Since the expansion of the NFL schedule to 17 games and the inclusion of Week 14 bye weeks cutting into the previous general start of the fantasy football playoffs, fantasy leagues have had to get creative with their schedules. The best solution is to have an extra non-divisional regular season matchup based on the corresponding finishes of the previous season. This is a step-by-step process on getting the schedule to work out in ESPN fantasy leagues.
These steps only apply to ten-team leagues, as typical 12-team leagues with three divisions of four teams each has the math work out well already (play each division opponent twice and everyone else once to make up 14 weeks). 8- and 14-team leagues are a different story.
1. Reset the schedule
League Managers should follow these steps to get a new schedule for the season: Go to LM Tools > Edit Schedule Settings > Check “Reset Schedule” > Hit “Save Changes”
This randomizes your schedule.
2. Record the new reset schedule
This step isn’t 100% necessary, but it’s wise to record (a simple screen recording is efficient) in case errors are made while making the schedule right.
3. Confirm Week 14 is all interdivisional matchups
By default, ESPN’s Reset Schedule feature in ten-team leagues should make it so Week 14 is all interdivisional matchups after Weeks 1-13 are automatically the two divisional matchups (adding up to eight) and the five interdivisional matchups.
- However, the Week 14 interdivisional matchups created by ESPN are random.
- Your league should implement a corresponding divisional finish for the extra interdivisional matchups—i.e., the first-place finisher in the East Division plays the first-place finisher in the West Division from last season.
- Not only that, but you probably don’t want the final week of the fantasy regular season to have no divisional games.
4. Generate a week for the extra interdivisional games
Again, with Weeks 1-13 being OK in terms of the correct number of divisional and non-divisional matchups, there’s an easy solution. Use a random number generator to pick a number from 2-13. (You could do 1-14 if you want, but most leagues probably prefer not to have all non-divisional matchups to open or close the regular season.)
This number, if it fits with the rest of the schedule, can be the week where the second set of interdivisional matchups of corresponding previous year finishes should be.
To confirm if the randomly generated number from 2-13 does fit, just be sure the weeks surrounding the number won’t lead to the same matchup in back-to-back weeks. For example, if the number generated is five for Week 5, just make sure the other matchup between the corresponding division finishers from last season isn’t also happening in what will become the new Week 4 and Week 6.
If the randomly generated number leads to a matchup in two consecutive weeks between the same teams, you can keep generating new random numbers until it works out (it should only take a couple of tries).
5. Slide the schedule
When the number matches up, you basically slide the schedule back to eliminate the Week 14 randomized by ESPN.
- Let’s say Week 10 was randomly picked as the extra non-divisional matchup.
- Go to LM Tools > Edit Head-to-Head Schedule
- Starting with Week 14, take the Week 13 matchups and slide them there. This eliminates the erroneous Week 14 games initially randomized by ESPN.
- From there, continue sliding the schedule back—i.e., put Week 12 games into Week 13, Week 11 games into Week 12, and so on—until you get to the randomly generated number that works.
6. Input correct interdivisional matchups
Let’s continue with Week 10 as the randomly generated week.
- In this case, after sliding Week 10 into Week 11 and getting to Week 10, you insert the correct interdivisional matchups based off corresponding division finish from the previous year (e.g., first place vs. first place).
- Weeks 1-9 remain as they were.
You should now be all set with each team playing:
- Divisional opponents twice (8)
- Non-divisional opponents once (5), aside from:
- An extra non-divisional matchup (1) with the corresponding non-divisional finish from the previous season.
7. Match up home and away games
The final step is to just make sure each team has seven home games and seven away games. It’s not a huge deal if not unless your league uses a home-field advantage setting (unlikely) or has a home-away tiebreaker, but it’s still best to do things right and ensure an even number of home and away games for each squad.
Conclusion
And that’s it. While not a perfect path to the solution (and ideally ESPN would implement something to make this simpler), generating a random week and sliding the schedule from there is the best path to making the fantasy football schedule work in ten-team leagues on ESPN.