Fantasy football allows you to simulate the management of an NFL football team or the American college league, adding excitement to traditional weekly games. Once the team is formed, you will rely on the performance of your players in real matches each week to generate points. Suddenly the match between the Browns and the Panthers which is stuck at 0-0 in the fourth period will become much more interesting. Whether you are a beginner or a veteran, it's always a good idea to refresh your mind on the basics of fantasy football. Start reading from Step 1 to find more information.
Steps
Part 1 of 3: Choosing a League
Step 1. Choose an alloy that fits your needs in terms of time and effort required
Fantasy football, just like real football, is primarily about competition. By joining a league you will develop personal relationships and camaraderie, as well as having an incentive to choose your players more carefully. There are various types of leagues to consider, so try to find one that fits the commitment you intend to devote to this pastime and your level of experience.
Step 2. Consider a classic head-to-head or full-score league
In the head-to-head game, your team faces a different opponent each week and the team with the most points is declared the winner. In full-score leagues, teams accumulate points throughout the season every week. At the end of the normal season, the teams with the best position in the standings clash in the playoffs to crown the winner.
- Head-to-head leagues are a lot of fun with friends, because they give you the chance to joke with them during the week and end with the end-of-season playoffs among the top ranked teams.
- Scoring Leagues are ideal if you enjoy watching football games all weekend, increasing interest when your players are deployed, whose performance you will check. This type of league is best suited if you don't have a lot of time to spend in the game.
Step 3. Choose players and scoring options
There are various ways to accumulate the performance points of the players you have chosen and different types of structures for the list of teams. Typically, you will take on the role of head coach, picking the players who give you the best chance of winning each week.
- In terms of scoring, many leagues employ a style called "points per reception", which awards points not only based on the score the player has scored, but also takes into account statistics such as receptions, yards earned and sacks. The type of scoring does not change the way you "play" fantasy football, but it could influence your choices when deciding which players to join your team.
- In leagues with the IDP option (from English Individual Defensive Players) you will individually select all the players of your defense, as well as field the defense line of a team. In the others you will simply use the entire defenses of the teams. This means that the managers of teams in the IDP leagues have to do a lot more research to decide which defensive players to select and when to buy them, in order to fill all the necessary positions. In addition, the complexity of choosing which roles and players are most important also increases. However, it can be very rewarding to win such a league if you are a true football fan.
Step 4. Find a league that fits your preferences and sign up online
You can do this on sites like ESPN and Yahoo, which are probably the two most used by gamers. Go to the Fantasy Football page and search for free standard public leagues, or contact your friends who are already members of a league you would like to join and have the administrator invite you.
You can create a new league yourself, but you should first get some experience in the various game types and complete a couple of seasons before trying to become an administrator
Part 2 of 3: Select the Players
Step 1. Participate in the draft
As in actual football, each fantasy football league organizes a selection at the start of the season. Players can be released and exchanges are possible, but you will form your squad mainly based on the players you select at the beginning, so it will be very useful to know the best present and future talents. There are two types of selection:
- In a serpentine selection, the coaches choose one player in turn, alternating the order after each full round, to ensure the correctness of the system. For example, the coach who chooses first in odd rounds will speak last in even rounds and so on.
- In an auction, each manager has a predetermined budget of imaginary money that they can spend on buying players, which are auctioned off and assigned to the team that makes the best bid.
Step 2. Choose the best players in the most important positions
A mistake that many novice fantasy coaches make is to pick their favorite quarterback first and then move on to other positions. When the time comes to choose the substitute, there will be nothing left but the third quarterback of a low-ranking team who was still playing in college last year. Don't let that happen to you too.
- Prepare a list of players to buy for the day of the selection. You should include your ideal picks, reserves and bets on your list. Try not to reveal anything to other players during the selection and keep updating the list continuously every time you buy a player. Also consider how much money you have left to spend and score when an opponent chooses one of the players you had bet. For example, you could use highlighters to indicate which team players are assigned to.
- Usually, it is the players chosen in the first 5 rounds who determine which team will win the league, so reserve these choices for reliable veterans who score points every week. If between the seventh and ninth rounds you manage to win reliable veterans who are not very popular because their team is not performing well or because they come back from injury, you will have an even stronger team.
- Pick five running backs (RBs) and wide receivers (WRs) in the first five laps, because quality drops quickly and most NFL teams only have one top RB. This means that there are only 32 RB holders in the whole championship. By studying the averages of the past three years, you will still be able to select a very good performing quarterback (QB) on the sixth round. However, if you get to the fourth lap you notice that one of the best QBs in the league is still available, don't miss it.
- Choose the kicker last on the fifteenth round. Let everyone select a kicker and defense, while you think about quality reserves for the position of RB and WR. Some coaches even end up selecting kickers and defenses that weaken their teams.
- Do not select first-year players in the NFL (rookie) if they are not RBs chosen from the top 5 of the draft. Rookies always disappoint. Of all the players chosen in the first round of the NFL selection, only 9% of the QB, the tight ends (TE) and the WR have comparable performance to the average, while 35% of the RBs do well already in the first year. This is because RB's stance is easier to learn, considering it simply requires you to run into the space left free by the attack line.
- Don't buy older players who have already begun their downward spiral, as they are more vulnerable to injury. The performance of RBs over 29 drops very quickly.
Step 3. Choose some players who might surprise you
Add variety to your squad by selecting a few rookies who can break through. Part of the fun of fantasy football is seeing a talent blossom out of nowhere that no one has been able to recognize.
- RBs play the easiest to learn role and have a tendency to explode in the second, third, or fourth year of the NFL. QBs, TEs and WRs usually blossom later, in the third, fourth or fifth season, because they fill more complex roles.
- Almost always avoid rookies who weren't chosen in the top 5 of the NFL draft. You should select WR in the fourth or fifth season with the same QB and the same team, as this is more likely to be the year they will stand out.
- Avoid players who get injured often or those who have just been operated on, as they may not be available for longer than expected.
- Avoid players from teams who have just changed QB or who have been transferred during the transfer market, as they have a tendency to score fewer points in the first year in a new environment.
- Do not take a reserve QB, nor a TE, defense, or a reserve kicker. At the end of the selection there will be many free players left in these roles, because there is not enough space in the squads to buy them (each team can only have 6 reserves and you mainly need spare RB and WR).
- If you buy TEs, kickers, defenses and QBs resting in different weeks, you can waste just one bench position and dedicate those seats to RB and WR that could explode and make your team stronger.
- Another strategy is to buy TE, kicker, defense, and QB all resting in the same week and simply lose that day. This is not a winning strategy, because injuries can force you to change teams, so you may find yourself sacrificing a day and still having to consider the teams' rest weeks due to the unavailability of your players.
- Do not select the players of your favorite team until you have created a list of trusted players. If you're a big Dallas Cowboys fan and want to take on a lot of players from that team, you may find yourself in trouble when everyone gets the same week off. Be careful not to choose too many players from the same team.
- Buy the best players in the positions that give you the most points. Remember, you're not building a real football team, so you don't need players to play tactical roles. They can be useful, but you need to try to get the ones with the best stats.
Step 4. Buy the releases
In fantasy football leagues, the released players are those who are not currently on any of the teams in the league (either because they were not selected or because one of the teams released them during the season). As the days go by, a player's performance could convince you to buy it. In general, clearing purchases are declared after the Monday night game and ratified later in the week.
- If more than one team wants to buy a free agent, the one with the highest waiver wire score wins. This score is determined by various factors, including the win rate and the number of releases already purchased. Once you have added a free agent to your list, you return to the last place in the ranking. The different leagues employ various methods to calculate this ranking.
- Pick the best players who have been suspended for the first four weeks and released by an inexperienced manager. Take them and keep them, because 4 weeks go by quickly.
- Buy the best players released by managers who had too many players resting in the same week. In many cases you will be able to buy a high-level defense, QB or TE because one of the coaches has too many and has to make room for non-transferable players to be on the bench, so that you can field a full line-up when many of his owners have the same week off.
- Buy players who have suffered an injury and are released before recovery time diagnosis. In many cases, these players will return within three weeks at the latest and are released because the newspapers have exaggerated the severity of the incident.
- Select and field a defense that faces a first-year QB fielded for the first time or that always performs poorly.
- Select defenses that complete a lot of tackles versus those that scored high because they scored an interception in the meta. Defense touchdowns are rare events, while tackles are a more consistent stat.
- Select one of the best defenses after 2 or 3 weeks, because you will be sure that it is one of the strongest. Unleash your current defense if it doesn't perform well, because you can always pick up another one later when players have learned to move in a coordinated manner and play better.
- If your kicker or defense has a sudden drop in performance, buy from the free agent list of substitutes who have performed well in the past 4 weeks. Usually, the decline in performance is due to injuries that have not yet been disclosed. Just replace a weaker defense with a stronger one. Check the calendar for the next 3 weeks and avoid defenses that face very strong attacks.
- If you have a spare WR that will play against well-defended teams in the next 3-4 weeks, release him and let someone else buy him. However, do not give up the champions. You will be able to fool many opponents, who will field those players and release them in turn after 3 or 4 weeks of poor performance. At that point you can buy them again! It is surprising how many coaches do not consider the strength of the defenses in the following weeks.
- After the first week, get one of the best free RBs instead of a WR, because WR performance varies a lot from week to week and good performing RBs are hard to find.
- After the first week, select the QBs and RBs that performed best, as they will be bought by other players right away.
- Usually the free agent market offers a lot of options in the roles of QB, TE, kicker and defense, so you don't need to have reservations in those roles in the first few weeks. Stock up on RBs and WRs that offer good performance. You will be able to release those who do not meet your expectations and select QB, TE and defenses in the future. Don't get a spare kicker as you will only waste one spot on your player roster.
Step 5. Swap players
As in real football, fantasy coaches can swap players. Some leagues set a time limit for rallies, while others grant coaches a majority veto right on all rallies.
Exchanges in the fantaleghe can be controversial and require the intervention of an external referee. On the internet you can find several sites that objectively establish whether an exchange is to be considered fair and valid
Part 3 of 3: Play Every Week
Step 1. Field the players who are most likely to do well in the weekly match
Each week during the NFL season, you will be able to field players in all the main positions, choosing the starting players. Their performance will allow you to earn points.
- Make sure the players you field are available. Usually, you'll see an "A" next to their name, which stands for active. If a player is injured or his team has a week off, he will be inactive and you will need to replace him.
- A very important stat to consult when choosing which QB and RB to field is the strength of the team they will face. If you have to choose between two players of similar quality, consider which opponents they will have next week. If one challenges the top of the table, while the other is up against the team in the bottom place, you have to take that into account.
Step 2. Assign roles in your team
Most leagues set a number of players who must be on the list and who must be deployed. You may also have to select the "starters", who play all the games and others that you put on the "bench" for specific days. The coaches must choose the starters every week before the start of the day.
Step 3. Collect points
Watch your players' games and performances! Each league has its own scoring system. However, one principle always remains the same: the actions of your players on the pitch determine the score scored by your team and the opponent's. At the end of the day, you will be able to access the league page and check your score.
Step 4. Pay attention to the weeks off
If you've found a good starting team that performs well, what will you do in a couple of weeks when your best players are all inactive? Who will replace them? Create a player roster that isn't decimated by an unfortunate combination of resting teams and plan for those situations right away. Make sure you have sufficient reserves that don't have concurrent weeks off.
Step 5. Think about exchanges as the days go by
When selecting, create a list of players you could sell or would like to withdraw from other teams. For a champion you want to have at all costs, plan ahead for a foolproof trading strategy to win him even if he were to be awarded to someone else.
Step 6. Get to the end of the season
Fantasy football adds a new dimension to your passion for football by creating attachment to individual players. You will suddenly become very interested in the performance of the Seahawks if you have one of their players in the squad, even if you've never been to Seattle. Watch the games, check the stats and have fun.
Advice
- The "dynasty" leagues are dedicated to the most serious fantasy coaches and require a commitment for several seasons. After the first selection of the inaugural season of a dynasty league, a predetermined number of players remain on the same team also the following year, unless they are sold or released. Every year after the first, a selection is organized for rookies, so the fantasy coaches need to know more about the collegiate league than the traditional leagues.
- The most important aspect of winning in fantasy football is having exclusive information at the right time and knowing how to use it.
- During the selection, you should have a sheet of statistics, a copy of the rules, pen and paper at hand.
- Make sure you know the deadline for entering the training each week.
- A "keeper" league is a cross between a standard and a dynasty. After each season, almost any player can be re-selected, but coaches are allowed to keep a predetermined number of players, usually no more than 4-5.
- Learn the rules for buying free agents well. Are the roses stuck on the weekend? Is it possible to buy and sell players at any time?
- In leagues with auctions, the ranking can be either head to head or total score. The difference is that managers have a predetermined amount of virtual currency available to bid for players and complete their squad. All players can bid for players of their choice, who can then end up on more than one team. If one of the coaches spends too much on a player, he may find himself without enough money to build a competitive squad in the other roles. In this format you need to know how to spend your budget wisely and make bets, like in the stock market.
- Prepare well. Before introducing yourself to the selection, make sure you know the entry fee, the rules and the distribution of the prize pool. Learn about lesser-known high potential players and try to beat your opponents with better preparation.
- All sources of information are not the same. Choose a free one that gives you all the news you need with the right timing.
- Do not give up. If you find that you can no longer reach the playoffs, try to ruin the championship of your opponents; it's almost as fun as winning.
- Don't let favoritism or cheering sway your decisions.
