Most of us who are fanatical about fantasy football hate this part of the year (unless we’re winning our leagues!). You start anticipating the league draft (or drafts) mid-summer. You pick an all-star team. You make a great trade, or find a gem on the waiver wire. You lose a couple of close games because you started the wrong wide receiver. The roller coaster of emotions is great, but now it is December, and the league is about to end, if it hasn’t already, and you have eight months before it all starts up again.
The fun doesn’t have to end! Let it keep going with playoff fantasy football! All the fun you had for the last four months, compressed into one more action packed month. Add a little fun to your NFL playoff watching enjoyment! Here’s how to get started.
Determine the size of the league
You may have been involved in a 12, 14, or even 16 team league for the regular season. But now, you are dealing with a pool of players that are less than half the size of the players available during the regular season. So, figure out an optimum number of teams in your league, and players at each position you wish to play with. For instance, if you want to have 10 teams in your playoff league, keep in mind that there will only be 12 starting quarterbacks available, so each team would only be able to draft one QB each. I am personally in a five team playoff league. Each team in our league drafts two quarterbacks, four running backs, six wide receivers, two tight ends, two kickers, and two defenses.
Determine the scoring style
You can keep the same scoring system you used during the regular season to simplify things. If your running backs scored one point for every ten yards of rushing in the regular season, do the same for the playoffs so that no one has to learn new rules in this short period of time. However, for the regular season, most leagues play in a Head-To-Head style, using wins and losses to determine a winner. For the playoffs, use total points scored over the course of the season instead. That way, everybody can still be competing until the Lombardi Trophy winner is awarded.
Determine the draft date
With the regular season, there is a lot more time available to have your draft. But, with the playoff season, you usually don’t know all of the teams which are available until after the Week 17 games, and the playoffs start the following Saturday. So, you can have your draft the Monday after the last game. But, if you want a little time for research and planning, or you just want to wait for the weekend, the Friday night before Wild Card weekend can work, too. You can even wait until Saturday morning to start the draft, and then catch the first game with your buddies.
Consider your strategy
The biggest difference between the regular season and the playoff season is the amount of games you will get out of each of your players. You can’t assume your whole team will play each and every week. You may draft some players who will play Wild Card weekend, and then lose them for the rest of the playoffs. The top two teams in the AFC and NFC each have a first round bye, so you already know that the players on those teams won’t be playing that first weekend. Is it better to get wide receivers that might score you 25 points once, but loses their first game? Is it better to get a running back that will score you 10 points a game, but gets to the Super Bowl? Part of drafting is deciding how involved your team is each weekend. I suggest working out your own playoff bracket, so you can factor in how many games you think each team will win in the playoffs. You can go to sports.Yahoo.com/NFL after the games on Sunday end to find out how the playoff bracket and seedings work.
Lastly, you will need to find a website that has a playoff fantasy football commissioner option to set up and record your scoring (unless you wish to go old school with a spreadsheet). A good site for this is RTSports.com. They let you try the site for the first weekend before paying, so that you can see if it works for your league. So, get your friends together, get your playoff rosters, and stretch your fantasy football fun for one more month!!!