Get to Know Your Fantasy Football Formats: Game Against the Median

The Game against the Median fantasy football format is an option available on some platforms such as Sleeper. When enabled, it works as follows: 

During the regular season, you play against your head-to-head opponent as usual. But you also play against a ‘ghost’ team. This ghost team scores the average of all the scores in the league for that week, also known as the median score. If you outscore the median, it is a win. If a score is less than the median, you get a loss. In the unlikely event you match the median score then it records as a tie. These two sets of games combine to make up your weekly record. To determine playoff placement and seeding, your games against the median are also added to your head-to-head matchup records.

The Rationale for Game Against Median

A couple of years ago I had a season that shaped my stance on using game against the median. Back in 2019, I seemed to be on the wrong end of the Fantasy Gods’ wrath. I cultivated an outstanding team by perfectly executing my draft plan, making strategic waivers, and pushing through a couple of shrewd trades. With a stacked team, I was the Points For (PF) leader by a margin of 201 points. I rostered the RB1, WR1, and WR3 that year in Christian McCaffrey, Michael Thomas, and Cooper Kupp. There was no doubt about it: I was dominant. Except, so were my opponents. At least when they played me they were.

Week after week, the opposing team would show up to play. When I scored 144 points, my opponent scored 162. When I scored 162, my opponent dropped 188. You get the idea. My PF lead? It did not do me any good as I also led the league in the Points Against (PA) metric as well. My PA lead was just over 100 points. Sure, that sounds like a surmountable total contemplated in a vacuum with my PF.

But context is everything: the second place in PA barely held a 100 PA difference between him and the team that had the lowest total amount of points scored against them. Amongst themselves, my league mates were playing hacky sack with their scores: kicking 5 points here, tossing 15 points over there, whatever. But when it came to me, they were dropping the hammer. It was insane. 

Matter of Luck

I wound up finishing with a 7-6 record and missed the playoffs. While I absolutely crushed it in the losers bracket (yippee), I cannot think of a time when I have ever felt so helpless in fantasy. There was nothing I could do that would have changed these outcomes. It was totally out of my control. It would be different if I had a middling roster all year or if I was constantly making bad sit/start calls. But that clearly wasn’t the case, as evident by the PF results. The true difference maker that year for me was chance.

We all know that fantasy football is notorious for being a roller-coaster of luck and uncertainty. As evident from my 2019 season’s tale, no matter how meticulously you plan or how skilled your roster-building is, victory on any given Sunday is not guaranteed. This element of unpredictability adds excitement to the game, but being subject to the whims of the chance to shape your entire season is beyond frustrating. So what can we do? The answer is easy: Activate the “game against the median” option.

Playing a game against the median is not something you alter your draft plan or roster management to account for – you still want to score as many points as possible every week. You will still need to win head-to-head games and an unlucky streak could still cost you a shot at the title. All it does is increase the odds of playoff teams being genuinely strong, championship-worthy teams. This leads to tougher competition in the playoffs and rewards process and decision-making over sheer good fortune.

Champion Validity

Using a game against the median also instills a sense of validity in the championship itself. There is nothing satisfying about watching what is arguably the best team in the league obliterate the competition in the losers’ bracket. Especially not when they are simultaneously outscoring every playoff team that only seemed to cobble together a respectable score when they faced that loser’s bracket juggernaut. Let me tell you from experience, being that losers’ bracket juggernaut is not all that satisfying either.

While luck is an integral part of fantasy football whose impact cannot be fully eliminated, it should not be the sole determiner in the outcome of the season either. We have to do what we can do, and where we can do it, to ensure process and decision are rewarded. Checking the impact of something as nuanced and ambiguous as chance certainly isn’t easy, but enabling the game against the median is a fairly easy way to do just that.