We’re less than a month away from the start of the NFL season, which explodes into action on September 9th. In the first clash of the season, the defending champions, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, will go up against the Dallas Cowboys.
Enthusiasts won’t be just looking forward to the action on the grid, but also to setting up and taking part in their own fantasy football leagues, which adds to the overall excitement of the season as they follow it. Do they understand the game as well as they think they do? The league will put their managerial skills to the test.
Thinking of setting up your own league? This post is all about how.
Shaping your league
First thing is first, you’ve got to call on all your friends, family, and co-workers and see who wants to join your league. Each person should field one team, and the league should consist of eight to ten teams. Make sure you keep the number of teams even. Scheduling will be a headache if you have an odd number of teams.
Name your league
Once you’ve decided who’s in your league, you’ve got to create a name for the league. If you’re using the NFL fantasy site, you’ll have to enter a league name and a password for the league that the other managers can then use to join. You can even customize the URL for your league.
Each player in your league must submit a name for their team. No matter how seriously you take the strategy elements of the game and the bragging rights for which you’re playing remember that a fantasy football league is a bit of fun to play as well. Get creative with your name and have a laugh.
Determine when your draft will be
The draft is important because this is when you pick the players for your team. Often, the weekend before the start of the NFL is the most convenient time to hold the draft. When setting up your draft, you should be able to pick preferences such as order, time per pick, date, format and type.
Note that there are two different types of draft possible: the auction draft, which allocates each participant a budget with which they can bid on players, and the serpentine draft, which some consider the fairer option because participants take turns to select players.
Select settings for your league
With your draft sorted, you can move on to other league settings such as teams, divisions, playoffs, weeks per playoff match and publicness. The settings don’t stop there, however. You can then choose your scoring settings, waver periods (the time a period is listed on waivers after they have been dropped) and max adds.
Understanding free agency, transfers and dropping players
In the NFL, free agents are players whose contract has expired with their team, leaving them free to sign to play for whoever they please, or players whose professional association clubs have released, resulting in them no longer having any affiliation with a particular league.
In the world of fantasy football, free agents are players who have been dropped by another team or who no one selected in the original draft. During the season, you’ll realize which players could carry your team to victory and which ones just aren’t delivering. You can bench the players who are holding back the team and replace them with free agents who will score more points for your team.
Understanding all this is crucial when participating in a fantasy football league. You may need to make some strategic changes, which could involve trading players and transferring them to or from your team.
Dropping players and the waiver wire
If a player isn’t performing well, you can cut that player from the team. These players then enter a waiver period, usually of 24 hours, in which other teams can submit a claim for that player. At the end of this period, the player goes into the free agent pool of undrafted players or, if a team has submitted a claim (and if they take priority), to the team that has made the claim on the waiver. The waiver wire itself in the NFL is the system by which players claim waivered players by priority.
Benching players
It’s good to have solid backup players in your team. If a player is performing poorly and not earning many points for your team, you may decide to bench them and replace them with another player from your team. Think carefully when choosing your players. Who would be a good backup player?
Transferring and trading players
Just as you can bench players within your team, you can transfer them from the bench as well within the team. A lot of fantasy leagues will have limits on how many transfers you can make in the season. They may also have transfer windows, which set time limits for transfers.
You can trade players with other teams as well during the season. This must be in accordance with the rules of your league, however, which you should establish at the start of the league.
The first weekend of the NFL is on the horizon, and the Buccaneers will be looking to retain the Lombardi Trophy again this season and make it back-to-back wins. Meanwhile, fantasy league participants throughout the land will be following events on the grids of the US and in their leagues, hoping to lead their teams to victory and experience a little glory this NFL season too.