How to Play Postseason Fantasy Football

Have you been antsy since your Week 17 fantasy football championship? If you haven’t turned off the notifications in your Sleeper app, you’re itching to draft a team, and next August seems like years away -- I’ve got good news for you!

The fantasy football regular season may be over, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop playing!

(Apologies to the patient spouses and partners out there; I am an enabler.)

If you’ve never played in a postseason fantasy league before, now is the perfect time to start. There are countless ways to play, ranging from salary-cap options to traditional snake drafts and best balls. Whether you set up your own league on a site like fantasypostseason.com or you join in a bigger contest such as NFC, you’re going to find the postseason can be just as much fun as the regular season.

One of the more interesting parts about postseason fantasy play is that it involves some amount of gut feeling about which teams will advance in the NFL playoffs and make it all the way to the Super Bowl. When setting your rosters, no matter what format, you’ll always want to consider how to get the most out of your players based on how far you think they will advance during the postseason. It adds an element of betting to the traditional fantasy league, giving it an interesting twist.

Think of it like combining your love for fantasy with the angle of thinking like a sports futures bettor. Trust me, you’ll love it!

Though there are endless ways to play, here are three common ways to play if you’re looking to get started.

1. Best Ball Format

This is the easiest way to play if you’ve never played postseason fantasy before and you’re looking for an easy way to be invested in the playoffs. In this format, there is no limit to how many people can play in a league. It could be two or it could be 50! No draft, no timer. All each league-member does is set a lineup that lasts for the entire postseason. The catch? You can only roster one player from each team. Once that team is eliminated, that player is also eliminated from your lineup. My suggested lineup for this format is 2 QB, 3RB, 3WR, 2TE, 2 RB/WR/TE, 1K, 1DST.

Strategy-wise, you can see why you’ll want to build your roster around the teams you think will advance. For example, if you think the Kansas City Chiefs will go all the way, you may want Patrick Mahomes as one of your QBs. However that means you cannot use Travis Kelce. If you want to use Kelce and get a positional advantage at a thin position, maybe you roster Brock Purdy at QB, as the San Francisco 49ers are the current NFC favorites for the Super Bowl. However, bear in mind that also means you can’t use George Kittle or Christian McCaffrey.

Oh, and one more thing to think about. The 49ers (and the Baltimore Ravens) have a first-round bye, meaning if they happen to get eliminated in the divisional round, you could still end up with only one week of stats from them. In that case, maybe it’s better to consider quarterbacks Mahomes, Josh Allen or Jalen Hurts, quarterbacks that will play in more games – if they make it all the way to the Super Bowl.

Finally, don’t forget to consider matchups. For example: the Lions were the most generous team to opposing wideouts for the last seven games of the regular season, but they have been among the toughest vs. the run in that span. Since the Rams could be eliminated this weekend, you may choose to use Puka Nacua over Kyren Williams as your selection from the Rams.

See how fun this can be?

2. One and Done

The one and done format provides that you can only use a player one week over the course of the postseason.

In this format, there is no limit to how many players from each team you can roster in any given week. However, once they are used in a lineup, you cannot use them again for the remainder of the postseason. You’ll want to try to grab max points each week and not leave any on the table while still leaving yourself plenty of players available for the Super Bowl. It’s a delicate balance, as you also don’t want to avoid using a stud player only to see their team get upset in an early round.

For example, if you use Josh Allen in the wild-card round, you cannot use him again for the rest of the postseason. Instead, the following week, you could use Lamar Jackson for your divisional matchup. However, if you play Allen and Jackson in the first two rounds, what happens if it’s Ravens-Buccaneers in the Super Bowl? You’d be stuck having to play Baker Mayfield! In this case, I like to play players I think will be eliminated early for my initial lineup. For example, if you don’t think the Rams will go all the way, then you’ll want to be sure you use Puka Nacua this weekend. If you don’t think the Texans will move on, you could choose to use C.J. Stroud.

Remember, you’ll also want to look at matchups and see if you can predict future matchups in order to make the strongest starts each week. For example, the Eagles have been terrible vs. wide receivers this season, as have the Buccaneers. In that case, you may choose to play A.J. Brown and Mike Evans in the wild-card round instead of Nico Collins and George Pickens, who have much tougher matchups, despite the fact you think the Texans and Steelers could be eliminated in the first-round.

3. Player Multipliers

In this format, you can replace players as they are eliminated from the playoffs with other available players, however, the players that remain in your lineup and were not eliminated receive a multiplier on their points scored. For example, if you start Jordan Love and CeeDee Lamb in the wild-card round and the Cowboys beat the Packers, Lamb remains locked in your lineup and will accrue double points for the divisional matchup. Love could then be replaced by Dak Prescott in the divisional round, with Prescott only accruing that week’s stats with no multiplier. Should the Cowboys advance to the NFC title game, Lamb will gain triple the points and Prescott will accrue double for that round. Should the Cowboys get eliminated, you can replace both Prescott and Lamb with players from a team still alive in the playoffs, but the multiplier count would start over. You can also mix up this format by requiring the wild-card lineup to only have one player from each playoff team, after which you can add one player from each team per round as you need to make replacements.

I hope this intro to postseason fantasy leagues was helpful. Whether you play for money or bragging rights, you’re guaranteed to have a lot of fun.