Make Fantasy Football Great Again!!

10 quick and easy ways to add some spice back into your league

Fantasy football drafts are finally here, but you’re bored with the same old thing. Every year you draft a bunch of guys you’ll cut by week 3, every fall you add four more names to your hate list, and every December you swear off fantasy football anew. Wasn’t this supposed to be fun?

But here we are again. So how about a chance to play fantasy football while adding in something fresh and different this year?

Take a look below and spice up your league with a few new twists this fall…

Never EVER count Week 17

Repeat after me: Never play fantasy football in week 17.

It’s just silly. Half the games don’t matter, and your stars will be resting for the playoffs while a bunch of no-names light up the scoreboards. That’s no way to determine your championship.

Orleans Darkwa, Latavius Murray, and Albert Wilson were week 17 leaders last season, and teams bold enough to double down on the 0–16 Browns rode DeShone Kizer and Rashard Higgins to their championship. Do you even know what team those other guys played for? It’s a silly way to determine a champ after four months.

If you just have to play Week 17, crown your champ a week earlier and let everyone pick a new roster and play for draft position in Week 17.

Try an auction draft!

Insert your favorite analogy here about going from a boring old snake draft to a high-octane auction. An auction is a great way to spice up a stale league. There’s nothing worse than having a favorite sleeper but being stuck at the end of a snake draft so you either have to take him 15 picks early or wait and risk him getting sniped before you have another chance.

An auction solves that. You want someone? Go get him.

You gotta do it at least once.

Get rid of the kicker

We already spend all year with our hopes in the hands of 160-pound kickers. Let’s not do the same in fantasy football. This is fantasy football. It doesn’t have to mirror things exactly. NFL kickers have been proven to be almost completely random — both by accuracy and by fantasy point total.

Just get rid of the kicker position completely. There are so many more interesting lineup pieces you can use instead, like …

Require a starting rookie somewhere in your lineup

This is actually my favorite rule and one I institute in almost every league.

Add one flex RB/WR/TE that can only be used to start a rookie. This is a great way to get to know the new guys and reward a little extra research. Suddenly Royce Freeman is a 3rd-round pick, D.J. Moore is an interesting 5th rounder, and finding this year’s Alvin Kamara or Kareem Hunt changes your entire season. If you’re in a keeper league, this is an even more interesting twist.

If you prefer, don’t make an extra roster spot — just require a starting rookie. You might even include QBs or kickers in that case. If your league is dumb enough to require a kicker, then it should be dumb enough to make Daniel Carlson a top-20 value too.

Fix the QB scoring

Quarterback is the most important position in sports, so why is it an afterthought in fantasy football? The position is deep and you can wait forever and still find a couple guys that will throw for 3,500+ yards and plenty of TDs. Unless you get an MVP or one of Tom Brady’s or Peyton Manning’s record seasons, your QB is probably scoring about the same as anyone else.

There are a few ways to spruce this up. Pick your favorite!

• Increase the scoring Give a point for every 20 yards instead of 25. Make all TDs worth 6. Subtract more for interceptions, maybe -3. If everything is worth more, those top QBs will stand out and be worth an early pick.
• Start 2 QBs My preferred solution. There are easily 16–20 QBs that could be started any given week, and if you’re using that many, Rodgers and Brady will definitely be valuable even without increasing the scoring. Be careful with 12+ teams though; it can be a mess on bye weeks.
• Offer a SuperFlex position Insert a SuperFlex instead where you can start a RB, WR, or even a QB. It sounds like a big advantage but if your backup QB is Eli Manning and he gets 7 some weeks and 18 others, you might genuinely be better off playing another PPR WR instead.
• Start a second QB but make it a “Bad QB” You’ll still start Russell Wilson and get his usual points, but you’ll also start Blake Bortles and hope he racks up “bad” points for you. The Bad QB actually gets negative points for throwing a TD. He scores points for taking sacks and turning the ball over, and a pick-six is money. Why not make Josh Allen relevant? Will you start Andy Dalton as your good QB or your bad one? Depends on the week.

Start a coach

Your coach gets a point for every 2 points his team scores and gets -5 if his team loses. It’s easy, and it makes sense. You can get creative too; maybe winning a game by one score should be worth bonus points.

Or play a bad coach instead — similar to the bad QB idea. I’ve actually done this before and it’s silly and fun. The more your coach loses by, the more points he gets. And if he accidentally wins? Negative points.

Fix your playoff set-up

It happens every year. Your team dominates all season, grabs a first-round bye, then crashes out with one bad week where your stud RB doesn’t find the end zone and your QB has a dud. It’s just not fair.

Fantasy football is like most sports. The regular season determines the best team; the playoffs determine the one that got hot or lucky at the right time.

The problem is sample size. Over 13 weeks, luck evens out and the cream rises to the top. Thirteen weeks is long enough to find the right guys via waivers or trades to fix a broken draft or replace an injury. But in the playoffs? It’s just one week, and if your opponent happens to start Keelan Cole and his 186 yards that week? You’re out of luck. So let’s fix it:

• Make playoff matchups last two weeks Use Weeks 13–16 and limit the playoffs to just the best four teams.
• Make your playoffs Survivor-style All six playoff teams compete in Week 14. The top four advance to week 15. The top two play for the title.
• Grant “home field advantage” based on regular season PPG Points scored is a far better indicator of fantasy prowess than win-loss record. If you averaged 140 in the regular season and your opponent averaged 130, you start with a 10 point “home field advantage” in the playoffs. It’s fair, it’s earned, and it makes every point all season valuable.

Up the ante with your defensive scoring

Shouldn’t defense matter a little more? It’s half the game, after all. Yet so many leagues insist on starting a 5 to 8-point defense every week that matters so little we all take them in the last round of the draft. What’s the point?

If you’re going to play with the traditional D/ST, make the scoring count. Points-against should be worth more. A shutout is rare — make it worth 15 or 20 points. On the flip side, giving up 35+ should be punishable with negative points, just like we subtract for turnovers from QBs and RBs.

Some websites allow you to award points for limiting yardage allowed or kick return yards. If your top defenses can score 20–25 points a week like a RB or WR, I promise the position will be a lot more interesting.

… Or if you prefer, try Individual defensive players instead

More and more leagues are adding IDPs. Make sure you get the scoring right. Reward big plays like sacks and turnovers much more than just a tackle.

You’re going to need to play a bunch of IDPs. If you just start 1 or 2, you’ve unfortunately just added another “kicker” to your roster. There’s enough stars for everyone and it’s just random from week to week. If you want to play with IDPs, start at least five or it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

If nothing else, try something totally different

How about a Survivor league with Best Ball lineups? This is great for folks that don’t want to bother with upkeep all season. No trades, no waivers, and no lineups. Everyone drafts a team, and the best possible lineup gets fielded each week. When Week 1 ends, check out the Best Ball lineups for the week, and the lowest scoring team is eliminated. Repeat Week 2 and each week after until one team remains, and they’re the champ.

Or for something completely different, build your fantasy roster using players from only two NFL teams. The draft is literally two rounds long. When you draft, you pick an NFL team and get sole access to every player from that roster. If you want someone from another team, you need to pick up an entire new team off waivers. Imagine a starting lineup of Brees, Kamara, Thomas, and Ingram buoyed by Evans and Jones, or maybe Luck, Hilton, and Doyle with DJ and Fitz? It’s silly but fun and bye weeks are as hellish as you think.

Make up your own rule

Make your fantasy league unique!

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons has a league with 11 members and only 10 teams; the previous season’s winner gets to vote one league member out at the following year’s draft. After you’ve done all your prep work and showed up with beer and wings and everything. It’s brutal and it’s brilliant.

Once I did a league where you had to start two DSTs. It sucked. So did the one where we started a punter, though having Houston’s punter in their inaugural season was pure gold.

Anything is worth trying once and this is fantasy football. So find an interesting new rule and make fantasy football fun again!

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