ESPN Fantasy Football 2022: New Features, New Content, More Fun!

ESPN Fantasy Football, the No. 1 most popular fantasy football game, is introducing new features and tools, as well as expanded content, insights and analysis across ESPN platforms, to make playing fantasy football in 2022 more fun and engaging than ever.

The ESPN Fantasy App, the most popular fantasy sports app, makes playing ESPN Fantasy Football easy, fun and fast, providing more information and insight for fans than any other fantasy football game on mobile.

Updates to game play on ESPN.com and the ESPN Fantasy App include new scoring and league management tools, with more new features and updates on the way throughout the season.

• An improved, comprehensive League History in the app allows users in private leagues to track their all-time performance, historical matchups and trends against their league mates.
• A new “Bonus Wins” format awards a win to players finishing in the top half of points in a league as a fun way help mitigate the unfortunate weeks when your team produces a high number of points only to be beaten by another team with an extraordinarily high score. League commissioners can enable this mode in their league settings.
• Scoring by Position enables league managers to set how many points are awarded to specific scoring categories. For example, awarding one point per reception for wide receivers and tight ends, and 0.5 points per reception for running backs.
• When a user adds a new player to their roster, Auto-Start Player Pickups ensures that the new player will automatically be placed into the starting lineup if that position was otherwise empty.
• Draft Keepers by Round allows users playing in Keeper Leagues to customize exactly which round their keeper picks will be selected within their draft.
• Partial Season Play has been improved for leagues that draft after the start of the season.

ESPN Fantasy continues to work with IBM to incorporate AI-generated insight from Watson into unique, in-depth projection and player comparison tools that make ESPN Fantasy Football easier and more fun.

• New for 2022 is the IBM Trade Analyzer, which will help users craft trades by providing data and other information for each player in a trade package, with a clear comparison of the needs of each team involved in a proposed trade.

ESPN Fantasy Football has the deepest roster of trusted fantasy and NFL experts providing fans with the most comprehensive collection of rankings, insights and analysis that continue to set the industry standard.

• Field Yates, in his dual roles as an NFL reporter and fantasy analyst, will write a weekly fantasy column for both casual and hardcore fans, diving into big storylines, providing insights on key player decisions and tapping into ESPN’s network of NFL experts to provide a comprehensive but quick-hitting guide to the week’s action. Yates will continue to host the daily Fantasy Focus Football Podcast, contribute to ESPN.com fantasy rankings, and host Fantasy Football Nowon ESPN2, while also appearing on a variety of ESPN shows.
• Mike Clay will continue to drive ESPN’s season-long projections, as well as his highly popular Fantasy Football Playbook on Fridays, which includes all his best advice to help fans win their matchups and football bets. Clay will join the desk for Fantasy Football Now on Sundays, and he will have an increased role on Fantasy Focus Football Podcast, providing his industry-leading wide receiver/cornerback matchup analysis every week.
• Fantasy injury analyst and ESPN.com senior writer Stephania Bell, the first woman inducted into the FSWA Hall of Fame, will continue to provide her expert injury analysis on a variety of platforms, including the Fantasy Focus Football Podcast, Fantasy Football Nowon ESPN2, and various columns and features on ESPN.com and the ESPN App.
• ESPN.com senior writer and FSWA Hall of Famer Eric Karabell will contribute as a ranker for both ESPN Fantasy Football weekly rankings and for projected rankings through the remainder of the season on Tuesdays, and his popular Flex Rankings every Wednesday.
• Tristan H. Cockcroft, an ESPN.com senior writer and FSWA Hall of Famer, will continue to compile ESPN’s exclusive Consistency Ratings, contribute to weekly rankings, and write his ESPN+ Matchups Map column on Thursdays, which highlights skill-position players with the best and worst matchups each week.
• Daniel Dopp moves into a full-time role as a host and analyst. He will co-host the Fantasy Focus Football Podcast, make weekly appearances on Fantasy Football Now and continue to contribute to ESPN’s weekly PPR ranker and editorial content.
• Liz Loza joins the team this season as a Fantasy and Sports Betting Analyst making regular contributions to fantasy rankings, developing weekly columns and picks, and appearing on Fantasy Football Now, Fantasy Focus Football, Daily Wager, and other studio shows.
• Fantasy and NFL writer Matt Bowen, who spent seven years in the NFL as a safety, will write three times a week, including a Tuesday “streamers” column in which he will identify matchups to utilize skilled players who might break out each week for fans looking deep for new options. Bowen will also continue to provide position rankings and team up with Cockcroft to break down and contextualize the most important fantasy storylines every Sunday.
• ESPN.com writer Eric Moody, who joined ESPN Fantasy last year, will write throughout each week of the season, including a weekly waiver wire piece ahead of Tuesday’s pickup deadline and a daily digest highlighting the most important information fantasy players need to know.
• ESPN.com’s NFL Nation will provide insights specific to all 32 teams in the league with fantasy-dedicated pieces each week.
• Every Tuesday, ESPN.com and the ESPN Fantasy App will publish a compilation of analysts’ PPR and non-PPR rankings to help fans make well-informed start/sit and free agent pickup decisions. ESPN’s PPR rankers includeBowen, Clay, Cockcroft, Daniel Dopp, Karabell, Loza, Moody, and Yates. Bowen, Clay, Cockcroft, Karabell, and Moody will contribute non-PPR rankings.

As fans prepare for their drafts and seek insights throughout the season, ESPN Fantasy delivers a constant supply information and analysis across ESPN+ and ESPN platforms.

• Fantasy Football Now will begin with a pre-season kick-off special on Sunday, September 4, at 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2, before starting its regular cadence Week 1 on ESPN2 every Sunday morning of the season at 10 a.m. ET to 1 p.m. ET. Clay and NFL analyst and two-time Super Bowl champions Damien Woody will join Yates and Bell in studio, with weekly contributions from Senior NFL Insider Adam Schefter, NFL analyst Louis Riddick, Dopp, Loza, and Moody, as well as live segments with NFL reporters at games.
• Fantasy Focus Football Podcast will deliver six shows per week Monday through Friday, including a Monday show delivered at 5 a.m ET, to give fans an early, drive-time start to their week with reactions to all of Sunday’s games and a preview of Monday Night Football. Yates will return as host, with Dopp, Bell and Clay, as well as regular contributions from Loza, Moody, Schefter, and Woody. Al Zeidenfeld will join Dopp and Clay for a daily fantasy sports episode each week.
• ESPN+ Fantasy Field Pass Preseason Specials will be hosted by Yates and available to stream Friday, August 12. Four episodes will focus on fantasy football scoring positions – quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, flex players – with special guests Schefter, Woody and Clay providing unique insights and analysis.

The ESPN Fantasy Football Marathon kicks off Monday, August 15, at 6 p.m. ET.

• More than 28 hours of ESPN Fantasy Football will be highlighted by NFL programming cornerstones Fantasy Football Nowand NFL Live, along with special editions of SportsCenter, Daily Wager, Get Up!, First Take, Jalen & Jacoby, This Just In, The Fantasy Football Focus Podcast, and Keyshawn, JWill & Max.
• During the Marathon, Fantasy Football Now will air as a four-hour special on Monday starting on ESPN2 at 7-9 p.m. ET, before moving to ESPN at 9-11 p.m. ET.
• The Marathon will culminate with a 10-team Fantasy Football Draft on Tuesday, August 16, at 7 p.m. ET, on ESPN and a commercial-free simulcast on the ESPN App, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Extensive fantasy football content on ESPN.com includes the 2022 ESPN Fantasy Football Draft Kit, a thorough collection of links to cheat sheets, mock drafts and projections, including Clay’s team-by-team projection guide, Cockcroft’s PPR Top 200, Karabell’s Superflex Top 200, and composite rankings for every position in the draft.

• Exclusively for ESPN+ subscribers, the Draft Kit offers even more vital information and analysis, including Clay’s Fantasy Football Playbook, which outlines everything any fan needs to know in order to play like an expert, and the Custom Dollar Generator, which runs ESPN.com’s Fantasy projections through Rotowire.com’s dollar value formula, creating personalized rankings and dollar values for salary cap drafts.
• ESPN+ subscribers also have access to exclusive position and individual player analysis from Clay, Bowen, Cockcroft, Karabell, and more.

About ESPN Fantasy
ESPN Fantasy is the No. 1 provider in fantasy sports with a comprehensive portfolio of award-winning games and content serving more than 20 million fantasy players across the web, mobile, audio, linear TV, and streaming video. Drawing on multiple resources and platforms, ESPN Fantasy continues to innovate, expand and reach new and younger audiences through all of its products.

About ESPN+
ESPN+ is the industry-leading sports streaming service that offers fans in the U.S. thousands of live sports events, original programming not available on ESPN’s linear TV or digital networks and exclusive editorial content from dozens of ESPN writers and reporters. Launched in April 2018, ESPN+ has grown to more than 22.3 million subscribers.

Fans sign up to ESPN+ for just $6.99 a month (or $69.99 per year) at ESPN.com, ESPNplus.com or on the ESPN App (mobile and connected devices). It is also available as part of The Disney Bundle that gives subscribers access to Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu for $13.99/month (Hulu w/ads) or $19.99/month (Hulu w/o ads). Subscribers to Hulu + Live TV also receive ESPN+ at no additional cost.

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