Hey there reader! It sounds like you were somehow looped into your first-ever fantasy football league. Whether it be a casual league with friends, a friendly (totally not for money) league with co-workers or you decided to dive head first into a public league, fantasy football can be a great way to enjoy the upcoming NFL season without needing to be a big fan.
It can also be quite overwhelming. There are plenty of resources out there discussing draft strategies, player rankings and overall season sentiments, but sometimes you need to learn the basics before diving into all of that. You have to walk before you can run.
To truly get the most of all the content that is out there for fantasy football, prospective owners need to learn the jargon. Throughout the years the fantasy football language has grown and become something of its own. As a long-time player myself, I want to help the next generation of players by explaining common words and phrases you’ll see throughout the fantasy season.
Welcome to your fantasy football vocab lesson!
Note: This is a living document, and will be updated if there’s something I missed.
[Related: 11 Ways to Improve Your Fantasy Football League]
Fantasy football players are smart, but they’re also lazy. They love shortening phrases, that way they can make more time to explain why their favorite player will be the next big thing. Here are some of the more important acronyms newer players should get familiar with as they consume more fantasy football content.
ADP is probably the most important abbreviation players should know prior to the start of the season. The average draft position of a player is the average spot in which fantasy football managers are expected to draft a certain player. The ADP is different on each platform, as it is determined by players participating in mock drafts as well as real drafts. The average draft position of player, whether it be in the first round or the 15th, is how most people will rank players going into draft day.
Fantasy managers often times are beholden to the ADP of players and will have heated discussions on players who are too low or too high. At the end of the day, ADP is simply just suggestion based on how people have drafted prior. The ADP of a player can drop or rise based on new info. For new players, following ADP is a safe bet to have a competitive team.
When leagues are being created, commissioners are tasked with the tough choice about what kind of scoring a league will have. One of the more common settings is to have PPR, or points per reception. The name explains the rule, however to explain it further – in a PPR league, players will receive points for simply recording a reception. When a player catches the ball they will grant your team one point. Easy!
Most leagues typically put all the focus onto offensive players because it is just more fun to root for touchdowns. Other leagues will add what they call IDP, where managers will draft defensive players as well. IDP leagues will vary on how many players go into the IDP slots, but the important thing to remember is that these are players that play on defense.
Football players are human. Humans get hurt sometimes, and sometimes injuries take a little bit to come back from. These players that will miss multiple weeks at a time will be put onto the IR, the injured reserve list. This list occurs in the real NFL as a way to make space for their 53-man roster to replace a player who is hurt. Luckily us fantasy football players get the same luxury. The IR spot allows you to hold onto a player that is hurt while opening up another space on the roster to replace them.
Football players are human. Humans do a lot of really really dumb stuff sometimes, and sometimes they get in some serious trouble. If you see a player with a big red SUSP next to their name, it is because they are suspended for some amount of games this season. Whether it was for betting against games or off-field trouble, these players will miss a varying amount of time. Unfortunately, they cannot be put into IR spots, so SUSP players are tough to hold onto for long periods of time.
Free agents are the players that you did not select during the initial draft. They are players that are fair game to everyone in the league. Free agents are important to pay attention to, as some will have some great games and turn into fantasy relevant players.
One of the ways league decides who gets to claim free agents is the FAAB system. The free agent auction budget is a set amount of “money” teams receive in order to bid for a specific free agent. Once the auction is over, the highest bidder receives the free agent. It’s a silent auction, so no one knows who bid what until the player is claimed. This is also the only amount of “money” a team receives during the year, so don’t spend it all in one place!
Time for the positions in football. These are the abbreviations for each type of position you’ll see in fantasy this season.
QB: Quarterback
The guy who throws the ball – Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts are examples.
RB: Running Back
The guy who runs the ball – Austin Ekeler, Cristian McCaffery and Saquon Barkley are examples.
WR: Wide Receiver
The guy who catches the ball – Justin Jefferson, Cooper Kupp and Ja’mar Chase are examples.
TE: Tight End
The guy that looks like a lineman but catches the ball – Travis Kelce, Mark Andrews and Darren Waller are examples.
DL: Defensive Lineman
The big guys up front on defense, needed for IDP leagues – Maxx Crosby, T.J. Watt and Aaron Donald are examples.
LB: Linebacker
The guys who stand in the middle of the defense, needed for IDP leagues – Roquan Smith, Shaq Leonard and Nick Bolton are exmaples.
DB: Defensive Backs
The guys who cover wide receivers, needed for IDP leagues – Budda Baker, Derwin James Jr. and Minkah Fitzpatrick are examples.
D/ST: Defense and Special Teams
The D/ST are the combination of a team’s entire defense and special teams units. They score points by getting sacks, interceptions, fumbles and touchdowns.
K: Kicker
The guy who kicks the ball for a field goal – Harrison Butker, Nick Folk and Justin Tucker are examples.
When you go out in the world and check out fantasy football advice, you’ll see a lot of the term RB1, WR24 or TE2 going around. These are just terms that describe a players rank in relation to the rest of the field. Though there are two types of ranking – overall ranking and tier ranking. So let’s go over those here.
When we talk about a potential RB1/WR1/QB1, the community is referring to the idea that a potential player can finish in the top of the position. A RB1 will be a running back that finishes in the top 12 of the position. The idea comes from the the thought process that (assuming this is a 12-team league) each team will need two running backs, and generally one will be seen as more valuable than the other. So we have RB1’s that will usually be the first twelve running backs off of the draft board, and then RB2’s who will be the next 13-24 running backs off of the board.
The same thing goes for wide receivers, quarterbacks and tight ends.
The idea behind this term is to explain how sometimes players sit in the same tier as other players. An RB1 is equivalent to another RB1 since they are both able to give elite production.
When we talk about overall rankings at a position, that is when we refer to players a the RB1. For example, when talking about someone like Jonathon Taylor, people will refer to him as the RB1 from 2021, while this year he is going in drafts the RB7 – the seventh running back off of the board.
Again, the same goes for WR, QBs and TEs.
This ranking is used for more pinpoint rankings for player-to-player evaluations.
There are several different types leagues out there that all do things a little different. Let’s talk about them!
Standard leagues are one of the most basic and most used leagues in fantasy football. In Standard leagues, players gain points by scoring touchdowns and gaining yards. That’s it! No points per reception or additional rules that others will see in different leagues. It is simple and easy to follow – great for new players.
We talked about this a bit earlier, but PPR leagues are similar to Standard leagues in every other aspect, however players now receive points per reception. Managers like this type of league as it makes some players more playable. There are some receivers out there that don’t score many touchdowns, but catch a lot of balls – this league scoring allows those guys to be relevant in fantasy.
Re-Draft leagues are the most common leagues by far. It is the classic, one and down type of season. You draft your team, and you have them throughout the season. You can add and drop players from the waiver wire, but after the season is over you lose your team. Then the next season you get to re-draft your team for the new season.
Keeper leagues are similar to Re-Draft leagues except with one major twist – you are now able to keep a few select players heading into the next season. These types of leagues are fun those groups that play with the same league each and every year, and want to add a fun wrinkle to the league.
The most intricate of the leagues is the Dynasty league. In a Dynasty league, you are now a general manager of an organization. You draft your initial roster, and you are stuck with them forever. That is, until you trade them away for draft picks, drop them to free agency or they retire. Dynasty leagues are for the football diehards who think they can manage a roster better than the pros.
Welcome to the wackiest of leagues that are gaining a bit of popularity among life-long players. Guillotine leagues are larger leagues (18 or so teams) that all compete against each other each week. The team with the lowest points total is dropped from the league entirely – meaning your fantasy season is done. The league continues until there is one sole survivor.
Then there’s the Vampire league, where a winner of a matchup steals a player from the loser. This league, in all honesty, is one that I’m less familiar with because I’m simply too scared to try it. Losing your only good players in the season seems like a pretty brutal hurdle to overcome.
The de-facto draft format for plenty of Standard leagues is the Snake Draft. During a Snake Draft, players will pick in an order – 1 through 12 – for the first round. Then in the second round, the player picking 12th gets to pick again. That’s right, the second round is flipped from the first round. Then after the second round is finished, it flips again. This will happen in each round until the draft is completed.
This draft style provides teams on both ends of the pick order some amount of advantage and downsides, ultimately making teams a bit more even.
Let’s spend some cash! Auction drafts, much like FAAB, allow managers to bid on players in order to draft them. Managers nominate a player to kick off the bidding process, and the owner who has the highest bid after a certain amount of time is now the proud owner of that player. Each team only has a set amount of budget, making it a fun game to see how each owner values a certain player and position.
Linear drafts are similar to Snake drafts where players select one after another, however Linear drafts do not flip after each round. So if you have the first pick in the draft, you’ll have the first pick each and every round.
Saved usually just for Dynasty leagues, Rookie Drafts are drafts where you can only pick up rookies. In these drafts leagues will usually allow teams to pick up free agents as well. They much shorter in length, usually three or four rounds, and happen any time before the season. Some leagues will do it right after the NFL Draft, while others will wait until the preseason. The big take away is that is just focused on the new class of NFL stars.
Wow that was a lot of words! Luckily through exposure and experience it’ll all become second nature. Now you can go into your drafts talking all the lingo and mocking people when they take someone before their ADP. Best of luck, and here’s to hoping your team scores well!
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