The Basics Of Fantasy Football

Fantasy Football is “game” where you draft an imaginary team of real, current NFL football players, and every week of the NFL regular season your team will match up, head to head with other fantasy teams in your league. 

 

Essentially, you join a fantasy league on a platform like NFL.com, Yahoo, ESPN, or another one, either with a group of friends or with a bunch of random people and The objective of fantasy football like regular football is to make the playoffs and win your league ( or in some cases not lose).  

 

People play for money, usually at which you pay an entry fee to their league commissioner where that money will most likely go to the cash prize winnings for the season. But, I have played in leagues where the team that scores the highest amount of points wins $10 that week as well as a pool of cash where first gets 60% of the final money pot, 2nd gets 30% of the pot and 3rd gets 10% of the pot.

 

Then there are leagues where the whole goal is to just not lose. (in this case the loser of the league has to do something stupid/embarrasing for losing their league and the winner of the league gets to pick what the loser does. (an example would be the tattoo fantasy league... Where the winner of the championship picks a tattoo for the loser opf the league to get on them)

 

So if you join one of those leagues if you’re planning to play, make sure you at least don’t lose.

 

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Points are based off of your players actual in game stats. 

 

But, depending on what point scoring league you play in, scoring rules differ. 

 

Standard point leagues- Only yards and touchdowns determines your player scores. In most cases 

10 receiving or rushing yards= 1 point (for QBs WRs, RBs, TEs)

25 passing yds= 1 point

Rush or Rec TD= 6 points  

Passing TD= 4 pts

fumble/ INT= -2

 

EX 1) if CMC rushes for 100 yds (10 pts), receiving yds= 50 yds (5 pts), 2 TDs (12 pts) = in standard leagues CMC  would have= 27 fantasy pts

 

PPR Leagues (points per reception)- every 1 reception = 1point  in addition to Yards and TDs 

½ PPR leagues = 1 rec = .5 points plus yards TDs

 

Simple

 

What is the best place to play fantasy football?

 

There are a lot of platforms to use when playing fantasy football.

 

Such as :

ESPN
Yahoo

CBS

NFL.com

Sleeper 

 

I have only used ESPN, CBS, and Sleeper. But I have heard good things about Yahoo and NFL.com. 

 

Of the 3 I have used, my favorite has been CBS. I like this one because of the stats and summaries they give you after each week. They essentially write an article powered by AI which is always fun to read about afterwards. But most of the platforms are very similar. 

 

ESPN is easy to use, but it’s not as customizable as other platforms can be. Although on game-days they definitely have the best visual play by play live stats system in my opinion. 

 

How do fantasy drafts work?

 

There are three draft types: a Straight draft, a Snake draft, and an Auction drafts.

 

 A Straight draft is when each team drafts in the same order every round. 

 

A Snake draft the draft order “snakes” so whenafter everyone picks in the first round, the picks are reversed. So first to last pick in the first round, last to first pick  in the second, and first to last in the third and then last to first in the 4th and so on and so forth. 

 

In an Auction draft, a player is placed on the draft slot to be drafted and you virtually bid on the player. The team with the highest bid will win the player, and that amount payed will be deducted from the teams draft budget. (normally this is with fake money like $200, but I’m sure leagues will use their entry fee for this)

 

If you're new to fantasy football or don't want to dedicate a lot of time, a snake draft league is the way to go.

 

You can do any of these formats online or in person. 

 

If you’re playing with a group of friends, I highly recommend playing in person on a homemade draft board.

 

It is a lot of fun and a good excuse to get together to eat and drink.

Mock draft is a term used by sports websites in reference to a simulation of a sports league draft or fantasy sports league's draft.

 

For fantasy purposes they are very helpful in seeing what round players go as well as getting a sense of how fantasy drafts work especially if this is your first time drafting.

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I recommend going to a site like ESPN and using their Mock Draft platform because  it's super user friendly. 

 

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What is the Waiver Wire?

 

The waiver wire is an online board where teams can claim  unclaimed players (Fantasy Free agents). 

 

These free agents or waiver picks are temporarily frozen, giving everyone a chance to claim them. 

 

After a certain amount of time expires, all waiver claims are processed, and the player is assigned to the manager with the highest waiver priority.

 

Managing the waiver wire is extremely important in your success as a fantasy manager, due to how rapidly changing football is with injuries, bye weeks, or down trending players. 

 

This is the place to dump your poorly performing players for good performing ones.

 

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Who is the Fantasy commissioner and what do they do? 

 

The commissioner is the person who sets up the fantasy league.

 

They set the draft date, handle the league fees, manage the players in the league, handles trades.

 

They're basically the boss of the league. So, if you ever have problems with others in the league or you think there is collusion going on, then you get them to deal with it.