Fantasy Football is Around the Corner

If you’re a sports bettor then you most likely know fantasy football. If not, we’ll give you the quick 411. It’s really simple to play and it is a ton of fun. All you need is a little knowledge to play. In a lot of cases it’s free. The more advanced you are the higher the stakes you can play. In this case, we will talk about a small league with a small entry fee. This way you can get a bit more feel for what it’s like to play for money.

Going Over the Basics
To make things easier we’ll treat this like a case study, which will allow you to get the full feel of how a fantasy football league is run. The first thing that needs to be settled are the amount of teams you want in the league. In this case, we’ll have a 10 team league and an entry fee of $50 a team. Some run with eight teams while others run with 16 teams. We’ve always found it best to have a league with 12 teams. This allows a enough competition, but still allows you to have a decent squad.

After your league is established you then have to pick a name for your team. Once all the names are put in a pool, the draft order is picked to figure out who picks the first player. The goal is to have highest pick, which will allow you to hopefully get the best players. Most teams are established around 16 players per squad. There are many ways to run a league, but the most common way is to start one quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, one tight end, one kicker and a full team defense. This will make up your squad for the rest of the season, but there is a lot more involved than just the draft.

Are You Ready to Draft
Most likely the draft consists of 16 rounds. Most drafts use a serpentine format. This means the first pick will start and then the 10th team will pick twice going into reverse order, which will give the first team the last pick in the second round. Let’s do a quick example. This year it looks like Adrian Peterson will be the diamond in the rough will make your team better. There is a lot of guesswork involved in fantasy football, but by the time you do a draft will start to understand how to formulate a team. It’s really not that hard.

Once all the teams are established with a full roster, the league is set to go. Each team will most likely play each other and the goal is to win either your division or at least have a good enough record to make it to the playoffs. Most of the leagues are a head-to-head matchup format, where you play one team at a time. This will determine the records at the end of the year, which will line you up to see if you make the playoffs or not. Playoffs are then announced and a championship game will follow.

How to Play Fantasy Football
Before we get into how the playoffs work or anything to detailed, it’s important to understand how each game works. Each team will receive points based on the actions of the players they start. If you were to start Tom Brady and he throws three touchdowns and 300 yards you will most likely have a pretty good day. If you were to start Tony Romo and he throws 100 yards, no touchdowns, and 3 interceptions, you’ll most likely end up with a bad day. A lot of times if your team has a good outing all around you will win for the a day. Remember, there’s always a possibility that another team will have a better day. Once the game has finished on Monday night, the game will be over. Records will then be set up and you’ll have to evaluate how your team did and what you need to do the next week to do better.

Without going much further, there are so many other things involved with a fantasy league. Players get injured all the time and you need to find replacements. You would use a waiver wire in this case and hopefully find a new player to fill the void. Sometimes a waiver wire pickup can be the difference between a championship and a horrible season.

Although this was a brief overview of what fantasy football is and how it is played. Make sure you do your research and figure out how to play it perfectly. This will allow you to draft the best team possible and hopefully take home the next championship. If you feel you’re too new to this there are plenty of free leagues on websites such as Yahoo.com and ESPN.com. You can get started in a league pretty much at any point in time just before the football season starts. While sports betting can be a lot of fun, Fantasy Football can help supplement the downtime.

If you have any questions about fantasy football you can always ask us in the comments below. We’d be more than willing to help you understand fantasy and hopefully get you started on the right foot. Good luck with your next game.