Fantasy Football: Everything You Need To Know

New To Fantasy Football? Here's How To Get Started

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Learning to play is easy. Becoming a champion is a whole other story.

Fantasy football is like chess for sports buffs: it’s a game of strategy, planning and research, and there’s a rewarding rush when you beat your opponent at the end. It’s played by millions of people every single week, but if you still haven’t formally joined the club, we’d like to invite you into the world of fantasy football. But be warned: it’s quite addictive.

Contents

How Does It Work?

In the simplest terms, fantasy football works like this: you draft a team of NFL players, filling out all of the requisite positions – quarterback, running back, etc. – and each week, you set your lineup and compete against other teams. If you’re players collectively perform well in real life, that means they’re doing well for your team too. And if they do better than your opponents’ set of players, then you win.

Season Long

To play fantasy football, the steps are as follows: join a league, prepare for your draft, build your team via the draft, compete on a weekly basis, try to improve your team through the waiver wire or trades, hopefully qualify for the playoffs and win the league. While it seems like a lot of work, it’s truly a labor of love. It’s a season-long commitment where you tweak and tinker your lineup and try to find wins any way you can.

Season-long fantasy is all about bonding and bragging. Usually, you join a league with people you know – unlike daily fantasy – and each week, you matchup against your buddies. Deciding who to start each week or boasting about your big win becomes a fun talking point in social settings.

At the end of the year, there is usually a significant prize for the winner – or top few teams – along with the bragging rights until next season.

The most popular sites to play season-long fantasy are Yahoo Sports and ESPN.

Daily

Daily fantasy (DFS) is a bit of a shortcut as it only lasts one day. Each time you play, you pick a starting lineup of players and the team that scores the most points for the day wins. The difference is that while season-long is a long-term investment, daily fantasy lasts for just the day. For example, you set a lineup for the Sunday of Week 3 of the NFL season and after the games are done, the scores are tallied and a winner is determined.

The benefit is that you don’t have to worry about injuries or busts so much. If you’re playing season-long fantasy and your star quarterback tears his ACL, your season is significantly affected. In daily fantasy, you might lose that day but you’re back in action the next time.

However, keep in mind that daily fantasy is pay-to-play, so you pay every time and end up committing much more than season-long. Season-long has one entry fee; daily fantasy has an entry fee every time you play.

The most popular sites to play daily fantasy are DraftKings and FanDuel.

How To Prepare For Your Draft

Draft day is arguably the most significant event in your fantasy football season. The decisions you make when drafting your team are the ones that will shape your season. Follow these steps to succeed on the big day:

Cheatsheet/Player Rankings: These are big lists of player rankings compiled by experts from most valuable to least valuable. They’re handy to have if you’re about to do a fantasy football draft to give as they give you an idea of the order you should be selecting the players.

Do Some Homework: ‘Cheatsheets’ are a cheat – as the name suggests. Sure, they’re a handy shortcut but they’re meant as a supplement; not the main source. If you want to succeed, you’ll want to do some light reading as to what’s happening. Outlets like ESPN and SportsXchange offer individual reports on every single team, Yahoo Fantasy will feed you excellent recap articles of news and players to target/avoid, and sites like Rotoworld get you deep into the nitty-gritty of fantasy news on every single player. If you’re short on time, stick to the macro level content like draft kits and cheatsheets, but if you want to get an edge, you’ll have to delve deeper.

Mock Draft Lobbies: ESPN and Yahoo give you the opportunity to practice drafting, which is important. Whether you’re new to fantasy or just trying to get a feel for how your upcoming draft will go, participating in a couple of mock drafts will give you a taste of how the live draft will go. In the mock draft lobbies, you join in with strangers (ESPN and Yahoo match you up) and everyone practices together.

Know Your League Rules: So many people go into their drafts blindly, but understanding the league is critical to how you draft. For example, a 12-team league versus and eight-team league is a significant difference. Or a league where you start two quarterbacks versus one. Or a league that provides a point-per-reception versus one that does not. There are lots of different types of leagues, so make sure you know what you signed up for and how the scoring works because that will directly impact who you’ll be drafting.

Don’t Draft A Kicker Or Defense Early: According to NFL.com’s fantasy numbers from 2015, the difference between the top kicker and the 10th best kicker was 25 points, which is roughly two points per week. For defense, the difference between first and 13th last year was 45 points, which is about three points per week. That shows that these two positions won’t make or break you as they have a minimal impact. To add some perspective, the difference between the first and 10th running back last year was about 80 points and the difference from the first to the 10th wide quarterback was just over 100 points. That’s significant and that’s where you should be focusing your energy early in drafts. Leave the defense and kicker for your last two picks.

Managing Your Team

So you’ve drafted a team and your roster is all filled out. What’s next is managing your team throughout the year. Each week (or in daily fantasy, every time you play), you’ll set your lineup of players. Before you do so, you’ll want to research the matchups and field your best men.

Weekly Matchups: Reading up on the weekly matchups is a critical part of fantasy. If you have two different wide receivers you’re considering starting but one is facing a strong defense and one is facing a weak one, then you’ll clearly want to go with the latter. If you follow the NFL closely, you’ll have a pretty good gauge of who to start and who to sit. If you need some assistance, the major fantasy websites like ESPN, Yahoo, CBS, Rotoworld and others will writeup articles to guide you on the matchups each week.

Prepare For Bye Weeks, Injuries: Each team in the NFL gets one bye week in the regular season, so for that week, you’ll have to find a substitution. When you’re drafting your team, you’ll want to keep an eye on the bye weeks as you don’t want to have five or six guys all sitting out the same week; you simply won’t have enough backups to fill those spots. The same goes for injuries. If someone gets banged up, you’ll want to be prepared to have a fill-in. Starting a player on a bye week or a player that’s out is a rookie mistake and one that will likely earn you a loss.

Work The Waiver Wires: Waiver wires are crucial to season-long fantasy as many leagues are won thanks to players scooped up off the wire. The waiver wire consists of all of the players who are not owned and after each week of action, the owners of the league have a shot to pick them up. It’s pretty important. Consider that players like Blake Bortles, Kirk Cousins and David Johnson were not drafted last year but were instead picked up off the waiver wire. They were among the most productive players in 2015. When you watch the games each week, keep an eye on who’s got next. Sometimes it’s an emerging youngster, sometimes an injury paves the way for someone new and sometimes it’s just someone nobody expected. If you’re asleep at the wheel, someone else will benefit and bolster their team, but if you do you’re watching, that could be you.

How To Set Your Lineup In Daily Fantasy: If you’re playing daily fantasy, you don’t have to worry about most of the other areas in this section. That’s because in daily fantasy, you build your lineup each time you play, so you don’t have to worry about bye weeks, you don’t have to think about waiver priorities and adjusting for injuries is quite easy.

Best Sites To Help You Win

There is a flood of fantasy football information on the internet and a lot of it is very good. We’ve rounded up our favorite places to tap into the research:

ESPN

Of course, the Worldwide Leader in Sports is pretty good. They’re arguably the best outlet for regular sports news – breaking news, injuries, etc. – but they also have a steady stream of fantasy football content throughout the week, including articles, videos and podcasts. Keep in mind that a lot of their more in-depth content is behind their ESPN Insider pay firewall.
Find out more at ESPN.com

Yahoo Fantasy

Of course, this site is a regular read for any fantasy player. From the great lineup of analysts that produce regular content, to the podcasts, to the Sunday morning show to help you get ready, they’re one of the follows to up your game.
Find out more at Yahoo.com

Rotoworld

Probably the biggest and best resource for individual player news. If you’re wondering about the status of an injured player or what the coaches/local beat writers are saying about someone, you’ll find the latest at Rotoworld.
Find out more at Rotoworld.com

RotoViz

This is a site that requires a subscription, but many feel it’s worth it. They delve into the analytics of fantasy football as good as anyone, and the numbers junkies eat it up. They also offer a lot of content for niche leagues, like dynasty/keeper leagues.
Find out more at RotoViz.com

FantasyPros

This is an aggregator for rankings. They collect all of the expert rankings in the industry and produce an average, which provides you really useful information about what the consensus is. That’s great for draft-day rankings, weekly waivers and setting your lineup.
Find out more at FantasyPros.com

FantasyFootballAnalytics.net

This site offers valuable statistical analysis. You’ll find a lot of advanced stats here to geek out on.
Find out more at FantasyFootballAnalytics.com

Twitter

Twitter is an excellent source of fantasy football support. Tweet your questions at the experts or big brands and you can get some direct advice. And, of course, you’ll typically find all the breaking news here first.
Find out more at Twitter.com

Advice From The Experts

This year marks AskMen’s third year in the GMC’s expert fantasy football league. While competing against the likes of Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Fantasy, Sporting News, CBS Sports and many other experts, we’ve managed to place second in the first two years. This year, our ‘Suh & And A Half AskMen’ team is aiming higher. A number of experts in the #GMCFF league wanted to share their best tip to succeeding in fantasy:

“Enter every draft with a pick axe and open mind in preparation for unearthing the best possible values. Strategy-specific approaches are generally foiled right out of the gate.” – Brad Evans, 8-Time Award-Winning Fantasy Writer Yahoo Sports

"True fantasy football aficionados don’t subscribe to any given dogma. They’re willing to zag while everyone else zigs. Go after the best player available in your draft spots and commit to working the waiver wire throughout the season." – Liz Loza, Fantasy Football analyst for Yahoo Sports.

“Tread carefully when it comes to rookie wide receivers. On the other hand, rookie running backs have had far more success and you can pick up a late-round steal with this philosophy.” – Russell Baxter, Pro Football Guru

“Don't go in with a predetermined plan. React to the way the draft unfolds and grab value where you can get it.” – Jared Dubin, CBS Sports

“Like most people, I’ll wait to draft a D/ST and kicker. In fact, if I’m not one of the last three people to draft a defense and I don’t draft my kicker in the final round, then you know something went horribly, horribly wrong. Please apologize to my family on my behalf.” – Matt Lutovsky, Sporting News

Best Places To Play

Yahoo

Yahoo is the pioneer of fantasy football. They’ve been running leagues since fantasy football was a thing. It’s a nice-looking setup that’s easy to use with plenty of resources to help you set your lineup. The mobile app is great too, so you can edit your team or manage your league while on the go.
Find out more at Yahoo.com

ESPN

ESPN is the worldwide leader in sports and they are right there with Yahoo in terms of fantasy football. They, too, have great tools for research, including a non-stop flow of fantasy articles, daily podcasts, videos and much more. Drafting on ESPN is an especially smooth process and the mobile app is great. Overall, you can’t go wrong with ESPN.
Find out more at ESPN.com

Fan Duel

FanDuel, along with DraftKings, are the top two daily fantasy options. FanDuel offers plenty of daily fantasy games across many sports. You’ll find salary-capped games, guaranteed prize pool tournaments. FanDuel takes a rake of 10% across the board.
Find out more at FanDuel.com

DraftKings

DraftKings product is very similar to FanDuel, but it has a few differences. To start, their rake can be as high as 13.5% but also drops as low as 5.66% as the buy-ins increase. They also offer the popular salary cap games that award millions in prizes each year too. This is really a Coke versus Pepsi option as both offer a great daily fantasy product.
Find out more at DraftKings.com

FantasyDraft

FantasyDraft is the new kid on the block in the DFS realm. It’s good to have some competition on the market as the big two are very similar. The product at FantasyDraft is just as good as the first two, but they have a unique referral program. If you refer friends, who refer more friends, who refer even more friends, you get paid for each tier up to six levels. And while FanDuel and DraftKings partner with the leagues, FantasyDraft partners with a number of big-name players, like Drew Brees, Clayton Kershaw and Chris Bosh.
Find out more at FantasyDraft.com

Fantasy Football Etiquette

As is always the case in sports, there are some unwritten rules to abide by. If you’re new to the game, avoid these five faux pas.

Show Up For Your Draft: Don’t be that guy. It’s a big day. Be there.

Always Start A Lineup: All that’s asked of you is that you pay attention and commit to a modest level of participation. Don’t have injured guys, empty slots or players on bye weeks in your starting lineup.

Review Trades In A Timely Manner: Usually when a trade is agreed upon, all of the owners get notified and get to vote whether to approve or decline. That’s just so that no collusion happens. Make sure you assess the trade and make your decision in a timely manner. Don’t ignore trade proposals or the process of reviewing them.

Don’t Collude With Other Owners: You’re not on an episode of Survivor or Big Brother, so skip the alliances and backdoor deals. There are all sorts of stories of teams going easy to hand an opponent a win, teams talking about splitting some of the winnings or colluding to trade away stars. Technically, these all might be legal tactics but they’re dirty and hurt the spirit of the league.

Don’t Quit On Your League: Don’t start to tank because your team is struggling or you don’t care anymore. That affects the rest of the league and is mostly a dick move.

Get Really Into It

Fantasy football is one of the best ways to amp up your passion for football as it really brings you into the action. Before, you somewhat cared about football but now your care level has shot up because you have a vested interest. Be honest: normally, you could care less about that Sunday afternoon, West Coast game, but now that you have Phillip Rivers as your starting quarterback and you need a big game from him. Your pride is on the line.

It’s a great rush when you win and it’s even better when you’re beating your buddies and showing them just how superior your football knowledge is. Now that you know what it’s all about, join the millions who are playing every single day.

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