The Draft#
A good draft performance is one of the most important components to a successful fantasy football season. It is important for any player to familiarize themselves with what the draft is and how it works. This page provides some basic information on the specifics of our league draft.
Also see this short guide to using the ESPN mock draft system.
Rules of the Draft#
The draft is typically held 1-2 weeks before the start of the NFL regular season, to minimize the chances that a team drafts an NFL player that gets injured between the time of the draft and the first game. The draft is held live and typically lasts between 1-2 hours. Each team manager selects 1 NFL player from the available player pool in each round of the draft. Our league uses a snake draft format, where the selection order reverses each round; i.e. if a team manager selects first in round 1, they will select last in round 2.
Team managers have a short amount of time each round to make their selection. Failing to make a selection in the allotted time will result in an auto-draft selection, based on the manager’s autopick draft strategy. A manager’s autopick strategy may be revised at any time ahead of the draft by following the autopick edit directions.
Draft Order#
For the draft to take place, an initial order of team managers must be decided. In our league, we typically have a small competition ahead of the draft to determine draft order. Details of the competition change year-to-year and are released after enrollment closes. See League Pre-draft Competitions for more details.
Team Settings#
Our team size follows ESPN standards, starting 1 Quarterback (QB), 2 Running Back (RB), 2 Wide Receiver (WR), 1 Tight End (TE), 1 Flex Position, 1 Kicker, and 1 Defense/Special Teams. Benches have an additional 7 players that may swap into these starting slots prior to individual game start. Our league also allows 1 additional bench slot for a player with an Injured Reserve (IR) designation.
Flex Position#
A flex position allows a team to start a player with one of several designations. Our league uses the ESPN standard configuration for a flex, which can hold a player with any of a Running Back (RB), Wide Receiver (WR), or Tight End (TE) designation.
Injured Reserve#
The Injured Reserve (IR) bench position is an additional bench slot available only to players that have received an NFL IR designation. Players with this designation are unavailable to practice or compete with their NFL teams for a minimum of 8 weeks. In the 2020 season, the minimum duration was reduced to 3 weeks to enable the use of IR rules for COVID-19 positive players.
When a player loses their IR designation, team managers may not add players to their roster until the now-active player is released or placed in a non-IR slot.
Scoring Settings#
Our league uses a 0.5 Point-Per-Reception (PPR) format, which provides an additional half point to players for each reception made. This format provides some additional value to receivers and results in higher scores than “standard” leagues that do not use PPR. We otherwise follow standard ESPN scoring settings. Current season settings can be found on the league settings page.