Fantasy Football 101 and Drafting Tips

Fans Only Sportz Network
Aug 1
8 min read

by Zak Drapeau and Matt Hylen 8/1/2025 FansOnlySportz

As August starts, so does Fantasy Football season. With 99% of Fantasy Football drafts happening this month, we thought it would be a good time to go over everything you'd need to know for your draft and upcoming Fantasy Football season.

Whether you play Fantasy Football to prove that you are better than your friends, you play for the prize money at the end of the season, or you play for the love of the game, it combines the best competitive spirit with the greatest sport in the world. It's infectious, and if you know how to play, it's addictive.

Whether it's your first year playing or you're a veteran, everyone can use some useful tips for your draft and even the season. Matt Hylen and Zak Drapeau have each played Fantasy Football for 10+ years and have won 7 championships combined. Our experience in this game gives us the edge when it comes to knowledge of Fantasy Football, and we've picked up a few tips and tricks along the way.

Make sure to check out every section as we cover:

How to Play Fantasy Football (Zak)
Draft Tips (Zak)
Setting Your Lineup (Matt)
Waiver Wire (Matt)
Playoff Implications (Matt)
Much More!

Let's start this off with a little history and what this sport within a sport truly means and how it should be played...

Fantasy Football 101

Drafting Tips

Know Football

This goes without saying, but the first thing you need to do before you draft is know the game. This means going over teams' rosters, ESPECIALLY including their off-season moves.

Besides having a general understanding of the sport and its players, Fantasy Football players need to know the best teams and the worst teams. They need to know who led the league in yards for each position. They need to know which players were injured and thus have a lower ranking they can take advantage of. They especially need to know the rookies coming into the game and how they can impact their teams, especially at RB, where rookies have been coming in from Day 1 and getting plenty of playing time.

The more you know about the game and every team, including their roster, their backups, and even their schedules, the more you will be able to pick players you can pinpoint in the draft, which leads us to our second point...

Pick Your Sleepers Early

In my [Zak] experience, I'd rather draft a "7th round" guy in the 6th round than draft a guy who ESPN tells me should be drafted higher and miss out on the guy I like more. Usually, that's what happens: "I'll draft this guy now and HE should still be available next round," then HE gets drafted a pick or two before you, and you want to throw your phone across the room.

I [Zak] have a spreadsheet where I list my top 5 favorite sleepers, or "undervalued players that rankings have going lower than where you believe they should go," for each round. Yes, that's a bit hardcore, but if you're serious about fantasy football, you need to be a bit hardcore.

I pick my [Zak] sleepers by first making my own rankings independently of the Fantasy Football rankings you can find anywhere, from ESPN and Yahoo to other niche sites, then comparing and seeing who I have ranked a lot higher than most.

The best example I [Zak] can give for this was my top sleeper last year, Brock Bowers. Yeah, I'll brag a little bit... I watched Bowers in college and knew he would be great, but I didn't know he'd be that great. Bowers had an ADP around 110 for fantasy last year, meaning he was dubbed around a 10th-round pick. I wanted him in every league, so I took him in the 9th or even the 8th in some leagues, and it worked.

Sometimes this strategy will come back to bite you, but more often than not, if you do your research and have a group of guys you REALLY want, drafting them early will be worth it.

PPR Leagues Means Targets over Yards and TDs

In years past I would go for the guys that might not get the most yards but were TD scorers. This sentiment should still ring true for you as you look for players especially in the mid rounds but it depends on your league. PPR Leagues, (point per reception) are getting more and more popular. In these leagues, a player like Puka Nacua or Jaxon Smith-Njigba is even more valuable because though they may only get 1,100 yards and 7 TDs, they will grab 100+ catches and be among the top receivers because of it.

Knowing your league and how the PPR factor can change it is a huge part of your responsibility. This rule is also especially good for receiving backs like Austin Ekeler and Christian McCaffrey. In McCaffrey's season where he finished first in fantasy scoring, he almost always had 50+ catches.

Figure out BYE Weeks later

A common misconception is that you can't draft more than one player to a BYE and I'm here to tell you that's not true. By the time the big BYE Weeks come around, (Weeks 8,9 and 10) most of your roster will have changed from the draft anyway.

Furthermore, if you draft two or three great players with the same BYE Week, you should gladly bench them and possibly take an L if it means you have a better chance of winning the rest of your matchups throughout the season.

Draft Defense and Kickers Last or Not At All

I commonly don't even draft these positions. For some leagues you HAVE TO and then you should definitely wait until the last two rounds. Almost always, you will end up switching Defense and Kickers every week through the waiver wire anyway so don't waste a higher draft pick on them when you could end up grabbing a sleeper instead.

Setting Your Lineup

Now, it may seem like one of the simpler things, but sometimes it is extremely hard to remember. Setting your lineups for every week is a tedious task, but it is the most important part of your season once it begins. With games starting on Thursdays, my advice would be to check your lineups three different times: once on Tuesday (any time), once on Thursday (typically I check it an hour or two before the TNF game), and once on Sunday (again, about an hour or two before the one o'clock games begin). If you want to ensure you have set the optimal lineup for your team, this is the minimum number of times in my eyes.

Why so many times? A couple of reasons. One, injuries can happen at any point throughout the week. Oftentimes, players who are questionable will be ruled out just before their game begins, so it is crucial that you are on top of things in case that happens. There also could be a situation where a player not on your team is injured and out for that week, causing one of your players (who is on that same team in real life) to step in and become that #1 guy. For example, let's say you have Seahawks RB Zach Charbonnet on your bench. If Kenneth Walker (Seattle's typical starting RB) is out one week due to injury, Charbonnet's value that week goes from a bench player to a must-start. Thus, checking your lineup and discovering this happened could win you that week.

Another reason is the waiver wire. We will get more into this shortly, but you always want to check your lineup early in the week in order to decide whether a waiver wire pickup is needed.

Waiver Wire

In my personal opinion, the waiver wire is the most important aspect of Fantasy Football when it comes to in-season moves. It is often the bridge that can take your team from a playoff hopeful to a championship favorite. However, in order to capitalize on the opportunities the waiver wire gives you, a few things need to happen on your end.

One, do your research. If you are watching the games on Sunday and notice a player who may not be well known but is performing well, research them. If they have a steady workload that is increasing, put in a waiver for them. Guys like Puka Nacua, Kyren Williams, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Chase Brown, Rashee Rice, and Bucky Irving were all waiver wire adds before they became household names.

There is always a league winner who does not get drafted, a guy who nobody expected to put up big numbers but splashes onto the scene quickly. If you do your research, you can get ahead of your opponents and find those guys before the others have the chance. To add to this, doing your research can also help you discover if a weekly flyer is available. If a starting player is hurt and their backup is on the waiver wire, be the first to pick them up!

Two, have a reason. Since the waiver wire has an order to it (once you make a pickup, you move to the bottom of the list of priority), be logical about the guys you are picking up. Only make waiver wire moves if you genuinely feel like they could help you long term, or if you have to in order to cover for an injury or bye week one or more of your players may have. It is important that your wavier wire adds are stragetic and thought out rather than to just pick up a guy. Trust me, you'll thank yourself later!

Also, when it comes to defenses specifically, the waiver wire is very important. I like to go with a defense by matchup every week, which means I am basically putting in a waiver for the defense with the best matchup (worst offensive opponent) every week. However, what I typically do when making more than one waiver claim is I will put whichever player I am picking up as a higher priority than the defense I am attempting to pick up. I do this because it is a lot easier to adapt and adjust to losing out on a defense than losing out on an individual player. It is a strategy that has always worked for me and one I think every manager should implement into theirs.

Fantasy Football Playoffs

Of course, the most exciting part of the Fantasy Football season (besides the draft) is the playoffs. Playoffs are what everyone plays for, and where the money, or bragging rights, are made. If you happen to make the playoffs, congratulations, but the job is not done yet.

When playoff time rolls around, there are a couple of things that every manager needs to remember. One, keep checking to see if real-life teams are sitting any of their players at the end of the season. Sometimes, when real-life teams clinch the playoffs early/clinch their seeding, they will rest their starters for a week or two in preparation. Of course, this never benefits your fantasy team, so if that were to be the case, work the waiver wire and find those backups. It may not be ideal, but being on top of this could save your season.

Another thing to remember is that matchups matter. Checking your lineup and the waiver wire multiple times a week is crucial, but looking at who your players are playing is just as important. By this time in the season, you will have a good idea of what defenses let up a ton of points to offensive players and what defenses do not. Thus, hard decisions will have to be made, but it could be the difference between moving on and getting eliminated.

Lastly, do not forget to add some trash talk in there! Fantasy football would not be nearly as enjoyable as it is without a little bit of trash talk. Keep it friendly, of course, but it never hurts to raise the stakes a bit! Build that anticipation, so when you win, the bragging rights will be even sweeter!