TG Fantasy Baseball

Fantasy Football 101

Introduction

So, you have heard all about this fantasy football stuff and want to know what it's all about? Well, we have got you covered!

The most basic description is this: You draft real NFL players for your fantasy team and when they score, you score. The object is to score as many points as possible.

Ok, it gets a little more complicated than that, but if you are interested in learning more about fantasy football, playing in an existing league or even starting your own league, keep reading.

Have Fun!

Fantasy football is all about having fun. Yes, some people play for money, but that is completely not necessary. Bragging rights are sometimes more important amongst your friends and family than winning a few dollars that you are going to blow at Starbucks anyway.

Since the idea is to have fun, you first must find a group of friends, family, co-workers, whoever will be fun to play with. The ideal league size is ten or twelve teams. It is OK if you do not have exactly that number, but we would recommend a minimum of eight and a maximum of sixteen. One requirement is that you do have an even number of teams.

Why an even number of teams? Well, each week of the NFL season, you will be matched up against one of your league-mates in a head-to-head battle. Whichever team scores more points that week is awarded a win while the other is saddled with a loss. Yes, ties can happen too, but that is like kissing your sister and nobody likes those.

Your Team

Each week of the NFL season consists of games played typically on Thursday night, Sunday, and Monday night. Sometimes there are games on Fridays and Saturdays, but NFL teams will play just once per week.

Your drafted team will consist of typically around nine players from around the NFL. You may have one player on the Chiefs, two on the Rams, one on the Jets, etc. It really does not matter which NFL team your players play for - as long as they score in their real NFL game, you get the points.

Each fantasy team usually consists of one quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, one tight end, one kicker, one defense and one flex player (usually a running back or wide receiver). These positions are not set in stone. If you want to have three wide receivers and one running back, go for it. If you want two quarterbacks, go for it. It's your league, you can set it up however you'd like.

The Draft

The most important day of your fantasy football season will be the draft. The draft is where you get together with all your league mates, either in person or virtually, and select or draft your players.

There are a few different ways to conduct your league draft and we will focus on those in a future article. For now, we will describe a standard draft where each team gets one pick in each round. The order in which teams pick is selected at random prior to the draft. Some leagues will have some silly contest like a race to the end of the block to award the winner with the first pick. Most leagues use some other kind of random selection like picking names out of a hat or something similar.

To keep things even, the draft order is reversed in each round. So, the team who gets the first pick in the first round, gets the last pick in the second round. The team with the last pick in the first round gets the first pick in the second round.

Now, you cannot have all the best players on your team. If you want Christian McCaffrey and have the first pick in the draft, you get him. But that means nobody else can have him. The other teams are now limited to players who have not been drafted yet.

Rosters

Rosters typically consist of between fourteen and sixteen players. As mentioned earlier, a starting lineup is typically nine players, so the additional 5-7 players are reserve players. These are players that you can put in your active lineup if one of your starting nine gets hurt or has a bye week or just downright stinks and you are sick of him.

Each week, you select your best nine players and pit those players against your opponent for the week. After each week, the points are tallied, and teams are awarded wins and losses.

Scoring

I have mentioned scoring a few times, well how does that work? Typically, when a player on your fantasy team scores a touchdown in their real NFL game, your fantasy team gets six points. When your kicker kicks the extra point, you get one point. When your kicker kicks a field goal, you get three points.

In addition to actual scoring in the NFL games, quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers and tight ends also get points for yards gained. Normally, for every ten yards of rushing or receiving those players get give your fantasy team one point.

So, a player who rushes for forty yards and scores a touchdown will give your fantasy team ten points that week. There are an infinite number of variations of scoring that you can use, but our recommendation is to keep it as simple as possible. While the web site you use to manage your league will calculate everything for you, it is a lot more fun if you know how many points your fantasy team is scoring, so keep it as simple as possible.

We mentioned defenses as part of your fantasy team. Defenses can score points for your fantasy team by getting turnovers (interceptions or fumble recoveries), sacks of the quarterback, defensive touchdowns, and safeties. More complicated scoring includes how many points or yards they allow, but again, our recommendation is to keep it simple.

Changing Players

Throughout the season, some of your players may get injured or may just not be performing very well. Each week after the NFL games are done, you can add any player to your team who is not already on another fantasy team. When you add a player to your team, you must drop a different player so that your total team size does not change.

Another way to change the players on your team is a lot more fun and that is by making trades with your league-mates. How much fun would it be to trade Saquon Barkley for Patrick Mahomes? Maybe your team needs a quarterback, and you have three or four really good running backs already. In that case, a trade like that may make sense. It does not hurt that it keeps you in touch with your league-mates and is a lot of fun to wheel and deal.

The Schedule and Playoffs

A full season typically consists of fourteen weeks, so fantasy teams will have a win-loss record of seven wins and seven losses, maybe eight wins and six losses, and if you are really good fourteen wins and zero losses! That is a lot harder than it sounds because, remember, each of your league-mates is also trying to win each week.

After fourteen weeks, the fantasy teams with the best records in the league make the fantasy playoffs. Leagues typically have four, six or eight teams to make the playoffs. Again, this is your league, so you can decide how many teams make the playoffs.

In the playoffs, if you score more than your opponent, then you win and advance to the next week. If you lose, you are out. This continues until just one team remains and that team is your league champion.

Where to Play?

There are many places on the internet where you can run your league, some of which are completely free. Yahoo and ESPN are the most popular sites. CBS also has a league manager site, but it is not free. I honestly do not know why people pay for CBS when ESPN and Yahoo do exactly the same thing for no charge.

Help is Available

There are a lot more complicated rules and strategies that we will discuss in the coming days and weeks, but for now, we wanted to lay out the basic framework of fantasy football for you. We hope we have you interested in this hobby now played by more than 29 million people.

If you have any questions, a quick Google search will reveal plenty of advice forums and chats around the web. You can always ask us and we will be happy to help.