Making a List: MyFantasyLeague Features

Ryan McDowell

checklist

Since my fantasy football career began nearly a dozen years ago, I have been an avid user of MyFantasyLeague.com. For my money, they are the best in the fantasy league hosting business. At this point, I act as commissioner for 12 dynasty leagues and all are hosted on MFL.

If you are an MFL user, you already know about many of their numerous features. As a bit of a dynasty addict, I have been guilty of assuming all members of my leagues are just as familiar as I am with those great features, but through some recent conversations with even the most active participants in my leagues, I’ve found that is not the case.

With that in mind, I want to point out a few important options offered by MyFantasyLeague that could help you manage your team, or just make the overall experience a little more fun!

  1. Most Added Players

As you might imagine, it can be very useful to get the pulse of the fantasy community as a whole by identifying the players who are “trending” at any given time. MFL offers this information in the form of a percentage of how many leagues a player has been added to a roster. Dynasty owners have to take some of this information with a grain of salt as all MFL leagues, including the large number of redraft leagues they host, are included in this data. When considering that though, it’s very possible to find that hidden gem before they are grabbed by your leaguemates.

Where can I find this?

There are two different areas of the typical MyFantasyLeague website this information can be found. First, follow this route: Reports-Player-Top Adds/Drops/Starters. On this page, not only can you find the players that are most added across all leagues, but also those who are dropped, started or rostered. The only downside with this particular report is the inclusion of all players, even when already owned in your particular league.

Alternately, I prefer to follow this path: Player-Full Free Agent Listing. Once on this page, I click on the “Add Pct” column in order to rank all free agents in my league in order of the most added for that particular week. When my waiver period is drawing near, I can use this report to quickly identify any player I might want to add to my team.

[inlinead]

  1. Player Transaction History

This feature is more of an interesting way to look back at the history of specific players in your league and not quite as useful to the day-to-day management of your team. With that said, it’s become one of the most addicting parts of the website for me.

The site’s transaction data goes back to (at least) 2005 and provides users with information about where players were drafted or when they were traded or added via waivers. It can be a fun exercise to see how often a player has been traded or the current studs who were once sitting on the waiver wire.

Where can I find this?

[inlinead]After clicking on any player’s name, there are multiple options listed just above the Player Biography and Stats sections. One of those is Transaction History. After checking out this feature, there are other notable options, such as News, Tweets and NFL Videos, all of which can keep you up to date in every way on players around the league.

  1. League History/Franchise Records

The multiple league history and records options featured on each MyFantasyLeague site can be a major rabbit hole, resulting in lost hours and many interesting tidbits discovered.

Among some of the information you can learn are weekly high and low scoring records, highest scoring individual players, (the current record in my longest standing league is 59.5 this past season by Jamaal Charles,) and much more!

Where can I find this?

Again, there are multiple places to find this information. For current season scoring history, go here: Reports-Franchise-Scoring History. For all of the various types of records, simply choose the Records option found under Reports. Finally, MFL offers a customizable League History option, which can be found here: Reports-

Rules-History

  1. Status in All My Leagues/All My Leagues

Of all of the many league features offered by MyFantasyLeague, this is probably the one I have used the most over the past few weeks. Being in so many leagues, it used to be quite a chore to find the status of certain players, especially up and coming players who might be impressing through training camp or pre-season. Last week, I was reading up on Giants wide receiver Corey Washington and wondered if he was available in any of my nearly 20 leagues. Rather than spending an hour going from one site to the next in search of Washington on the waiver wire, I was able to quickly and easily find the list of leagues in which he was available.

This feature is most useful if you play in multiple leagues, but is a time saver even if that number is not out of hand, as mine is.

Where can I find this?

There are two ways to find this information. First, I mentioned the options listed on each player page in the Transaction History section. One of the options is Status In All My Leagues. Choosing this will bring a report listing all leagues you’re currently logged into and the team that currently owns that player. If he is a free agent in a league, there will be a link, which can be used to quickly add that player via waivers.

The other route is just as simple. By choosing My Leagues-All My Leagues, you’ll find a list of every league you take part in and at the top of that page will be a player drop down. Choosing a player will bring up the same report as mentioned above.

  1. Previously Processed Waivers

You may be wondering what a report like this could do for your team. There is actually some great information to be mined from this option. In fact, this can be so useful to other teams that some commissioners choose to eliminate the report from their leagues.

When viewing the report, along with the recent successful waiver claims, you will also find failed attempts to add a player. A waiver attempt will fail for a number of reasons, but most often because another team with higher waiver priority claimed the player first, or another team bid more waiver money for the player.

The failed waiver claims can give other owners two important pieces of information. First, it will show owners of newly acquired players what other teams were interested in a player. For example, if my team wins a week one breakout player with the intention to trade that player, my first stop will be the Previously Processed Waivers report. While this information is really only useful to one team, all teams can benefit from the final piece of intelligence. Along with showing which teams were attempting to add a player, the report also reveals which players on their team they planned to drop in the transaction. This will show all other owners how that player is being valued by that owner and give them the heads up to either look for that player to hit the waiver wire soon, or potentially make a buy low trade attempt for that player.

Where can I find this?

Just follow Reports-Franchise-Previously Processed Waivers to find this report, which is updated each time waivers are processed.

MyFantasyLeague offers many great features as part of their league hosting, including ultimate customization ability when it comes to draft and auction formats along with the general look of the site. The popularity of their MFL10s is noteworthy and on a selfish note, the ability they offer to conduct free mock draft leagues and best ball leagues is what allows us at DLF to offer our updated average draft position data.

[ad5]

ryan mcdowell