Yahoo! Pros and Cons

Yahoo: Pros and Cons

In our last edition of Pros and Cons we discussed the ESPN fantasy platform. Today we will pivot to another favorite of beginning fantasy football players, Yahoo! As one of the first mainstream fantasy football platforms, Yahoo has become a reliable and consistent source for all things fantasy football. Like every other platform Yahoo has things that they do really well, and things that leave a lot to be desired. Let’s take a look at some of the pros. 

Pros:

Yahoo is one of the easiest platforms to get your league started on. The leagues are a little more customizable than ESPN, and the app runs well enough. Yahoo offers an in-depth view of each player and their history. Information wise, Yahoo is one of the very best platforms out there. Their projections are solid, not as good as ESPN, but still reliable. Yahoo has a trade analyzer tool that is fantastic. While I often find myself disagreeing with their trade logic, this tool will help many new players not get swindled by a wily vet. 

Yahoo gives you the option to do snake and auction drafts, has a better keeper interface than ESPN, and even allows you to do DFS on their platform. Their draft day report cards are a blast to dive into after the draft, although I have found over the years that the classes I get the lower grades on, tend to perform better than the ones that I crush. 

Yahoo offers the typical bells and whistles that most other sites offer such as chat functions, smack talk boards, and draft recaps. It’s also easily accessible as most people either already have a Yahoo email address or are at least familiar enough with the platform. Yahoo also offers a solid mock lobby for anyone wanting to get some practice in. 

Cons:

The app works well and does everything you need it to, but boy is it ugly. The user interface is very basic and looks like it was designed in the 1980s. Their game day feed is far inferior to ESPNs and their draft day experience also pales in comparison. While Yahoo supports most formats, dynasty leagues are a nightmare to host. 

Trading is clunky at best on Yahoo and the chat is garbage. The entire interface is difficult to navigate, even once you’ve utilized the platform for a while. You’re much better off just using Facebook Messenger than trying to work the Yahoo chat system. Yahoo doesn’t send you timely alerts and I’m often left with a mess of unread nonsense at the end of my fantasy football week.

Yahoo not only looks like it was designed in the 1980s but also still employs standard scoring as their default scoring system. While this can be changed, it’s clear that they have fallen out of touch with the needs and desires of redraft players. The most annoying feature of Yahoo is the ability to drop players even once their game has started. That’s complete bullshit.  Yahoo is behind Sleeper in the statistics game, and behind ESPN in the functionality game. 

Bottom Line:

Yahoo was one of the first players in the game. Unfortunately, they’ve done little to keep up with the other players who have emerged, and mostly surpassed this antiquated app. There are worse options than Yahoo out there, but there are plenty of better ones also. Yahoo prides itself on providing information, yet have fallen behind several competitors in this regard. Hard pass on Yahoo for me.