Thoughts on Dynasty football on ESPN

[Kramer]

Messaging isn't a problem for my league because we all know eachother and already just have a group chat. I'm wondering if you can customize the draft order on ESPN. For example, if someone trades me their first round pick, can I customize the draft board to give me their first round pick? Or would he have to draft the player I want and then trade me him after the draft. I'm thinking about moving my league to ESPN because NFL.com doesn't allow off-season trades

We just do a slow offline draft where each person gets 24 hours to make their pick. The commissioner then just goes in and adds the players to each team as the draft is occuring.

[WhatWouldDitkaDo]

Messaging isn't a problem for my league because we all know eachother and already just have a group chat. I'm wondering if you can customize the draft order on ESPN. For example, if someone trades me their first round pick, can I customize the draft board to give me their first round pick? Or would he have to draft the player I want and then trade me him after the draft. I'm thinking about moving my league to ESPN because NFL.com doesn't allow off-season trades

We just do a slow offline draft where each person gets 24 hours to make their pick. The commissioner then just goes in and adds the players to each team as the draft is occuring.

We use Yahoo, but we do the same thing. Rookie draft occurs via email / Google doc with each pick getting 24 hours. MFL is the best functionality-wise, but you can easily use any other platform if your commissioner is willing to put in a tiny bit of work.

[skip]

Am I the only one who sees a problem with choosing a platform that is missing things that require an "off site" solution? It makes zero sense to have to track picks elsewhere...draft elsewhere...etc...

[jcc6fd]

Am I the only one who sees a problem with choosing a platform that is missing things that require an "off site" solution? It makes zero sense to have to track picks elsewhere...draft elsewhere...etc...

It's definitely a major flaw. But it's also free. For my league with personal friends it's not a big enough inconvenience that it warrants a change, but it seems like it would be much more difficult to manage these shortcomings in an online/strangers league.

[AdrianBeatyerson]

As a LM of a dynasty on ESPN, I can honestly say I despise the site for dynasty purposes.

While ESPN is probably the most user-friendly site for redrafts, they bozo's in Bristol have completed ignored the dynasty community and leagues. The one thing that boggles my mind is the inability to not implement rookie draft pick trading.

[Chris_R]

ESPN is fun for redraft. Dynasty it is a waste and they are way behind the times in making a league configured for dynasty settings.

[Phaded]

Am I the only one who sees a problem with choosing a platform that is missing things that require an "off site" solution? It makes zero sense to have to track picks elsewhere...draft elsewhere...etc...

It takes minimal effort to do it though (I say that as the commish of two ESPN leagues) and is nowhere near the hassle some make it out to be. I will gladly sacrifice a minute of my time when there is a trade and five minutes of my time when it is draft time (to assign picks) to use what I consider a superior platform from a design standpoint.

There is simply a message board thread that lists the draft picks that anyone has; and when a trade involves draft picks, both parties must post to acknowledge it; this is only required in season or for future years. In the off-season (when most draft pick trades happen), you can configure it so trades can actually include the draft picks as a piece of the offer.

You can also implement a chat service on the page as well. I also have a thread for contact info (cell numbers, emails, skype IDs, anything else people want to provide).

Nothing "has" to be off site - I run everything strictly from the ESPN pages.

[Defender]

So, I've been using ESPN for years, and I feel like I can give you a decent rundown of the platform. Currently, the biggest issue is the email system. Though, I haven't had the issue for the last couple of weeks, ESPN has been dropping emails pretty frequently. I wasn't receiving trade offers, messages, or anything.

The next biggest issue is the scoring, like people said. It's not a big deal if you want to run a fairly vanilla league, but you can forget running anything with super specific rules. IDP is pretty much the same way, though it does allow for the standard customization based on sacks/tackles/asts and so on. As far as other communication, ESPN does allow html posting on their main page, so it's easy to drop a chatroll in for everyone to talk with. People can even create their own private rooms to discuss trades if they are both on at the same time.

The draft is... meh. I manually keep track of all trades involving future draft picks through the regular year through the message board. After the offseason maintenance, you can schedule a snake draft and draft pick trading. You can then trade around all the picks to ensure everyone has the correct ones. As long as you kept decent records, that shouldn't take more than 5-10 minutes. The big issue is that ESPN doesn't allow you to use the draft client until Jul 1 at the soonest. So I typically enable this until we get ready for a message board draft and then disable it so that I can add players manually. All further trades have to go through the message board after that. I should also note that if you do use the live draft client, you can't trade picks while it is being used.

ESPN does have some perks to it as well. They generally have the best, cleanest interface and the live scoring is by far the best out of all the clients I've used. They also let you split cb/s and dt/de, which fleaflicker doesn't allow. This sometimes creates positional inaccuracies, but they've really gotten better in the last year or two about those. They just recently introduced the edge rusher position, and if your league uses a generic DL position, it allows you to start 34 OLB there as well, which is pretty neat.

ESPN is really good for redraft and standard leagues, but they lack the conventional dynasty features that would make them much better. I've no idea why they've been so resistant to developing them, because I feel like it would put them head and shoulders above everyone else if they just added a few things like in season draft trading and some scoring upgrades.

In the IDP forum, there was a pretty big thread about the merits (or demerits, as most of us see it) of this positional wrinkle. Worth a read for anyone considering using the option.

[ajmyk]

It's not close, MFL is far better for most dynasty features.
I even use it for one big redraft league I commish.

Like mentionned there is the tracking of the picks, the complete scoring, and the slow draft while trading during the draft is very fun too. More than trades, MFL allows to have waivers all off-season, which allow to react to news and signings. On ESPN it can only be First-Come First-Serve which sucks.

I also like more the statistical data on MFL, on ESPN the PPG data sucks and include missed games too . The Player Stats table in MFL is far better.

I agree that the live scoring is cleaner on ESPN, as is the whole interface, but for functionality MFL is way more than trading picks.

[Ruggenater]

It's not close, MFL is far better for most dynasty features.
I even use it for one big redraft league I commish.

Like mentionned there is the tracking of the picks, the complete scoring, and the slow draft while trading during the draft is very fun too. More than trades, MFL allows to have waivers all off-season, which allow to react to news and signings. On ESPN it can only be First-Come First-Serve which sucks.

I also like more the statistical data on MFL, on ESPN the PPG data sucks and include missed games too . The Player Stats table in MFL is far better.

I agree that the live scoring is cleaner on ESPN, as is the whole interface, but for functionality MFL is way more than trading picks.

This isn't true. The ESPN league I run uses continuous waivers (with FAAB).

[Adidas95]

It's not close, MFL is far better for most dynasty features.
I even use it for one big redraft league I commish.

Like mentionned there is the tracking of the picks, the complete scoring, and the slow draft while trading during the draft is very fun too. More than trades, MFL allows to have waivers all off-season, which allow to react to news and signings. On ESPN it can only be First-Come First-Serve which sucks.

I also like more the statistical data on MFL, on ESPN the PPG data sucks and include missed games too . The Player Stats table in MFL is far better.

I agree that the live scoring is cleaner on ESPN, as is the whole interface, but for functionality MFL is way more than trading picks.

This isn't true. The ESPN league I run uses continuous waivers (with FAAB).

I just made a league on ESPN. Do you know how o can customize the draft board, for example to give player A player B's first round pick?

[Cowboysfan33]

It's not close, MFL is far better for most dynasty features.
I even use it for one big redraft league I commish.

Like mentionned there is the tracking of the picks, the complete scoring, and the slow draft while trading during the draft is very fun too. More than trades, MFL allows to have waivers all off-season, which allow to react to news and signings. On ESPN it can only be First-Come First-Serve which sucks.

I also like more the statistical data on MFL, on ESPN the PPG data sucks and include missed games too . The Player Stats table in MFL is far better.

I agree that the live scoring is cleaner on ESPN, as is the whole interface, but for functionality MFL is way more than trading picks.

I agree with this. Other than the interface, MFL is alot better, imo. The interface doesn't make that big of a difference to me, I know it does to some people so I could understand that being a big deal to those people.

[AZK]

I just made a league on ESPN. Do you know how o can customize the draft board, for example to give player A player B's first round pick?

Yes, you have to set the draft as a snake draft and then enable pick trading. Then go into edit rosters and trade the picks of every team to what they should be ie. trade #12 and #1 pick of every other round to each other, making the draft linear #1 - #12 for every round. Then go in and trade the picks between owners that were traded. You will have to enable keepers to do this, our league just expands rosters in the offseason to accommodate for the rounds of our rookie draft. In the end if it is a 25 player roster pick 1.01 would be - [26th round pick #1].