Fantasy Football: Wacky League Types

Hello there, o’weary traveler. Come and rest a spell before continuing on your journey through the fantasy football landscape. If you’re looking for legitimate advice, I’m afraid you’re in the wrong place. If you’re here to laugh, try something new, or annoy the hell out of your leaguemates, then I may just have something for you.

That’s right, today we’re taking a look at a whole bunch of unusual league types, ranging from the hardly noticeable, to the completely game-breaking. I’ve scoured the internet for ideas and brainstormed a few of my own, and present to you a comprehensive guide on a topic absolutely no one cares about. If your league has become stale or the managers have grown bored of regular old fantasy football, consider pitching your favorite ruleset from the options I have assembled.

To be clear, these aren’t leagues that have a single quirky scoring rule or a funny last-place punishment. Most of the ideas below would fundamentally change the way managers approach their seasons, so implement with caution. They assume redraft format for the most part, although some of them could be applied to dynasty if you’re a special type of crazy. Without further ado…

Classic

Let’s kick it off with the unorthodox leagues that most veteran fantasy football managers have heard of. They’re relatively popular in the fantasy community as the go-to rulesets for anyone looking to shake up their league. They can be a bit complicated, but should make your league a hell of a lot more interesting.

The “Guillotine” League

As one of the definitive weird leagues, the Guillotine league is simultaneously hilarious and demoralizing. Instead of head-to-head matchups between managers, this league is a free-for-all. Team scores are put up against each other at the end of each week and the team with the fewest points is disbanded. Not only is that manager removed from the league, but all of their players go onto waivers immediately. The remaining squads grow stronger every week and the last team standing wins.

The “Pirate” League

Simple but distinct, Pirate leagues allow you to steal one active player from any team you beat in a head-to-head matchup. A good start to the season can result in some of the most overpowered teams possible in fantasy football. To counteract this, some leagues have modifications where you must swap out a player of the same position, declare the player you plan to steal before the week begins, or even block one player from being stolen. 

The “Vampire” League

Similar to Pirate leagues, Vampire leagues implement stealing players in an asymmetrical fashion. Choose one manager to be the vampire, however you see fit. They will not take place in the draft with the rest of the teams, but instead must build their squad through waiver wire and free agent pickups. The normal teams are not allowed to use waivers but can trade with each other, and losing to the vampire means having a player stolen from your lineup. These leagues are usually head-to-head, but depending on the number of teams I think it could also work well as a free-for-all.

The “Kitchen Sink” League

Kitchen Sink leagues are usually just roster changes, but they allow for a level of freedom and flexibility rarely seen in normal leagues. Your team positions are as follows: 2-3 superflex, 8-12 flex, 2 kickers, and 2 defenses. QBs gain value, RBs lose importance, and most TEs fall off into obscurity. Perfect for that zero-RB truther in your league or managers that want to score 200+ points every week.

The “Unbiased” League

There are a few different interpretations of these rules and they don’t seem to share a common name. Based around fairness, these leagues have two major versions: additional matchups against the median score or matchups with every team every week. This is done to limit the fallout of unlucky head-to-head scheduling, and is probably very appealing to you if you’ve ever missed the playoffs with the most points scored.

Feasible

Now let’s talk about the less popular, but still, very manageable leagues. These rules offer a skewed fantasy football experience, but aren’t necessarily too much to scare away hesitant leaguemates. Some might even be genuinely good ideas. But don’t worry, there aren’t too many more of those.

The “Mix it Up” League

Ever wish your normal league would have more player turnover? Look no further than the Mix it Up league, where you have to drop one player from your starting lineup each week. Most of these leagues seem to agree that kickers and defenses shouldn’t count, but there are many rule variations. Some say you can’t pick up a player you just dropped or vice versa, some make you drop multiple players, and some require every team to drop a player of the same position.

The “Team Draft” League

If you’ve ever thought “this fantasy draft is taking way too long”, then I have the league for you. Team Draft leagues have you pick whole NFL teams instead of individual players, and let you use any player from those teams in your regular lineup. It’s unclear whether or not you can trade individual players during the season, but you might as well continue the theme and keep all players attached to their respective squads. These leagues usually cap at eight members to give each manager four NFL teams.

The “Supplemental Draft” League

As many fantasy football managers know, the first few weeks of every season reveal a few valuable players that were skipped over in the draft. Instead of waivers, Supplemental Draft leagues have a mini-draft take place after week 2 where managers compete for the undrafted players, commonly in reverse order of the original draft. It’s pretty much business as usual for the rest of the season, but you could even continue doing mini-drafts every other week if you’re looking for a seriously unique league.

The “Penalties” League

The most popular complaint I hear about fantasy football is that penalties aren’t fantasy relevant. Not really, but that didn’t stop me from figuring out how to incorporate them into a league anyways. If a player on your roster commits a penalty he loses points equivalent to the number of yards lost, just like if he had ran the ball backwards for the same distance. It’s relatively inconsequential but would be quite difficult to track. You could even try to give back points for plays that get wiped out by nonsense penalties, which is admittedly pretty stupid but that’s probably the point.

The “Humiliation” League

Humiliation leagues are very straightforward and are probably the easiest to convince your leaguemates to join. No scoring or roster changes, no weird waiver setups. Just the rule that if you lose by 40+ points in a head-to-head matchup, your opponent may change your team’s name and picture. Losing teams aren’t allowed to reset their name until they get a win.

Impractical

Oh yeah, now we’re getting to the good stuff. These rules are seriously weird; all of them altering some important aspect of the fantasy process, and subsequently adding another layer of strategy to take into account. Fair warning, these leagues get dumber the further you read.

The “No Losers” League

There aren’t many ideas on this list that I want to try more than the No Losers league. It’s easy to remember: your players score exactly 0 points if their team loses the real-life game, regardless of individual success. This would place you in the uncommon position of rooting for your players’ teammates even if they aren’t on your roster. Player values and lineup decisions would change drastically, and you’d have to make a soft prediction on the outcome of every single NFL game.

The “Time Machine” League

Time Machine leagues are for those of us who stress way too much about start/sit decisions. Every manager gets a certain number of time machine uses, usually three, where they can swap one player from their bench into their lineup. All requests are submitted in secret and announced to the rest of the league together at the end of the week. This means that you could use one or even all of your time machines and still end up losing the week if your opponent does the same.

The “Free Market” League

Do you ever wish your leaguemates would be more open to trades, or stop vetoing trades that others agree on? Check out the Free Market league, where every manager is required to make a certain number of trades both before the season and during it.

I’d recommend two trades pre-season and one for every normal week, but as with most of these rules, it’s up to you. Keep in mind that managers will be much more desperate to make trades before the week starts, so lopsided teams are inevitable.

The “Forecast” League

I don’t know about you, but I absolutely hate having a player in a great matchup, but playing in terrible weather. The Forecast league was invented specifically to deal with this injustice. Another one that requires a bit of outside commissioner work, this league gives extra points to players whose game takes place in bad weather.

You could give various bonuses for rain, hail, or snow, or even have a points multiplier that scales with the temperature. Show me another league where players’ stadium types are as important, I dare you.

The “Parallel” League

Another one of my personal favorites, the Parallel league doesn’t care how many total points your team scores. Instead, all that matters in this league is each one of your players outscoring their parallel counterpart on the opposing team. If your RB1 beats their RB1, you get a point.

The roster could be any size as long as you field an odd number of players, and lineup construction would be a whole different level of strategy. It also throws a wrench into the classic quality vs. quantity debate, where in this case you might rather have a few solid players instead of one stud.

The “Monado” League

I hope you like predictions, because that’s what the Monado league is all about. At the beginning of every week, managers submit their guesses for who will be the highest, and lowest scoring players in their lineups. If you’re right on either, that player gets double points.

You could build your team so that one player is significantly better than the rest, and hope that he carries you through the year with double points each week. This league adds a whole new layer of prognosis and should result in some great buzzer-beater matchups.

The “Contracts” League

This one’s for all you financial gurus out there. In the Contracts league you draft like normal, but every team has a salary cap. Individual players are assigned cap hit values based on their real-life contracts and you must field a team every week that stays under the cap limit. You might end up targeting rookies or underpaid players, avoiding the likes of Patrick Mahomes unless you deem him worth the hit.

The “No Sitting” League

The No Sitting league is simple: no bench spots. That’s it. Want a waiver wire player? You’ll have to drop a starter to get him. First round pick get injured? That’s zero points until he’s back to full health. Bye weeks coming up? Get ready to revamp your whole team. Yeah I know this one’s especially dumb, but go ahead and try to convince me that it wouldn’t be hilarious.

Ridiculous

Abandon all logic, ye who enter here. The leagues below are unconventional to say the least, and should serve as a last resort for commissioners who have long since stopped caring about the opinions of their leaguemates. They’re absurd, unpredictable, and difficult to organize. I warned you.

The “Bizarro” League

The quintessential ridiculous ruleset, Bizarro leagues are fantasy football in reverse. All it takes is for the commissioner to change some scoring settings so that negative actions are positive points and vice versa. Your players should get points for negative yards, interceptions, fumbles, drops, incompletions, and missed kicks, but lose points for positive yards, touchdowns, catches, completions, and made kicks.

Players that receive no opportunities will get negative points, and the scoring should be balanced so that legitimately bad players are the most valuable. You’ll want to draft players that fail, but not ones that get benched. It’s a fine line to walk in a fabulously stupid league.

The “Misfire” League

Misfire leagues require a bit of oversight, but produce some of the silliest drafts possible. When a manager selects a player to draft, the commissioner rolls a random number between -1 and 1. If it’s a 0, congrats, you get the player you wanted. But if it’s a -1 or a 1, sorry, you’re forced to draft the player above or below the one you selected.

You could get lucky and have a relatively normal draft, or you could end up stuck with a whole team of players you didn’t want. I’d recommend bumping the draft time up a bit to allow for the chaos; and if you want to continue the theme throughout the year, you could use similar rules for waivers.

The “Sleepers Only” League

Everyone in fantasy football cares so much about sleeper candidates, so why not have a league full of them? The Sleepers Only league has you remove most starting players from your draft pool before the year even begins. Assuming a 12-team league, you would need to take out the top 12 QBs, 24 RBs, 36 WRs, 12 TEs, 12 kickers, and 12 defenses. Imagine a world where Damien Harris goes first overall. That’s the world I want to live in.

The “PFF” League

If you’re a true Pro Football Focus believer, this is the league for you. The PFF league throws those archaic scoring systems out the window, and uses weekly PFF grades for your fantasy team’s points. Any player could have a disappointing game but still score highly if it wasn’t necessarily his fault. What do you want from me? I told you these were dumb.

The “There’s No I in Team” League

Why is it that QBs, RBs, and WRs get all the fantasy attention? There’s not enough appreciation for the less popular positions out there – a problem this league aims to fix.

Instead of “skill positions”, this league fills your roster with punters, holders, long snappers, kick returners, fullbacks, and offensive linemen. You could even throw in coaches and coordinators if you’re up to the challenge, but good luck figuring out how to balance the scoring systems.

The “King of the Hill” League

Do you despise that one manager who’s always sitting at the top of your league standings? Then come on down to the King of the Hill league, which unfortunately has nothing to do with propane or propane accessories.

In this league, whoever has the most total points scored is the king, and is at risk every single week. If the king loses a head-to-head matchup, they are forced to drop every single one of their players onto the waiver wire. That manager still participates throughout the year and can even pick their players back up, but will be seriously nerfed until another king is dethroned.

The turnover in this league would be insane, and I could easily see a bottom-five team getting lucky and running away with the championship.

The “Rookie Bomb” League

And finally, the Rookie Bomb league. Choose one manager (probably last year’s loser), to start as the rookie team. That team is only allowed to draft and play rookies, but other managers are not allowed to have any rookies on their roster.

In a free-for-all format, if the rookie team outscores a normal team, those managers completely swap rosters. If the rookie team outscores multiple normal teams, just have them switch with the lowest scoring team of the week.

This fantasy football league is less about winning and more about not losing, as whoever is in possession of the rookie team at the end of the year shall be deemed the ultimate loser. Avoid losing to the rookie team at all costs, or do everything in your power to drop it on someone else.

There’s your extensive guide to the world of weird fantasy football leagues. If you’ve read this far, I would like to genuinely thank you. I put a lot of effort into this list and while it’s probably not the most productive use of time, I really enjoyed it. If you end up trying a league you read about here, please let me know at @chosenoneff on Twitter. And of course, good luck! You’re going to need it.

Nick Pellegrini