Fantasy Football ‘25: 3 Quick fixes to improve your league

Welcome back, readers! Summer officially starts this weekend, and that means draft prep for season-long, redraft fantasy leagues is underway. In case you missed it, my recent fantasy columns here at Big Blue View include the safest players and riskiest players for 2025, a beginner’s guide to Fantasy Football, and burning questions for the 2025 season.

As the summer gets rolling and the 2025 NFL season gets closer, I’ll have a lot more fantasy draft prep content for you right here at Big Blue View, including player rankings and tiers, players I’m avoiding and targeting at Average Draft Position (ADP), sleepers, draft strategy pieces, and more. So please check back regularly for new content. My columns are easy reads at the beach!

If you’ll indulge me today, I’m going to climb up on my soapbox one more time. Fantasy football is a great game, but it can be even better if leagues are willing to evaluate and tweak the rules and format. Today I’m offering three quick fixes to improve your league(s). Since lots of leagues implement rule changes in June and July, hopefully this article is timely.

Readers who followed my content at my old Pigskin Papers website have heard some of this (and more) from me before. I also posted a quick fixes piece at Big Blue View last summer. I won’t call myself a crusader, but I’ve given these topics a lot of thought over the years, and my own playing experience in 30-plus years in my main league (which has implemented almost all of the changes I’ve talked about in my columns, and more) has been extremely positive and rewarding. Like all games, fantasy football can be improved.

Fantasy football has been around since the early ‘60s. It’s grown into a multi billion-dollar industry, with tens of millions of people around the globe playing across a variety of daily, dynasty, best-ball, and redraft formats. Over time, “standard” versions of each format have taken hold, and most participants just accept the rules as they are. But fantasy managers control their leagues and can change league rules and settings to suit them. Many of the big hosting websites (like My Fantasy League (MFL), for example) are very flexible when it comes to settings and scoring. I like to think of the “standard” fantasy football format as nothing more than a guideline, as opposed to something sacrosanct that was handed down on a mountain.

Resistance to change is natural. But hear me out. You’re playing a great game with some dumb rules and settings. My focus is primarily season-long redraft leagues but some of the changes I’ll discuss work for other formats as well.

Note: All season-long player rankings shown below are for Half Point PPR, are on a points per game basis, and Week 18 is excluded.

Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images

1. Superflex – Yes, it IS the Flex I think it is

More and more leagues are moving to a Superflex (SF) format, and that’s a good thing. But there are still way too many 12, 10 and eight-team leagues out there where only one quarterback is permitted in the starting lineup. In a SF league, there is an extra Flex spot and it can be a QB, so the vast majority of teams in a SF format start two quarterbacks each week. Oh, and if you’re in an eight-team league…c’mon, man. Find two more warm bodies!

Quarterback is the most important position in football (and probably in all of team sports), Quarterbacks are by far the highest-paid players in the NFL, and QBs are the highest-scoring players in fantasy. Last season, the entire top six and eight of the top 10 fantasy scorers were QBs. But due to a lack of positional scarcity, quarterback has been greatly devalued in fantasy, to the point that in 1-QB leagues, it’s typical for no quarterbacks to go in the first 15-20 picks.

Right now, using a 1-QB setting, Josh Allen has the highest ADP of any quarterback, at No. 25. Sure, ADP is a little wonky in June, and he’ll probably settle in at an ADP of around 20 when draft season rolls around. Still, that’s crazy. Allen has finished as the No. 1 or No. 2 overall player in fantasy for FIVE straight seasons. You heard that right – FIVE! He’s also remarkably durable and boasts the longest consecutive starts streak among QBs, at 117 (including playoffs), which is more than double the next best active streak (Jared Goff). Without question, out of every player you could consider drafting this season, he’s the single safest bet to finish at or near the very top in fantasy points. He’s the definition of fantasy gold. And yet, there are currently 24 players ahead of him in ADP. Really? Really.

The absurdity continues as you move down the board. In 1-QB leagues, plenty of excellent fantasy quarterbacks will be available well into the middle rounds. Using current ADPs, QB9 Kyler Murray (the No. 16 overall fantasy scorer last season) has an ADP of 91 (mid-eighth round in a 12-teamer). There is simply too much supply of quality at the position, and it severely depresses the value of quarterbacks. Dak Prescott, Justin Herbert, Jordan Love and other very productive QBs are ranked outside the Top-12 at the position this season. That means they probably aren’t going to be every-week starters in a lot of leagues, despite the fact that they’re all likely to finish among the Top-25 overall fantasy scorers.

Love is a case-in-point. He finished last season as the QB12, which made him at best a borderline starter in a 12-team league. But he was also the overall No. 18 in total points scored. In a 1-QB league, too many high-scoring players at the quarterback position are either riding the bench or worse, sitting on the waiver wire, every week.

By doubling the number of starting quarterbacks across a league, SF market-corrects by creating an appropriate level of positional scarcity. It realigns quarterback value so that it’s closer to actual fantasy scoring value. In a SF draft, you can expect at least half of the first-round picks to be quarterbacks, and many more come off the board in subsequent early rounds. Shouldn’t the highest fantasy scorers be drafted early? SF also increases the options for employing different draft strategies.

While I think moving to SF is a no-brainer, I don’t recommend it for leagues that are larger than 12 teams. In those cases, you can start to run too thin at the position, and especially with the frequency of quarterback injuries, plus the presence of Bye weeks. But for everyone else, if you aren’t already there, you should seriously consider the SF format. If your Commissioner resists, send him or her my way.

Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images

2. Snakes are sinister creatures – switch to an auction draft!

The vast majority of redraft leagues employ a snake draft, where fantasy managers simply take turns drafting players. It’s like the annual NFL draft, but for the snake feature: Round 1 goes 1-12, then Round 2 goes 12-1, and so forth. Seems like a good idea that promotes fairness, right?

Let’s wait a second before answering that. Do you covet Saquon Barkley or Ja’Marr Chase this year? Bijan Robinson? Jahmyr Gibbs? Sure! Who wouldn’t? Well, if your league has 12 teams and employs a snake draft, then going in, you’ve probably got about a 25-30% chance of drawing a random draft slot number that will give you an opportunity to draft even one of these four stars, and you have no chance whatsoever of drafting two of them. That in and of itself is a major indictment of snake drafts, and it goes beyond the first few rounds, as throughout the draft, there will be players that you won’t be able to consider taking without either reaching or getting very lucky.

I get the appeal of a snake draft—it’s easy, fast, convenient, and players within a certain range just kind of fall to you each time it’s your turn. Yes, there’s plenty of positional strategy and some skill, but if you really want to enhance the fantasy draft experience, then try an auction draft. In an auction draft, franchises take turns nominating players, and each player goes to the highest bidder.

The advantages of an auction draft are many. In a nutshell, it’s 100% egalitarian with no preset advantage or disadvantage based on draft slot, you’re never blocked from getting specific players unless and until you don’t have enough money left to bid on someone you want, there’s more strategy and skill involved, and it’s more gratifying if you’re able to construct a strong team. I also think it’s more fun. Draft night comes just once per year, and in most cases, it’s a group of people who have a history and like being together. So why rush it? If need be, it can be done remotely, just like a snake draft. Try an auction once and it’s unlikely that you’ll ever go back. Going once, going twice…GONE.

Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images

3. Fix the waiver wire process

I have never understood why the vast majority of fantasy leagues process waivers on Tuesday night at midnight. At that time, almost every NFL team has yet to practice for the upcoming week, and information about player availability for that week (and beyond) is limited.

Waiver runs should be no earlier than Wednesday midnight, and Thursday afternoon is even better. Why not give owners as much information as possible before they need to make decisions on drops and pickups? Seriously, if anyone can tell me why Tuesday waivers isn’t one of the dumbest things out there, please drop a comment below and enlighten me. And while we’re here, any league that still allows open waivers on a first come-first served basis (before league-wide waivers are processed for everyone) should be shut down by the Fantasy Police. I’m not done – if you’re still using priority waivers, that’s dumb, too, so get rid of that. OK, I need to take a breath.

I’m back. The best system, which many leagues now use, is a free agent acquisition budget (FAAB), where each franchise starts with a fixed cap to spend on free agents for the duration of the season ($100 or $200 is typical), and blind bids are used to process weekly free agent claims. If you change nothing else, at least make the acquisition of free agents a fair process.

OK, that pretty much covers it. And consider yourselves lucky, because I spared you my rant on the biggest change I’d like to see take hold, which is to get rid of head-to-head play. In my view it’s the most consequential improvement your league can make, and there are some very good options to use instead, that fairly reward the better teams. But that’s another story for another time.

While we’re here: Full-point PPR is too rich. A screen pass for no gain (or worse) is worth the same points as a 10-yard run. That’s no bueno. Half-point PPR is more sensible. And last but not least, using individual defensive players (IDP) is more fun than having a team defense/special teams. D/STs are the ultimate crapshoots, and the fact that people will sometimes bench a D/ST on Monday night to assure a win is reason enough to eradicate it as a feature of the game.

OK, NOW I’m really done. Thanks for listening! If you’ve got other rule changes you’d like to see, please drop them in the comments.