Martin A. Schulman - Fantasy Football For Dummies

The free agency pool: In Yahoo! default leagues, all undrafted fantasy players begin the season as free agents, which means they’re available to be added to your roster at any time. You can swap any player on your roster for any free agent player, using your league’s list of available players. Simply create an open roster slot by dropping one of your current players and then adding the new player. Many free agent pickups will surprise you and become staples in your lineup, so making good adds/drops is one of the keys to fantasy success.

The waiver wire: If another team drops a player, the player goes on waivers for a limited time before becoming a free agent. This means all coaches have a set amount of time (usually two days) to decide if they want to add him to their teams. In order to add a player on waivers, you must make a waiver claim (by selecting him and a player on your roster to be dropped) and wait until the waiver period has expired. If you have the highest waiver priority — set in reverse order of your draft at the start of the season — you’re awarded that player. After a claim is awarded, your waiver priority drops to the lowest number.

If your team needs help and you can’t fix it via free agency, it may be time to make a trade offer. Of course, making a good trade is easier said than done, because you have to give up someone good in order to get someone good (which is one of the reasons drafting for depth is so important). Closing a deal can be tough, but proposing a deal is a breeze.

Thanks to online technology, you just select the players you want and the players you’re willing to give up, and your site automatically submits the trade to the other coach. That coach then accepts or rejects your proposal or makes a counteroffer. Your opponents won’t always agree with your assessments of the players involved, so always be diplomatic and listen to what they have to say. Trade negotiations that become ugly almost never end well. (For more on trade scenarios and for trade advice, check out Chapter 11.)

As the professional football season marches on and fall becomes winter, the NFL separates its pretenders from the contenders. The same transformation occurs in fantasy football. When the NFL’s best teams are fighting for playoff berths, most fantasy leagues begin their postseasons. The formats vary for deciding fantasy championships, but most leagues use a single-elimination tournament among the best teams in the leagues. At the end of the standard fantasy postseason, two teams battle for the league’s crown in the championship game. They battle for glory, for trophies, for cash, for bragging rights, or for the love of the game. May the best team win! ( Chapter 12covers what you need to do to succeed in the fantasy playoffs.) The following sections introduce the different facets of the fantasy postseason.

The fantasy playoffs take place towards the end of the NFL regular season so that all 32 teams and their players are still playing. Depending on the size of your league and the playoff format, most fantasy postseasons begin somewhere between Weeks 15 or 16, and conclude a week before the end of the NFL regular season in Week 17. Smaller leagues may feature only two playoff teams and one playoff game. Larger leagues may have six or more playoff teams, which can mean playoff games that cover three weeks.

Getting to the finals and winning your fantasy league is what fantasy football is all about. After all, only first place gets the prize and the bragging rights. Watching your NFL players while tracking your fantasy football championship game online is an adrenaline rush you can’t duplicate in other fantasy sports. You’ll be cheering, screaming, and biting your nails! And if you win, don’t gloat too much, because your league will be gunning for you next season.

Fantasy football can be a fun and rewarding venture. Are you interested in getting in touch with your fantasy persona? If so, jump on in. The water is amazing! Keep the following in mind based on your fantasy needs:

If you’re a beginner looking to join a league, start in Chapter 3on league types. If you are looking for Daily Fantasy Football leagues, check out Chapters 13& 16.

If you’ve been invited to play in a league for the first time, start in Part 1. Some of the lingo may be new to you, but knowing your league setup will be useful when pre-ranking, drafting, and managing your team. Then read Chapters 2and 4before diving into Parts 2and 3.

If you’ve played fantasy football before, you may want to start with Part 2. Knowing what to look for when ranking players and not just following some expert cheat sheets blindly is what will take your game to the next level. Part 3reviews some draft strategies that you may have heard of but haven’t fully embraced.

In 1962, Bill “Wink” Winkenbach, a limited partner in the Oakland Raiders, and a group of die-hard local football businessmen founded GOPPPL: The Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League. Wink and his buddies hammered out the rules for drafting players from all the teams, and on draft day in 1963, fantasy football was born. For more info on the history of the game, check out www.fspnet.com/wink.pdf .

Fantasy football has been going strong ever since, but it really took off with the growth of the Internet in the mid-1990s. Online league providers make playing easy for beginners and experts alike by compiling all the scoring results each week during the football season. The web also offers tons of fantasy expert sites filled with handy advice and stats to help every coach research the players and make smart choices when drafting and managing teams.

Chapter 2

IN THIS CHAPTER

Realizing the impact of scoring in fantasy football

Getting offensive for the bulk of your scoring

Examining defense’s role in the scoring picture

Picking a scoring format that suits your style

In real sports, the team that scores the most points wins — the same goes for fantasy football. There are baskets in basketball, runs in baseball, and goals in hockey, but scoring in fantasy football entails more than just getting the ball into the end zone and between the uprights. Many statistics show the value and ability of players beyond their actual points scored, and those stats translate into fantasy points for your team.

This chapter explains how scoring works in fantasy football and how it differs from the NFL. Note: The default settings I refer to in this chapter and in this book are the default settings on Yahoo!’s Fantasy Football Platform, but other leagues use different scoring modifiers that may even affect your draft strategy. Check with your league and acquaint yourself with its scoring default settings before you do anything.