How to Play Fantasy Football and Win

This guide on how to play fantasy football will not only tell you how to play fantasy football in 5 minutes or less, but I’ll also give you tips on how to build a team that wins.

How to Play Fantasy Football for Beginners

There are several types of fantasy football along with various scoring settings and rules but basically it goes like this: There are 12 teams with 15 roster spots and you have a fantasy football draft to fill your roster.  Your goal is to draft the best players possible to score the most points for your team so you can beat the other teams.

The better the players stats on your team, the more points your players will score for your team.  Players score points for real life stats like touchdowns, gaining yards.

Example:

Let’s say Tom Brady passes for 2 touchdowns and 250 yards.  If touchdowns are worth 6 points apiece and your league awards 1 point for 25 yards passing, then Tom Brady just scored 12 points for touchdowns (2 touchdowns X 6 points each) and 10 points for yards (250 yards divided by 25 yards).  This means Tom Brady scored 22 points for your team.

Note that how much stats are worth are determined by your league’s point settings and rules.  It is very important to know all the rules and point settings for your team before you draft.  The point settings of a league can change how the players would be ranked.  For example, if touchdowns are only worth 4 points apiece but yards are valued highly, players that score a lot of touchdowns but don’t rack up a lot of yards will lose value relative to other players who get a lot of yardage but don’t score a lot of touchdowns.

Typically, each team will start 9 players and have 6 bench players.  The players you start each week are who will determine who many points you score.  The players on your bench will not score for you.

A fantasy football starting lineup typically looks like this:

QB
WR
WR
WR
RB
RB
TE
K
D

This means you start 1 quarterback (QB), 3 wide receivers (WR), 2 running backs (RB), 1 tight end (TE), 1 kicker (k), and 1 defensive team (d).

Defensive team score points by creating turnovers or making positive contributions on the defensive side. For example, blocked kicks, interceptions, and fumbles all count for points towards your defense.

How to Win at Fantasy Football

Once your team is drafted, you will set your team’s starting lineup every week and pit your starters against other team’s starters. The team that scores the most points will win the game. The teams that win the most games will make the playoffs. Once you’re in the playoffs, you enter a tournament style elimination bracket for the championship.

League champions and second place finishers typically win prizes including trophies and money.

As you can see, the basic premise of how to play fantasy football is to pick the best players to score the most points for you. If you have no idea what fantasy football players to pick, you should file the recommendations of a few fantasy football experts and go off what they say.

Fantasy football cheat sheets have a list of players ranked in order from best to last. Remember these are just predictions but they are usually educated projections.

Along with cheat sheets, you should also look at what is called “average draft position” to find out about where players are being drafted so you don’t draft a player too soon or wait too long to have a shot at a player you really want.

How to Play Fantasy Football and Win

If you have any questions about how to play fantasy football, please like me and ask me a question on Facebook. If you need one-on-one personal coaching or fantasy football consulting for your team, you can also hire me to personally draft and/or manage your team while you cheer for your players every Sunday.

Need to go over the concepts one more time? Try fantasy football for beginners.

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