The I-81 Sports Fantasy Football Playbook

By SCOTT FELTS

Whether you’re gearing up for your very first fantasy draft and wondering what RB1 means or defending your championship from last season, understanding these essential terms is key to drafting and managing your team and, hopefully, ending the season as a winning team. Maybe even a championship team. 

This guide includes information on league types, draft and player rankings, lineup terms, scoring formats, and much more. 

Leagues

• Redraft League – A league where every season you completely give up your team and draft an entirely new roster the following season. No players are kept and all managers start from scratch. 

• Dynasty League – A long-term fantasy football format where managers retain most or all of their players from year to year. Success in dynasty leagues depends heavily on your ability to build and curate rosters that can be successful over multiple seasons.

• Keeper League – A hybrid between redraft and dynasty where teams keep a set number of players each season. Rules on how long a player can be kept vary by league. There are also a lot of different ways to have keepers in these types of leagues. There may be a penalty for the following year’s draft based on when you chose a player you’re keeping. For example, if you keep your first-round pick from this season, you’d forfeit a first-round pick in next season’s draft. There can also just be a flat number of keepers with no penalty. 

• Guillotine League – A league format where the lowest-scoring team is eliminated from the league each week, and then that team’s players become free agents, creating a mad dash of player pickups from the remaining teams. 

Scoring Formats

• Standard Scoring – The traditional fantasy football scoring format where skill players earn points for yards and touchdowns but not receptions. Running backs and high-TD wide receivers tend to be more valuable in these leagues. 

• PPR (Point Per Reception) – In addition to awarding points for rushing yards and touchdowns, teams receive one point per catch, increasing the value of well used WRs and pass-catching RBs. 

• Half-PPR – A compromised scoring format where receptions earn .5 points. This provides a more balanced setting that slightly favors WRs but doesn’t overvalue high pass-catching players.

Draft Types

• Auction Draft – In this format, every manager has a set budget (often $200) and bids on players, with the highest bid winning. I don’t recommend this type of draft for a new fantasy owner, as it’s important to understand the value of a player based on the league scoring system to know how much to bid. Draft order is the order in which you nominate players to be bid on. 

• Snake Draft – The standard draft format in most leagues, where the draft order reverses every round. Which draft position you hold in a snake draft greatly influences strategy. There is a big difference in drafting at the first overall position and then waiting until the 20th overall pick to draft again (in a 10-team league) or drafting eighth overall and then getting the 13th overall player to go with them as the second round snakes backward. 

• Mock Draft – A practice draft that allows you to test your strategy and become familiar with player values or average draft positions. I get possessive of the teams I draft so instead of doing mock drafts where I don’t get to keep the team, I find myself with 40-50 leagues per year to keep up with. (A word of caution: this level of commitment isn’t for everyone!)

Key Fantasy Terms

For any draft, you should prepare ahead, know your league’s scoring, and stay flexible with your strategy. Avoid reaching for players too early, or getting too attached to your favorite team’s players.

Now let’s learn some terms that will come up during the draft you may need to know. 

• ADP (Average Draft Position) – This represents the average spot where a player is being selected in fantasy drafts. It’s one of the most useful stats in determining a player’s expected value during your draft. Keeping up with this can help you avoid reaching for a player too early or missing out on a bargain player that has slid below their normal draft slot. 

• Sleeper – A player projected to greatly exceed their ADP and offer excellent value. A sleeper may be getting drafted as the 29th best player at their position but by season’s end they rank in the top 10 at their position. 

• Bust – A player likely to underperform relative to their draft cost. Avoiding busts is just as important as finding sleepers. Fantasy experts will usually tell you that these are players to avoid because even though a great number of people may be drafting them as a top 10 player at their position, they are more likely to end up outside the top 25. 

• Handcuff – A backup running back with high value you can play if the starter is injured. Smart drafters stash handcuffs to protect elite investments. Handcuffs are usually the actual player’s backup from their own NFL team. This ensures that if that starting player gets hurt, you will already have the next guy in line to receive his playing time. 

• Bye Week – When an NFL team doesn’t play (and as a result your player doesn’t play), requiring some planning to see who needs to be taken out of your lineup. Don’t take too many players who share the same bye week or you could be in big trouble in that week’s matchup.  

Player Terms

Everyone playing fantasy football should know that QB stands for quarterback, and RB stands for running back. However, the following terms go a little more in-depth with what you need to know about building your fantasy roster.

• IDP (Individual Defensive Player) – Like receiving points for a skill player’s yards or catches, you may receive points for an IDP’s tackles, sacks, or turnover recoveries. 

• D/ST (Defense/Special Teams) – This position represents an entire NFL team’s defense and special teams. Points are awarded for turnovers, sacks, touchdowns (both defensive and via punt/kickoff returns), and points allowed. You can choose a great D/ST unit and ride it all season long or even stream different units each week based on favorable matchups.

• FLEX – The FLEX spot gives managers lineup flexibility by allowing a WR, RB, or TE to fill an extra starting position. In the league I run, I have a RB/WR FLEX and a RB/WR/TE FLEX. Different leagues offer different flex positions for their starting lineups. 

• SuperFLEX – This expanded FLEX spot allows for second QBs, making it critical to value quarterbacks more highly on draft day. SuperFLEX leagues often mean that even in a 10-team league the free agent pool of available QBs is almost nonexistent. In my league, I limit starting lineups to one QB and overall lineup restrictions to only two QBs unless one of the QB’s goes onto IR. Speaking of IR …

• IR (Injured Reserve) – IR slots are designated areas on your roster where you can stash players ruled out for an extended period of time. Leagues have different qualifiers for what makes a player IR-worthy so check your league settings. 

• Bench – Simply, these are players on your roster who are not active in your starting lineup. Any stats they accumulate do not count toward your league’s weekly fantasy points total. A strong bench is important for bye weeks, injuries and for following my Sit, Start, Snipe feature, which runs weekly throughout the NFL season. 

Once you’ve drafted your team, now what?

Weekly Lineup & Management Terms

• Waivers – A process where managers attempt to add available free agents based on an order of permission. This order might reset automatically each week, or roll based on if a manager picks a player and then moves to the back of the line.  Waivers typically run by midweek, allowing teams to make strategic adds before games begin on Thursday night.

• FAAB (Free Agent Acquisition Budget) – A bidding system where managers use a set budget to acquire waiver players. This adds strategy and transparency to claims, preventing managers from simply relying on waiver priority. Each fantasy team gets a budget at the beginning of the season and if they want a free agent player, the manager puts in a bid for how much of that budget they want to spend to get the player. 

• Start/Sit – Weekly decisions about who to place in your active lineup. This is another great place to plug my weekly Sit, Start, Snipe piece, where I will help you pick the best players to make active each week, and who to add to your team before someone else does. 

• Streaming – Rotating a position (like K, TE, IDP or D/ST) weekly based on their real-world matchups. This approach allows you to draft more skill players while using the last rounds of your draft  to fill these slots since you will be cutting and replacing them throughout the season.

Player Tiers & Rankings Terminology

• RB1 / WR1 / QB1 – These designations identify players ranked in the top 12 at their respective positions. For example, an RB1 is expected to finish among the top 12 running backs in fantasy points over the course of the season. These players are often taken in the first few rounds of your draft. RB1s are starting backs with heavy workloads, goal-line touches and involvement in the passing game. The number of players in this tier may shift depending on the size of your league. 

• RB2 / WR2 / QB2 – These players are projected to finish between ranks 13–24 at their positions. While not elite, RB2s and WR2s are crucial to rounding out your lineup, especially in deeper leagues or FLEX formats. Their value often hinges on matchup and volume. For quarterbacks in 2QB or SuperFLEX leagues, a good QB2 can be the difference between weekly wins and losses.

• Flex-worthy – A player deemed viable for the FLEX spot (RB/WR/TE). These players aren’t always consistent enough to start every week but have upside in the right game environment. They’re often matchup-dependent and valuable for exploiting weak defenses.

Trading Players

• Trade Block – A feature in most fantasy platforms that lets managers alert other managers in their league which players they are open to trading.

• Buy Low / Sell High – A classic but often advanced manager strategy where you trade for underperforming players with upside (“buy low”) or trade away overachieving players before regression hits (“sell high”). Monitoring usage trends, snap counts, and NFL player news gives you the edge needed to make the best deals. 

 League Structure Terms

• League Settings – The rules of your league, including roster positions, scoring format, waiver type and playoff structure. Custom leagues can also include keeper, guillotine, dynasty formats or just about anything the commissioner wants to do.  In my league I have a two-round mini draft opportunity prior to our season draft. Order is determined by random draw with teams having their names entered based on their number of losses from the last season. There are 20 players protected from that draft that will be available in the full draft and if a team uses its first or second round “Comp Draft” pick then it loses its matching full-round draft pick for that season. 

• Commissioner – The individual who sets up and runs the league. This role includes finalizing rules, resolving disputes, and maintaining fairness throughout the season.

• Playoffs – The postseason of your fantasy league, usually held in Weeks 15–17 of the NFL season. Understanding your league’s playoff structure helps you plan ahead and manage player matchups. It’s always a good idea to try to get players during the season through free agency or trades that have favorable matchups in those playoff weeks.   

• Tiebreaker – Rules used to determine playoff seeding or weekly winners in case of identical scores or records. Common tiebreakers include head-to-head record, total points scored or bench points. Some leagues may even use total points from a specific position, like WR.

Consider this your guide to get started playing fantasy football or start winning more in your leagues. 

Please continue to follow I-81 Sports for more preseason fantasy football articles and of course my weekly in-season article that will help you know who to start, not to start, and who to target in free agency.