

Go to this page, log in, and save the site to your toolbar or bookmark bar/bookmarks.

 https://www63.myfantasyleague.com/2022/home/19048

That's it for now. Remember that waivers are currently in our first blind bidding session of the year. They will process Wednesday night. Thursday morning begins 'open' waivers with a cost of $5 a player. That runs through the noon (Central) kickoffs on Sunday. 

 That's it for this week. Next week is special because someone is having her first birthday!

 

 

Random Crap Being Random

 

We are one game into Week One of 2022 and I thought I'd toss a few things up on the blog while they are still fresh in my mind. Some may have been already sent in emails but this is where I come to reference what I've said, so here we go....

--Most teams took advantage of the Open Waiver window and added a final player to their roster. Some (like me) made additional moves. We are now done with waivers until the Blind Bidding session now in place is processed next Wednesday night. You can put in bids now. Our 'normal' waiver schedule begins next week.

--I spent a few minutes this morning looking at a few dedicated fantasy football draft clients. I found a couple others in addition to the one I linked to last week in that email. None are perfect but they still seem better than the MFL Draft Room. The one I linked to is the best looking and easiest to use I think but it doesn't have a chat feature which I believe is important for what we do. It also requires a little bit of extra work for the remote drafters but that's not very difficult. The other two have both good and bad points. But I have a whole year to come up with something. The more I think about it the more I like the idea of using ESPN or NFL.com, etc. Then just 'back-loading' our rosters into MFL. We'll see.

--I generally ignored the league website all summer and have only recently put back into place the in-season modules. I'm still moving them around so you may not see something in the place you're used to. 

--Clarification on the dedicated TE spot for next year. If we go that route we will still have 8-man lineups and continue to use the flex slot,

Our lineup requirements would go from this:

Total Starters:          8
Number of Starting QBs:               1
Number of Starting RBs:             2-3
Number of Starting WR+TEs:    3-4
Number of Starting PKs:                1

Total Starters:          8
Number of Starting QBs:              1
Number of Starting RBs:            2-3
Number of Starting WRs:           2-3
Number of Starting TEs:            1-2
Number of Starting PKs:               1 

In other words you'd start a QB and a kicker, two RBs, two WRs, a TE plus an additional player who could be an RB, WR or TE. And I've even given some thought to doing away with the kicker slot. But that might be just too radical?!?

I'm planning to return here next week with a Week One summary and more nonsense. 

Meanwhile, enjoy a pic of........

My Little Pixie ©

A Quick Story and some Biznez

I'm sure most everyone is aware of the 'David Overstreet Incident', i.e. the drafting of a deceased Dolphin runningback with the first pick of the 1984 EHFL Draft.  If not, catch up with it here. I can no longer laugh about Gary's pick.

A little backstory..I'm covering a friend's football teams while he preps for a new assignment in exchange for his taking over my baseball team this summer. Of course I didn't know he had four teams, three of with were concurrently involved in drafts as I type this. Ugh.

Anyway I was dealing with his dynasty team and post-draft I thought I'd claim Hassan Haskins, rookie RB for the Titans as a handcuff for Derrick Henry. Being the idiot I am, and using my phone to boot, I ended up putting in (and winning) a claim for Dwayne Haskins, the late (as in dead) quarterback of Washington. Ooof! I dropped him as soon as the email arrived and I realized that I'd fat-fingered away $3 of Ron's waiver cash but there it was on the transaction record. 

The commish offered to delete the record of the transaction (but didn't offer to restore the cash or the dropped player) but Ron thought it was hysterical so it'll always be there are a reminder to him not to let me jack with his teams in the future. Fine by me.

News Of The World

As I type this on Wednesday the 24th we are less than two weeks away from the 2022 Draft. Please check the detains on the homepage if you haven't already. We will see you there!

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I took several months off from even thinking about the league earlier in this off season. I had planned to update the rules page but I just never had the inclination to deal with it. Part of the issue is that I knew I hadn't really formalized a few details. I'm going to begin to update that page to reflect the simplified system we'll have going forward. In the mean time you can refer to the post below this one and the emails over the past week or so for much of what you need to know. The Rules page is now updated. I still need to proofread it and clean up some formatting but for the most part it's good to go.

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Say "Hi!" to my sweet granddaughter!

 

Looking @ 2022 (an ongoing thread)

 

What you read below is an ongoing dialog about the 2022 season and how it will be run.

I will be making changes to this page when an idea strikes me or when something I'm planning proves to be unworkable. I have a 'phantom' league site set up that I'm using to experiment with and I've already had some of my questions answered by playing around with it.

Latest Update:

Feb 2 Feb 17  Feb 21  Feb 28 March 15 August 21

We will stay on MFL for 2022. I don't know of a site that is as flexible and I'd rather not require anyone to learn a new system. I am going to do away with some modules to make the site faster to load.

Now the particulars:

1. No keepers, we will redraft from scratch each year.

2. No trading of future picks going forward but 2021 deals will be honored. Teams which traded away 2021 picks will fill out roster with comp picks at end of draft or thru a special waiver session. UPDATE...MFL will allow me to add picks to a round once the draft is set up so comp picks will likely be a 'thing'.

3. Low cost. More than likely it'll be $7.00 per owner (to cover the $80 league fee to MFL) with a deadline in early/mid-August. Due to MFL's sliding (upward) league cost by date paid for the cost to you will rise the later you pay.

I'm keeping expenses to the bare minimum. Only outlay will be the league fee to MFL. I've taken a loss on trophies and graphics* but I'll end that this year (see below for update on the trophy) So here's the deal. I will throw open the league officially and establish a payment deadline. When you've paid I will add your waiver money ($350) to your franchise. Once the deadline expires without payment I'll begin looking for a replacement owner.

4. No trophy or any other championship awards other than a digital Hughes News Hughes Bowl edition. UPDATE: Note that the trophy has been paid for by an owner so we will award one this year as usual.

5. Draft order randomized on day of draft thru the MFL system. No need for me to load in everyone's email and team names into an outside services website. MFL will do the work with one click. UPDATE: A test of the MFL system shows that it works as expected if I choose the correct option (which I didn't the first six times I tried it and couldn't figure out what the hell I was doing wrong).

6. The rosters will have a 17 player limit. One IR spot with a requirement that the player be listed on IR or NFL's COVID list.

7. Waivers slightly changed with one condensed post-draft session. Limit of two Blind Bid claims per week and a total of three total claims per week, 30 claim limit per season. Claims made during the single FCFS session between the draft and the Week 1 kick off will count towards season total of 30 claims and waiver money. NOTE: That period runs at 8 a.m. Central the morning after the draft until 5 p.m. the next day which is NFL Opening Thursday Night. There are less than 48 hours between the end of our draft and the NFL season. The minimum blind bid amount will remain at $10 but FCFS (open claims) are going to be $5. 

As noted the in-season weekly calendar will not change...Sunday kickoff to Wednesday nite for blind bids, Thursday morning thru Sunday kickoff for FCFS (open) claims. All of that begins prior to Week 2!

8. Six playoff teams, three division winners and three wildcards. WC=best two teams on records and highest remaining PPG with at least 6 wins. If no team qualifies under that last provision we will award the 6th spot based on record using our standard tiebreakers.

9. Basic playoff structure unchanged (top two teams get byes).

10. Scoring system will be true 'half PPR' for all players. i.e. one half point for each reception. This is a change from the previous rule which gave a point to RBs for each reception while giving a point to WR/TEs for every two receptions. Obviously scores can now end with a 'point five' i.e. you can win (or lose) 102.5 to 102.0 😏 True half PPR is the best way to get balanced scoring from both RBs and Receivers in the current NFL.

 *=funny story. Our old graphics guy, the same guy who curtly told me out-of-the-blue a few summers back that his minimum to touch the league was now $250 (up from $50 yearly for a banner it took him maybe 30 minutes to update each year), reached out in mid-February to offer his services. When I mentioned his extortion attempt price hike email he acted like he didn't recall anything about it.  LOL

RIP Gary Brooker

A Fun Saturday (and wrapping it all up)

 

Photo by James A.

The above is not a photo of the remaining Gambino crime family in the yard at Ossining. Rather it's of six of the seven Hughes owners who gathered on a (surprisingly) pleasant Saturday afternoon in Houston to put a bow on the 2021 EHFL season. Fun conversation (the David Overstreet story NEVER gets old!), food, a few brews and in general a very good time. James, the only attendee without grey hair, was there and took the photo so it was 100% representation for the Houston owners group. 

We spent some time discussing the '21 season, both in the Hughes and other leagues were were in, and the consensus was that this past season was a mess for almost everyone. COVID, shared playing time, and what seemed like an excessive number of injuries turned a lot of rosters upside down. I guess it was reassuring to hear that I wasn't the only one who didn't have much fun navigating the pitfalls of the fall.

I'm in the process of sorting through some things, namely whether or not we will have a league going forward and if we do, what will it look like. I can assure you that if we continue it'll be in a minimalist sort of way. Ideas are always welcome.

I'll have more to say once a decision is made in a few weeks or months. I want to see what the COVID landscape look like as we get closer to the fall. Stay safe everyone.