Extreme Fantasy Sports: About: Fantasy Football New Owner’s Guide

Welcome to Extreme Fantasy Sports! This guide is for owners who have purchased their first EFS fantasy football team, whether you purchased a new team or inherited an orphan. Here, I’ll give you the basics of what you can look forward to with your new team, as well as some tips for new team and orphan owners. For more detailed information, see the EFS Rules

New Team Owner

1. First, congratulations!: You’ve accepted the greatest fantasy football challenge on the internet. To win here is no easy task, and the beginning of your EFS journey starts with a full league and the veteran draft.
2. The Veteran Draft: Once your league fills, you will need to decide on a draft type — live or “slow”. Usually, this is done by email or in the EFS League Forums. For a live draft, everyone would agree upon a block of time to draft 10 rounds of veterans. For a slow draft, league members would need to agree on the number of veterans to draft (from 10 to 41), a start date and how long to give each owner per pick. (The default is 24 hours.)
3. Live Veteran Draft: First advice — be prepared! You will need to go to the draft room (“Veteran Draft”) to participate in the veteran draft. Come to the draft room at the league-designated day and time with a prepared draft list, preferably entered into EFS. On draft day, you will need to know each football player’s Player ID (PID). When it’s your turn to make a draft pick, you will need to enter the PID. Be ready! You will be alerted within the draft room how much time you have left to make your pick. You’ll also be able to see all the owners concurrently in the draft room. All recent picks made will be listed. For fun, you can talk to fellow league owners about the picks in the EFS Chat Room
4. Slow Veteran Draft: Read the rules for the live veteran draft, because you’ll need to bring those PIDs with you into the same veteran draft room. The only difference is that you’ll have more time. 🙂 You will be alerted by email when it’s your turn to pick. (Make sure that your owner master has a valid email address.) You can see how much time you have left to pick within the veteran draft room. The biggest feature of veteran drafts is the ability to trade drafted players and/or veteran picks for drafted players and/or veteran picks. Check the forums and trade room often.
5. Veteran contracts, intro: Ok, here’s the tricky part. You need to assign contracts to the veterans you just signed from your team’s Simple View page. You’re given a total of 140 years to spread across your active roster. An active roster can have, at most, 46 players. That leaves you with about 2.8 years per player. Each player can be given a 1-to-5 year contract. You need to decide which players you want to give bigger contracts. Typically you give bigger contracts to younger and better players, especially if their initial salary is high ($3 million or more). Next, you need to decide which players you want to start on the practice squad. Do NOT think of the practice squad as a bench! Think of it as a place to put future stars (who aren’t yet), and backups to your active roster backups. If you put a good player on PS, he’ll be bid on quick. Choose your contract assignments wisely!
6. Veteran contracts, assigning: When you want to assign a player contract, click on his name from the Simple View page. Enter the number of years you want to give a player in the Con/Ext input area. If you want this player to begin his career on your team on the practice squad, enter a “Y” in the PS input area. (This is important — you must designate a veteran player to the PS at the time you give him his initial contract.) At this point, you can submit the update.
7. Rookie draft: After the veteran draft, you’ll hold 7 rounds of a rookie draft chosen exclusively from the current year’s rookie crop, with the same options as the veteran draft — live or slow. From here, you can trade veterans, drafted-rookies and/or rookie picks for veterans, drafted-rookies and/or rookie picks during the draft. (Once again, be ready with those PIDs!)
8. Before the Regular Season: Hereon, you can continue trading into the regular season, make bids in free agency (via. FA by Position and FA Bid List menu options) to fill in whatever roster holes are left, and prepare for the regular season.
9. The Regular Season: During the regular season, you’ll need to set your team’s 24 starters for that week. You have until about game-time per-player to make changes. Once a player’s game has started, you can’t change him in or out of your starting lineup. Set your starters early! You can always set starters days or weeks ahead of time — which is better than starting injured or BYE week players, or worse yet, having the system set your starting lineup for you.

New Orphan Owner

1. Beginning Orphan Ownership: Depending on when you took over, you’ll want to start reading above. The first thing to remember is, EFSports fantasy football is NOT like other fantasy football sites! You’ve entered a dynasty keeper fantasy football site. Do NOT make any sudden moves.
2. Off-season Orphan Ownership: Whether you pick up an orphan during the off-season or regular season, you need to begin communication with the rest of the league members first. Examine your team, other teams, the free agent list, the waiver wire, and RFA (if applicable). Decide what you need to do in order to field a competitive team during the regular season. Figure out what’s not on your team that you need, and what’s on your team that won’t help you. For what’s on your team that you want to drop, try trading them first! Waiving players costs your team contract years and salary against those respective caps for your team up to FOUR years in the future.
3. Regular-season Orphan Ownership: If you pick up your orphan during the regular season, first make sure you set a lineup for the coming week. Second, check out your playoff situation. If you still think your team has a shot, you might want to make moves to strengthen your chances; otherwise, rebuilding for next season and beyond might be a good idea. Communicate with the other league members as soon as you can to help open trade talks. Again, don’t make any sudden drops — other owners might want what you don’t, and it’s always cheaper to trade players than simply waive them.
4. End-of-Season Orphan Ownership: Before the end of the season, you’ll need to determine which players should stay and which should go. Once you’re out of playoff contention, you need to evaluate your contract cap situation for the next season. One contract year will be returned to your contract cap for every active player. Your current-year contract cap penalty years will be returned, as well. This is what you have to work with for the next season. From this, you need to plan ahead. Figure out which players with a 1 year contract you will keep in RFA (unless bid too high) and what you want to extend their contracts to. Review all 2-year contract players. Determine the top, highest-priced players to give them contract extensions NOW to save contract extension money. Low-priced players (around $1M or less) can wait until the extension deadline for 1-year players in the new season; then, you will have a better idea whether you want to give them a sizable extension, string them along another season with a 1-year extension, or let them wind down to RFA in the next season. Check your next-season draft situation and set aside enough years for those picks. Also, set aside about 20-or-so contract years (if you have it) for during-season free agent and practice squad signings.