For most of my fantasy football career, once the calendar turned to January, that was it. After the Super Bowl, we all have no choice but to wait seven months for meaningful games. So why not extend the fun by another four weeks with NFL playoff fantasy football? Learning the various ways to play fantasy in the NFL playoffs is becoming an intriguing way to keep the season going a bit longer.
How To Play Playoff Fantasy Football
Regular-season fantasy football has its fair share of formats and variations, but the overwhelming majority of people play the same game — head to head with a 14-week regular season and a three-week playoff.
Playoff fantasy football can’t function the same way. The player pool is reduced by more than 50%. There are only four weeks of games. That means we have to get creative.
While options are limited by the duration and nature of the NFL playoffs, there isn’t much uniformity when it comes to how playoff fantasy leagues function. There are best ball, head-to-head, weekly, and total points formats. And then, within those formats, there are multiple ways to select rosters and set lineups.
The vast majority of fantasy aficionados are already likely familiar with all of these concepts. After all, fantasy is a somewhat simple concept. If you’re a veteran of the game but haven’t really dabbled in postseason fantasy, there are some important changes you’ll need to make.
Perhaps the most pronounced is league size. In regular-season fantasy football, the optimal league size is 12 teams. 10-team leagues are also quite common and good for beginners. There are plenty of 14-team leagues out there as well.
In the playoffs, you pretty much have two options:
- You have a large-scale pool with no limit on entries where everyone gets to pick whatever players they want, knowing that there will be overlap.
- You have a traditional league with a draft, which forces you to limit your league to 6-8 managers.
For regular-season fantasy, there are roughly 200 relevant players at any given time. We have 32 teams, all of which have a varying number of players we can use over the course of 17 (or 18) weeks.
In the NFL playoffs, we start with only 14 teams. Then, each week, as teams are eliminated, the available player pool is slashed. That results in less than 100 fantasy-relevant players at the outset.
If your entire 12-team league is interested in playoff fantasy football, an easy solution is to split into two six-team leagues. With there being 14 teams in the playoffs now, seven-team leagues are also a great idea. Having an odd number of teams is not a problem in playoff fantasy because there are no head-to-head matchups.
Choose a Roster Size That Won’t Be Overly Difficult To Fill Based on League Size
The next step in setting up your playoff fantasy football league is to decide on starting rosters. A 14-player roster is a solid starting point in a six-person league. However, much like seasonal fantasy, there’s plenty of wiggle room.
The same applies to roster construction. Anything around your usual format should work fine.
Going with something similar to 2 QBs, 2 RBs, 4 WRs, 2 TEs, 2 Ks, and 2 D/STs will have you on the right track (I would suggest leaving out kickers and defenses, though — it’s more trouble than it’s worth).
This is probably intuitive, but it’s worth mentioning anyway: Playoff fantasy football doesn’t have trading or waiver wire pickups.
The main difference when learning to play playoff fantasy football comes with the scoring.
A Total Points Scoring Format Will Likely Be Your Best Bet When Setting Up a League
This is easily the most significant departure from regular-season fantasy football. Fantasy managers see this format most in best ball — the final standings are based on an accumulation of total points across the 17 weeks of the fantasy season.
Of course, these leagues do exist for non-best ball, weekly managed leagues. They’re just not particularly popular, but they do exist.
For those unfamiliar, in regular-season fantasy football, you can choose to participate in a league where the only thing that matters is total points — and not on a weekly basis. Your team accumulates points over the entire 17-week season and the final standings are based on whoever scores the most. This is a fairer way to play fantasy, but, in my humble opinion, it is far less exciting.
If you want to ensure the best teams always win your fantasy league, make it total points. It’s fair. It’s balanced. There’s no situation where the team that scores the most points will miss the playoffs. You can’t drop the second-high point total on a given week and take a loss. Success is less susceptible to being impacted by when injuries or bye weeks occur. It’s also not particularly exciting, which is why head-to-head is so popular.
In playoff fantasy football, the balance of power shifts. It’s actually more exciting and beneficial to everyone to utilize total points. After all, we’re talking about four weeks. You can’t have head-to-head matchups because your league either doesn’t have enough teams or there will be too much overlap in players.
If your league selects rosters through a draft, there’s far more nuance to the strategy than drafting the best players. Your players only accumulate fantasy points for each game they play.
Whereas in regular-season fantasy football, your focus is on what players you think will score the most points. In playoff fantasy football, you need to consider whether the players that score the most points will be on teams that win.
At this point, we know who the best players are. There’s very little predicting going on when it comes to how well we think these players will perform. However, we certainly don’t know for sure how the games will play out.
It’s incredibly important to enter your draft having a clear idea of who you think will win each playoff game and how you think the playoffs will transpire. Sometimes, it’s better to take a lesser player on a better team because he’s more likely to play multiple games.
Playoff contests extend all the way to the Super Bowl. Choosing players on teams who can make deep playoff runs is crucial to securing enough points to win it all. When learning how to play playoff fantasy football, this is what can make or break your team.
This is also why trading and waivers do not need to be part of playoff fantasy football. It’s a four-week mini-season more directed at fun than anything else. The challenge of playoff fantasy football is more predicting what teams will advance further. It nearly defeats the purpose of the draft if you can replace the players you lose along the way.
What Are Some Key Strategies To Know When Learning Playoff Fantasy Football?
The most important strategy is drafting players on teams that will play multiple games. Puka Nacua is absolutely an elite WR1. So is Justin Jefferson. However, if they’re only going to play one game, how beneficial will that be to your roster?
The Chiefs have the No. 1 seed. Even if we were to assume they make the Super Bowl (again), is it a lock that three games of Xavier Worthy would be more valuble than one or two games of Nacua or Jefferson?
Another aspect of playoff fantasy that is different is the value of quarterbacks. Now, to be fair, we are going to see Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson in the second round of 2025 fantasy drafts. But we won’t see them in the first round. And we certainly won’t see any fantasy managers use their first picks on them.
In playoff leagues, the elite quarterbacks are the first picks every time. Quarterbacks score the most fantasy points, and unlike in the regular season, they are a very scarce commodity. There are only 14 quarterbacks available. If you don’t have a good quarterback on a team likely to advance far into the playoffs, your chances of winning decrease greatly.
Don’t Concern Yourself With Bye Weeks When Drafting
We are now in the third year of the NFL’s expanded playoff. With only one team in each conference on bye, it actually makes navigating the bye weeks a bit more difficult.
Unlike in the previous format, there is a 100% chance a team playing in the Wild Card round will be playing in the Conference Championship. Ideally, that’s the quarterback you want. That player is guaranteed to have at least as many starts as either of the No. 1 seeds’ quarterbacks and has the best shot at advancing to the Super Bowl outside of the top seeds.
Learning how to play playoff fantasy football introduces a new, fun way to play without the commitment of a 17-week or 18-week schedule. It could make for a fun introduction to the game to get new players interested in this sport we love, thus growing the game to even larger heights.