Fantasy Football 101: The Core of What You Need to Know
We've got everything here that you will need to know in order to win your league, whether you are a beginner player and new to football, or you watch every game and just want to get better at fantasy football.
One of the most key components to winning in fantasy football is studying. Pre-draft, roster maintenance during the season, daily fantasy, all require studying. Studying teams, individuals, injuries, and injury history, even coaching. A lot of people tell you, “you gotta study, you gotta look at the stats/numbers”.
What stats? What does all of that really mean? Studying serves no benefit if you aren’t studying the right material obviously. You wouldn’t study a Japanese textbook for a Spanish quiz, right? Of course not. But how do you make that translation to the sports world? It’s 2024. You have tons of options. First let’s talk about what, then we’ll tackle how to study.
The traditional way is old fashioned number crunching through spreadsheets. Go to any reputable sports website and get player stats. There is no shortage of places to go for this. ESPN provides data, NFL.com, and others all provide basic player stats for free! It’s typically not very comprehensive as far as how deep into the weeds you need to get. But it’s a start. Targets, receptions, carries, yards per carry, touchdowns, so on and so forth. These are all available for no charge whatsoever. Use it as a baseline.
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Now, if you are willing to pay a little cash, you can get some comprehensive stats without doing much work. One of my absolute favorites is Stathead. Here you can start to get into the nitty gritty. For example, one thing I may use to separate two WRs that on the surface have equal value is how many targets they get on 3rd and long? Why? Well, fantasy football is less about how good a player is, and more about how much they have the ball in their hands. If player A gets fewer targets on 3rd and long than player B, it tells me one of a few possible things:
- A’s team doesn’t face that situation as often
- The QB trusts someone else more than A
This is a very small example, but it is an important number for me. Another more commonly known one is ‘big plays’. Define big plays how you want. For me, in terms of RBs, big plays are plays of 15 or more yards. For QBs you can also use 15, though I typically push it to 20. Regardless, the point is if you play in a league where there are bonuses, say for instance 300+ yard passing for a QB gets an extra 5 points or whatever it may be, then it’s helpful to know who is most often getting those big chunk plays. You aren’t getting to 300+ yard passing games by going 6 yards a pop.
These were last year’s (2020) top 10 QBs in ‘big plays’, 15 yards or more. And to the right, overall fantasy leaders. 5 of the big play passing leaders, were also 5 of the top QB leaders from 2020. And if you slide out the two QBs who also heavily depend on rushing, Murray and Jackson, then the 11th and 12th place leaders, Cousins and Ryan, also both would make it. And Derek Carr sits at 13.
| Top 10 'Big Play' QBs | Top 10 QBs Overall Fantasy Leaders |
|---|---|
| Patrick Mahomes | Josh Allen |
| Deshaun Watson | Kyler Murray |
| Matt Ryan | Aaron Rodgers |
| Matthew Stafford | Patrick Mahomes |
| Josh Allen | Deshaun Watson |
| Tom Brady | Russell Wilson |
| Kirk Cousins | Ryan Tannehill |
| Phillip Rivers | Tom Brady |
| Derek Carr | Justin Herbert |
| Aaron Rodgers | Lamar Jackson |
Again, this is just a very small example, but you can already see the value in digging into the depths of these stats. Now, if you have any computer programming knowledge, you can enhance this even further, scraping data from various sources, compiling it all into one place, and producing your own grading system based off certain scenarios as the one laid out above. For example, your baseline grades can be based just off the baseline stats, total yards, TDs, INTs, and so on for whatever position you want to sort out. Then you can apply various weights to the more intricate stats, say an extra point for 1st down throws that come on 3rd and long as those keep drives alive, and thus the opportunity for said player to continue scoring.
That’s the what. You need to establish a baseline, and then you need to be able to branch off into other more detailed stats and there are several ways to do so. The next thing you need to do is consume various forms of media. You must be careful of this though, as not everyone knows what they are talking about. Some people are just spewing nonsense and so you need to be able to filter through the BS and get down to the important stuff. So, vet carefully. Now, having said that, my favorites are Podcasts and YouTube. A more recent one is Spotify’s Greenroom and there are various Discords, forums, blogs, and many other places from which to get valuable information. Someone out there knows something you don’t know. They’ve looked at some impossible stat, have spoken to someone in the know (if you’re talking about really vetted individuals/sources) and most importantly, simply offer a different perspective.
There have been plenty of times where I wanted to draft someone and have discovered through a podcast or some other means that their upcoming matchup wasn’t a favorable one based on some weird stat that I was unaware of. Other times you hear about players who may have reduced playing time, or some unknown player that is about to take off due to injury to someone in front of them on the depth chart. Those things happen all the time and if you are relying solely on you to be in tune with all those things, you'll lose.
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You can find all sorts of YouTube channels, podcasts, and blogs that are excellent in talking about the very things discussed at the top of this post. The intricacies and little-known facts about certain players that they cover are critical.
There are also excellent people to follow on Twitter as well that drop plenty of little nuggets that can help you win your league throughout the year. Other sources for valuable info sometimes aren’t directly connected to fantasy football at all, but perhaps gambling, or just talking football in general. There you can also pick up things as I said before like various matchup problems, or a player’s history vs a certain opponent. I love a lot of the Ringer podcasts, and a lot of them don’t focus on fantasy football itself, but you can certainly pick up things that will help you.
Lastly, if you have ever studied stocks, one of the most common pieces of advice is to keep a trade journal. Well, you should keep a fantasy football journal. Note your draft, what picks you made and why. Note what free agents or waiver wire pickups you made and why, what trades you make, players dropped, all that stuff is important. If you aren’t studying you, then you aren’t making progress. If you’re getting worked over in your league, it’s probably something you’re doing wrong. Sure, there is plenty of luck involved in how a fantasy league plays out. But often, it’s about how you drafted, and how you maintain that roster throughout the season. That will put you in the best position to have luck in your favor. And in order to do that, you need to study the right data, and listen to the right people.