2022 Fantasy Football Strategy

40 million people play fantasy football across the world. In other words, if the fantasy football community was a YouTube channel, it would have more subscribers than Rihanna, OneDirection, and Maroon 5. Luckily, you can like both Maroon 5 and fantasy football. What’s that you say? You’ve got the moves like Jagger but you don’t know the first thing about fantasy football? That’s fine! Let’s get you caught up and teach you everything you need to know to play in your first fantasy football league.

Why should I — a guy with an avatar from a failed 2000s TV cartoon — be your guide to play fantasy football? Because I’ve played fantasy football for over 20 years, won an industry league against top competition, finished in the top 10 of FantasyPros most accurate weekly rankers three times in 2021, and placed as a finalist for “best article” in the 2021 Fantasy Sports Writers Association awards. I’ve helped thousands of people in the fantasy sports space improve their teams, and I’m here to help you as well.

Now that we’ve established our trust and filled our heads with shirtless Adam Levine images, let’s talk fantasy football!

Before You Draft

Playing for Money:

The absolute first thing you should do is decide if you’re playing fantasy football for money. The fantasy sports industry churned nearly $9 billion in revenue in 2021, but you don’t need to pay to play. You can spend decades playing fantasy sports on the top sites for free.

If you decide to play for money, play wisely: never play with money you can’t afford to lose, never chase losses with bigger gambles, and understand that the house always wins. DraftKings is one of the largest fantasy sports sites in the world, and it reported that among its 2 million monthly users, 80% of players lost money over the last month. Fantasy football is for entertainment, and you should not expect to profit from the game.

Where to Play:

Once you’ve decided whether you’re playing for money, you can decide which platform you want to use. Fantasy football has similar rules regardless of platform. You can use them all if you like! While your league is locked to the site where you drafted, you can draft as many teams as you like (or can afford!) across many platforms. Let me summarize the largest fantasy football platforms; these recommendations are not compensated by the platform or endorsed by Razzball:

Best for new fantasy football players: ESPN and Yahoo are perfect for first-time users because they are simple to use and have some of the largest user bases in the world. They have fully-featured free leagues and robust paid league options. You can access these platforms by the website or mobile app.
Best for community-based fantasy football players: Sleeper is the best platform if you want to interact regularly with your league-mates because it resembles the workplace team-manager Slack. Sleeper primarily runs on their mobile app but does have functional web accessibility.
Best customizable fantasy football site: Fantrax is legendary for its customizability, and you can personalize everything from the scoring settings of the league down to the appearance of the site. Fantrax supports web and mobile app.
Best high-stakes fantasy football site: If you’ve decided to spend a bit of money or you want to challenge the top fantasy football players in the world, then the NFC is your best choice. Unless you’re playing in a sponsored industry tournament, you won’t find a free league at NFC, though. NFC is currently browser-bassed only.

If you’re brand new to fantasy football, stick with ESPN, Yahoo, or Fantrax. There are dozens of other platforms I could mention here, but you could play an entire successful fantasy football career on these three sites alone.

Scoring and Format:

Fantasy football scoring can be overwhelming. Let’s keep it simple: you want to score the most points. I’ll tell you how to do that part later. Modern fantasy football leagues have moved almost entirely to a points-per-reception (PPR) format, meaning that each reception a player catches earns them a point. When we say “standard” scoring, we refer to an older style of scoring that did not include PPR. This is kind of weird, right? Such is the evolution of the “new standard.”

Pro-tip: If you’re new to fantasy football, stick with PPR scoring formats — they’re the most popular format, and you’ll find tips and tricks for these leagues everywhere.

You’ll likely be in a league where you draft a lineup, meaning you’ll do a “first-come, first serve” choice of NFL players assigned to your team. You’ll likely do a snake draft, which means the last person in the draft queue will pick twice in a row when it’s their turn; if you look at the “draft selections” from an overhead view, it looks like a snake. Trust me, it’s cute. There are also auction or salary cap draft leagues, but these are more complicated and not recommended for new players.

Pro-tip: Your draft will take planning and participation. Don’t get stressed out though! Every fantasy football platform offers computer assistance to help you choose your team if you get overwhelmed. It’s OK to auto-draft, or let the computer take over the draft, if you need help or need to step away.

In the NFL, two teams match up every week in a “head-to-head” game. Some of these matchups have become legendary rivals: the Minnesota Vikings vs the Green Bay Packers; the New York Giants vs the New York Jets; and the Patriots vs everybody. Most fantasy leagues follow this “head-to-head” format, except instead of Vikings vs Packers, it’s Tony from Accounting vs Barb in Packaging. The head-to-head format is familiar and fairly simple because you only need to beat one team per week. Like the NFL, you set your lineup and hope to score more points than your opponent’s lineup.

There’s also a recent movement towards “best ball,” which looks nothing like NFL scoring. In best ball formats, you draft players to your team and never set your lineup. Instead, the computer takes the top positional scores from every roster and adds the points. You effectively play every team at once, and at the end of the season, whoever has the most points wins.

Pro-tip: Best ball is the simplest approach to fantasy football. However, it’s also a very hands-off format and less-likely to involve you in the fantasy sports community. I play almost exclusively best ball leagues because my life is too busy to manage head-to-head leagues. If you’re super-busy, I recommend you play in a best ball league.

Roster Allocation:

A typical NFL starting offense lineup has 1 quarterback (QB), 1 running back (RB), 5 offensive linemen, 2 wide receivers (WR), 1 tight end (TE), and 1 “flex” player that depends on the coach’s play style. Fantasy sports attempts to mimic the NFL starting lineup while simplifying the roster allocation (like, removing all of the offensive linemen).

In fantasy football, you choose your roster allocation when you choose a league. There are many variations of roster allocation, but the “standard roster” is generally 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 1 Flex. Then to make things simple, most fantasy leagues combine an entire NFL team’s defense into 1 roster spot (Team DEF). As the cherry on top, most leagues choose a placekicker (K) as well. Some leagues use individual defensive players (IDP), but these leagues are less common and more complex than standard leagues. Recent trends in roster allocation gravitate toward “superflex” leagues, which allow two quarterbacks in the starting lineup, or leagues that eliminate the Team DEF and PK spots.

I recommend newer players use the standard roster of 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 1 Flex, 1 Team DEF, 1 K.

The Draft

Consider everything I wrote up there [waves hands upward] as the recital. You practiced your lines, got your costume, and learned your cues. Now, it’s the show. Little did you know — it’s an improv show! You don’t know how it’s going to unfold. There will be curveballs and unexpected events. But don’t worry! You’ve practiced your “Yes, and ___”, and you’re ready for anything.

The draft can happen in many formats, but most often, it’s a “live draft” where everybody shows up — usually virtually but sometimes in-person in your uncle’s garage — and they pick their players. This resembles an improv performance because a live draft has a timer (usually 60 seconds) and people panic and make non-rational choices. Even in a slow draft — where the timer spans 4 to 8 hours — people still make puzzling choices. There are also auction or salary cap drafts, but because you’re a beginner, we won’t discuss these advanced drafting forms now.

Ranking Players for the Draft

Ranking players is assigning a top value to players based on previous statistics. We call the hierarchy of a player’s expected stats their Rank, and a top-ranked player is expected to perform better than a lower-ranked player. Player ranks work in tandem with the market for these players, or the fantasy football community’s certainty in that player’s rank. As people select their preferred rank of NFL players, these choices are averaged behind the scenes in a database and produce the average draft position (ADP). ADP is the market of certainty around a player’s yearly statistical expectations. Follow this link for the 2022 ADP Data.

Too confusing? Let’s metaphor! Imagine you’re in the cereal aisle and can choose Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, or Muesli. Turns out, there are only three boxes of cereal, and two other shoppers are joining you in the race to choose. Thanks, supply chain nightmares! What do you go with first: the sweet, crowd-pleasing Cinnamon Toast Crunch, the reliable Cheerios, or the life-sustaining Muesli? Me? I’m going with the upside — I’m taking Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I want flavor, first and foremost. And maybe tooth decay. But you might be more conservative with your teeth or health, and you choose Cheerios or Muesli. None of these choices are wrong — they just serve different purposes. Cheerios are kind of boring, but they’re consistent. In fantasy football terms, this is where we ask ourselves if we want as our top pick Jonathan Taylor — a running back with one year of elite performance — or Dalvin Cook, a running back with many years of very good performance. Myself? I’m taking Cinnamon Taylor Crunch — wait! — Jonathan Taylor over Dalvin Cook every time in 2022.

Variance: Why We Play the Game

The truth is: the draft is the magic of fantasy football. Nobody knows the future, and nobody can confidently say what will happen in the NFL. At most, we can provide a reasonable expectation of outcomes for NFL performance. But when the players take the actual NFL field, the narratives begin and change all the expectations. When you play fantasy football, a significant part of the game is understanding the gap between what should happen and what does happen. In statistical language, this is called variance.

In 2020, running back James Robinson signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars as an undrafted free agent — basically, a player unwanted by NFL teams — and through a series of unlikely events rose to be the top running back on the team. In the past two years, Robinson has started 75% of the Jaguars’ games and performed well-above average despite most analysts believing he would never play an NFL snap. Robinson has outplayed Clyde Edwards-Helaire, who the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs selected in 2020 to be their running back of the future. This is one of many examples of how unlikely events in the actual NFL affect fantasy teams; we can expect Clyde Edwards-Helaire to perform better than James Robinson, but in reality, Robinson has been the superior running back for two years. Will this trend remain in 2022? Only time will tell.

How to Draft

Here’s the part of the article where I point to other articles because I’ve written so much about draft strategy elsewhere. Too busy to click? Here are the essential takeaways for evergreen fantasy football advice:

Start your first round with a running back.
Balance your team — take one of every starting position before taking backups.
It’s fine to closely follow the average draft position (ADP).
Draft your Team DEF and kicker in the second-to-last and last rounds.
Don’t draft injured players.
Have fun! Take players you like in real life so you’re more likely to follow your team.

Here are my in-depth draft articles:

For the most accurate rankings, please check out our site master Rudy Gamble’s 2022 Fantasy Football Rankings.

In-Season Play

Well, this is the part of the article where I hope I’ve trained you well enough to fight the dark side. You’re on your own from now on. There’s no right or wrong way to play fantasy football — there are merely more optimal or sub-optimal ways to play. If you picked a best ball league, all you have to do is wait until the end of the season to see if you win. If you picked a head-to-head league, you’ll be setting your lineup every week. There are a few great pieces of advice to follow, although these should be considered guidance rather than rules:

Start Your Studs: Generally, start all of your top draft picks. They should play better than “the other guys.”
Don’t Start Your FLEX on Thursday: Thursday Night Football happens almost every week. If you have a player that is active on Thursday night, start them in your “main” slots instead of your “FLEX” slot. This leaves your FLEX slot open for Sunday or Monday in case of injury status changes.
Don’t Overthink: Houston may be a terrible team, and you might want to start that rookie wideout against the atrocious Texans secondary. Is it better to start your rookie wideout over your star wide receiver? Probably not. If a team gets up two touchdowns against the Texans, they might just run the ball for the rest of the game — receivers will probably get a rest and have poor stat lines.
Watch Out for Weather: Snow, wind, rain — it may make for magical memories in the NFL Highlight reels (Adam Vinatieri memories!), but they’re generally disastrous for fantasy teams.
Change Players: The free agent wire is where you acquire new players by swapping them with players on your team. Is your rookie wideout not playing? Swap them out for somebody who is playing. Did your running back lose their job? Swap them out. Is your kicker on a bye week? Swap them out. The name of the game is scoring points, and you’re getting zero points from players on the bench.

Above all, the name of the game is to have fun. If you’re not having fun in your current league, remember that there are 40 million other fantasy football players. You can search for new leagues, find different communities, and find different formats. I won’t be offended if you move on to another analyst site. Just because I showed you the door doesn’t mean I’m your cup of tea.

Here at Razzball, you can always feel free to drop a comment in the article — whether it be another writer or me — and let us know your questions. If you want to support the site, you can get a 2022 Fantasy Football Tools subscription or share our site across social media. Or, just say thank you in the comments.

Hope to see you around, and good luck in 2022 fantasy football!