Year seven is approaching, and as I do every year, I take the offseason to evaluate how I can improve the league. Over the past handful of years, I've done research and testing on different fantasy platforms to see which offers the best versatility and continues to listen to their users. I'll start by saying that fundamentally, nothing is wrong with Yahoo. They've provided just about everything we needed. The primary problem is that over the 10+ years, I've been using them, they're about as bad as it comes to updates, new formats/scoring, fixing issues, etc. I think we can all agree ESPN is the only worse major platform at doing so.
In comes Sleeper Fantasy. I initially looked into this platform in 2019 when I worked with a couple of their reps for testing and was part of a dynasty league for a couple of years to try it out. Personally, I wasn't a fan at the time. They had limited funding resources as fantasy is free for users. Their funding came from in-app purchases where you could buy stupid dancing mascots for your team. I thought it was childish and didn't fit the fantasy demographic. Since then, they've launched an update this summer primarily focused on daily fantasy but also updated the UI for the fantasy platform and killed off the mascots. Before inviting everyone to the league I created, I did additional testing on my own, with a surprisingly positive outcome. Those in the league who have since taken some time to review it also had positive comments.
I know a few of the league members are torn on making the change, why fix something that isn't broken? I truly believe once you get comfortable with the app, you'll enjoy it. Worst-case scenario? We switch back should shit go south, but I don't anticipate that.
Getting into the core of everything, I want to try and familiarize everyone with the app and how to improve the user experience. I've provided a table of content below that will allow you to scroll past the shit you don't care about. But I think this will help everyone get introduced to the app.
Table of Contents
Removing the Gambling from Sleeper
Changing Notifications
Navigating the Interface
Mock Drafting
Removing Gambling from Sleeper
I found this helpful because I personally don't give a shit about gambling through Sleeper and just cluttered the UI. If you would like to remove anything gambling related on Sleeper, follow these steps:
Click on your avatar image in the top left of the home screen.
You'll access the settings via the cogwheel next to your username.
Click on Responsible Gaming
Click on Self Exclusion
Follow the steps to exclude yourself from all gambling
After that, the interface should be focused primarily on fantasy sports.
Changing Notifications
I've been told that the notifications are annoying, which I agree with except I don't receive them because I am the commissioner. There are a couple of ways to disable notifications but should you have any trouble, give me a call and I'll walk you through it.
Navigating the Interface
I'm not going into depth with this because everyone should be savvy enough to understand a fantasy app. Just wanted to provide a couple of insights. You'll see the League listed as one of your leagues, click on that to see everything about the league.
There are four main headers on the league page, DRAFT, TEAM, PLAYERS, and LEAGUE.
DRAFT
By scrolling down you'll see everything such as draft time, teams, league setting and scoring.
TEAM
This is where you can manage your weekly rosters, make trades and see updated news.
PLAYERS
Player search for waivers, trending, point leaders, trading, etc.
LEAGUE
League standing and activity.
You'll see five main icons at the bottom of the interface, or four if you have gambling disabled. The third one would be gambling if you don't have it disabled.
The first one is your league home page.
Second, is a scoreboard for sports where you can see live game scores, fantasy totals for players and play-by-play.
Third is similar to a Twitter (X?) feed. You can sort by the latest or "hottest" aka, ones with most interactions. You can also add specific NFL teams to your feed.
Fourth is just a bunch of BS videos, podcasts and other shit. I imagine you won't need that often.
Mock Drafting
Some things to note: It values QBs highly, as I expected via the scoring change. This is personally what I wanted. QBs value should be higher and there should be a tough decision in the early rounds to take QBs. Whether this happens or not during the actual draft is TBD. Normally people have held off on drafting a QB until mid-late rounds because it didn't make a ton of sense to draft one early. That value still may be there but again, you could be harshly punished if the QB you take late is not consistent. To read my last article on the QB scoring changes, click here.
I'm happy to walk people through the changes in-depth.
We're almost 2 weeks away from draft day. Start mocking and get prepared. Another cup goes to the victor.