2021 Fantasy Football Game Format Rundowns

Think quick, hotshot! Who’s your favorite type of music? I bet you had an answer already prepared because you’ve answered that question a million times. For me, I love progressive metal. But, I also love chill hop. I also love ambient and jazz and orchestral and and and. Now, think of your favorite band or musical artists. What genre are they in? Me? I would say that the progressive metal band Periphery is my favorite band right now. Would Periphery be any good at chill hop music? Or ambient music? Or country and western or trap or grime or dubstep or honkey-tonk or…you get my drift. The day I see Waylon Jennings cranking out metal riffs is the day I give up writing (please don’t make me give up writing).

So what do genres of music have to do with fantasy football? A ton. Simply put: there are genres of fantasy sports. And — believe it or not — not everybody is good at all genres. I remember being stunned in Razzball chat one day when Rudy described the difference between him and Grey on the baseball side: Grey was the superior daily lineup player, while Rudy was the superior weekly lineup / best-ball player. At the time, I didn’t think much of this. But as I grew my presence in the industry and met so many other informed players who did all sorts of different kinds of fantasy sports — not only different sports but the different subtypes of games within the sport — I realized that not every format was for me.

This year it dawned on me that I simply didn’t have the time to change my lineups every day. Kids needed me, work needed me, dogs needed me, whatever. So, I gravitated heavily towards DFS. I’m the DFS editor on the baseball side of Razzball, participate in DFS Wars (a contest put on by RotoRanks), and the more I discussed and learned by keeping an open mind, I realized that DFS wasn’t for me. How could that be? I both like but shouldn’t be playing DFS? What do I do? I don’t want to play daily lineups or DFS…what should I be playing? Ah, yes, here’s the point where I realize that I like many genres of fantasy sports, but one genre is my favorite.

So, let me explain how I view the selection of fantasy games, which will help readers understand where they should dedicate their time in the 2021 fantasy football season.

Game Selection

Game selection is one of the most important aspects to succeeding as a fantasy player. The games you choose should be dictated by: 1) How much time you have to play; 2) How much attention span you have; and 3) How much capital (money, social, etc) you want to spend on the game.

If you want to see a Twitter thread version of this, go ahead and check out Joe Holka:

Have skin in the game, show receipts.

2021 marked my 7th year playing primarily tournaments on DraftKings & FanDuel.

I’ve won nearly $125,000 with a 40% ROI over that time period in NFL alone.

But it’s been far from rainbows and sunshine…

My DFS journey, by the numbers🧵

— Joe Holka (@JoeHolka) July 1, 2021

Let’s break down the commitments needed to play Fantasy Football in DFS, Weekly Redraft, Weekly Dynasty/Keeper, and Best Ball formats.

DFS:

DFS (Daily Fantasy Sports) Fantasy Football is probably the fastest growing market in fantasy football, and it’s the area of the fantasy sports world where players can make the most money. In DFS, a player puts in a new lineup every day. Or, hundreds or thousands of lineups. That’s the beauty of DFS: you can choose either one or thousands of lineups every day. Injuries don’t matter. You don’t have to set your lineup on Thursday for a Sunday slate (unless you choose to). However, DFS also costs money (unless you’re one of the weirdos who plays in the free contests). The vast majority of DFS players lose money. Draft Kings announces the percentage of players who win on a month-by-month basis, and it’s usually about 18% of DFS players who maintain a net positive return. Additionally, many of those positive returns are in the 5-7% net return on investment range; you could make just as much money with half the effort by investing in the stock market. Very few DFS players make any change, and those who do, often work in very large sums of money. If you refer to the Joe Holka thread above, you’ll see that his initial investment was $10,000. For me, that’s an unfathomable amount of money to risk on an enterprise that loses players’ money 82% of the time. Imagine this: Joe Holka from the above thread put that $10K into the Vanguard S&P 500 fund VOO and then chipped in $600 per month, much like somebody would add to a retirement fund. Over the same time period, Joe would have a 44% ROI with significantly less stress (you can see in his thread that playing DFS cost him his job and some social capital). So, I’m not saying to avoid DFS; but you need to know where your money is best spent. For me, playing DFS is fun and I enjoy playing in smaller competitions, but I’d rather invest my money in Draft Kings stock than lose it to sharks operating 700 lineups in GPP tournaments.

Additionally, DFS has a time component: you can’t just set and forget your lineups because sometimes a slate has games starting at 12 PM and 7 PM — when the 12 PM games start, you’re still looking at a ton of questionables for the 7 PM game. Do you skip the 7 PM rosters? Odds are, you shouldn’t. So, you need to be by your phone or computer even more than usual to succeed at DFS. For me, I would rather spend this time creating content and earning guaranteed money…at least until I’m at the point in my career where I have a large amount of capital and no 3-year-old toddlers to distract me.

Weekly Redraft:

This is the classic fantasy football format. You draft at the beginning of the season, set your lineup weekly, and replace players who are injured. It’s the bland vanilla soft-serve of fantasy football, but it’s also where the community is made. Because of the ubiquitous providers, you can play redraft fantasy football almost anywhere with anybody…and sometimes you end up in 11 leagues, or 20 leagues…or more. Most of us in the “industry” and the community have been there. You spend your Sunday morning not with your family or the newspaper, but with the player news feed, rapidly updating 20 lineups on an app that keeps crashing. If you’ve got the time and patience to set your redraft lineups every week, you can’t go wrong with classic fantasy football. For me, this is the kind of league driven by love, not money.

Weekly Keeper/Dynasty:

This is like redraft, except at the end of the year you keep some of the players on your team (Keeper leagues) or you keep all of the players on your team (Dynasty). Sometimes, people forget that rookies have a very poor track record of succeeding in the NFL — many years, the first round of the NFL draft produces no Pro Bowlers whatsoever, and in most years, there are a handful of relevant fantasy rookies that make it. Why does this matter? The market seen inside the dynasty leagues can be wild. Travis Kelce in the 4th round. Tom Brady in the 8th round of superflex leagues. Because the market for players is so different, many teams can accidentally crash while trying to build an empire, and when those real-life managers decide they hate their team, they move on and leave their problem for new people. If you can get the right crew, keepers/dynasty leagues are solid for community building. My main keepers include internet friends that I’ve met in real life and talk to more than my extended family.

Best Ball:

Hey look, it’s the RazzBowl! Best ball is where you draft and hold players all year (some formats do allow player add-drops) and then the computer sets the lineups based on the best performance. Many new companies are adding best ball capabilities, and it has become my favorite format as a busy dad who spends his time creating content. Oh, what’s that? A player got injured during warmups and it was announced 5 minutes before roster lock? As a best ball manager, I don’t have to leave my kids to fumble with my phone for a 4G signal in the woods to get my roster set; the computer manages it for me. Best ball can be really frustrating for injuries though; imagine starting Christian McCaffrey/Joe Mixon/George Kittle/Courtland Sutton last year. There was nothing wrong with your draft process, but there’s nothing you can do to save that team now. Any money you spent on the team is tanked. So, oftentimes best ball mangers enter dozens of drafts to create diversity in their player pool. For me, I’d rather spend some more time in the draft room upfront instead of hovering near my phone at 2AM for a roster add/drop (as opposed to taking care of my cranky toddler).

Fantasy Takeaway:

There’s no right or wrong league, and there’s no better or worse. There’s just the kind of league that’s right for you, right for your playing style, or your time commitment. If you’re finding yourself losing money or not having fun or not building community or not winning leagues, it’s time to try another format. You might just find that a league with a different time commitment — whether it be a different roster lock or shorter slates or no late nights — really caters to your style of play. Maybe you’re really good at best ball but had just never tried it before. No matter what, I encourage all fantasy football players to jump out there this year and try a new format.

What’s your favorite format? Leave me a comment below and let me know!