The Byes Arrive, Waivers Begin In Earnest
Hope everyone is enjoying the season so far! Please feel free to write us with any questions or concerns or ideas. We’re friendly!
This week starts the beginning of the NFL bye weeks, and frantic waiver activity. Don’t forget to set waivers tonight before 10pm ET, and remember that 30 minutes later all remaining available players become free agents, available for pickup for free!
If you’ve never used the DataForce waiver processing page before, watch this short video.
If you missed our newsletter a while ago about how waivers and free agency work, check it out here.
What Happens To Dropped Players
We’ve been playing for five weeks now, and we hope by now everyone has become familiar with blind bidding, but we still get a few questions from our customers. For example, what happens when you drop a player, either through free agency or waiver bidding? Does he go to Free Agency where another team can pick him up?
Nope. Dropped players go to Waivers. All team owners have an equal shot at any dropped player, through the bidding process. And that happens on Wednesday nights. So dropped players go out of play until the next Wednesday bidding.
There is one exception: If you pick up a player and drop him in the same week, he doesn’t go to Waivers. He goes to Free Agency. This is to prevent churning, where one owner picks up a lot of players and drops them just to try to lock them up so nobody else can get them. It won’t work, they’ll just go right back into Free Agency.
If you have any question about the status of a player, check out the League->Players page to learn his status.
(MFL note: MyFantasyLeague can’t recognize when a player is picked up and dropped in the same week, so it locks them all. If you want a player who was dropped, and notice that he was picked up just this week, just write us a note and we’ll make him available for you.)
Two More ‘Free’ Weeks For Most Guillotine leagues
Beginning in week 7 heads begin to roll in most guillotine leagues. Two weeks remain in 12-team leagues where you play for blind bidding money instead of for your life.
If you’re in a 10-team guillotine, you have another two weeks beyond that to relax. Head-chopping doesn’t begin until week 9.
Once things get grisly, one team drops out of the league each week, and all their players go to Waivers. That’s why you’re fighting so hard these early weeks to accumulate as much blind bidding money as you can. There’s gonna be some great players on waivers soon, and the feeding frenzy will be wild.
The team that gets chopped is the team scoring the fewest points that week! We get asked this each year: Fewest points year-to-date, or fewest points each week? It’s the latter. It makes absolutely no difference where you are in the standings, if you choke one week, you’re gone.
Helpful Roster Moves
With lots of players on bye this week, you probably received emails overnight about ‘helpful roster moves.’ This is a process that runs every Tuesday night. If the software detects that you have a player in your lineup who is on bye, or already ruled out for the week, it tries to replace that player in your lineup with someone from your bench.
The purpose of helpful roster moves is mostly to keep abandoned teams competitive by trying to start players who will compete. The player the software chooses to start will not be based on any projections This is not a sophisticated selection process, nor is it meant to be! It simply picks the bench player who has scored the most points this year.
If you don’t find this helpful and would like to disable this Tuesday night feature, you can do so from the Owner->Setup page.
Potential Points Calculation For Next Year’s Draft
Off to a bad start? Started looking ahead to next year in your multi-year league? If so, you need to be aware of the potential points calculation.
Next year’s draft order is not determined by this year’s standings!! It makes absolutely no difference how many games you win or lose! Do NOT tank games trying to get a better draft spot next year: that will put you in violation of our fairplay rules.
There is simply no reason to ever play less than your optimal starting lineup. Ever. Unless you are trying to help somebody else win, which is illegal and unethical.
Instead, the teams which do not make the semifinals will be ranked worst-to-first based on potential points, a measure of how many points your team could have scored for the first 14 weeks under bestball rules. And if you score nothing at a position after the bestball calculation, you’ll be penalized. For example, if you don’t roster a quarterback, you’ll get 20 ‘potential points’ at quarterback! (Not 20 real points for your head-to-head game, of course, just 20 points toward the calculation for next year’s draft order.)
You will find your calculated potential points on the standings page for dynasty/legacy/keeper leagues.
(MFL note: Do not pay any attention to potential point calculations on MyFantasyLeague. DataForce’s calculations will differ, and it’s the DataForce calculations that will be used at end-of-year.)
Lee Harmon
Commissioner