The Unspoken Edge: Adjusting to League Settings

By :: Tony Kneepkens (@tonytk44)

Knowing your specific league’s settings can be as important as your “player takes” as you prepare for your fantasy draft, negotiate trades, and consider waiver pickups throughout your fantasy season. Specifics like numbers of teams in your league, number (and makeup) of starters and bench spots, and matchup and scoring settings can change the actual and perceived value of many players within their position groups, as well as the value of the positions relative to one another. 

It is important to know and understand your specific league’s settings so that you can make your own adjustments to the player pool, but it can be equally impactful to know how other managers in your league might react, or potentially overreact or underreact to unique settings.

A few examples of different scoring settings you might encounter and how they might impact your player pool or draft strategy:

1. In PPR leagues you might consider drafting and/or starting certain role-playing RBs who don’t play on early downs or near the goal line. These players would have considerably less (likely close to zero) value in leagues that don’t award points for catches, even less yet if carries are worth points and catches are not.
2. In leagues that award “big play” or “long TD” bonuses, it is logical to break ties at the WR position to favor players who have a higher average depth of target or who play in offenses or with QBs who prioritize deep passing concepts.
3. Some leagues have position-specific scoring, such as one point per reception for RB/WR but two points per reception for TEs. This should move the group of elite pass-catching TEs up draft boards, and you might consider adding some lower- ranked TEs to your player pool more than you would in a standard scoring format.

The examples above are all impactful to an extent, as they shift players with different skill sets within their position groups and in some cases, you might even add or completely remove players from your player pool based on the specific settings.

the Six Most Important Things To Know Before You Draft:

How are points scored?

Many leagues award six points for TDs and a point for every 10 rush/rec yards and for every 25 passing yards. Often there are some points awarded for receptions, sometimes for 40- or 50- yard plays, or carries, or kick-return yards. In most cases, these changes don’t necessarily turn your draft board or overall strategy upside down, but they can, again, provide for in-draft bargains if your opponents are sticking to standard sets of pre-draft rankings. To go back to some of the examples from the intro above, these more unique scoring settings are great ways to break ties within tiers of similar players or identify undervalued skill sets when you’re drafting or making in-season roster moves for your specific league.

How are matchups, standings, and/or prizes determined?