Congratulations on joining your first (or 50th) fantasy football league! I swear I’m not being sarcastic (maybe). By now you have noticed fantasy football has decided to use a made-up language consisting of mostly consonants and few vowels, so yes, it is like Wheel of Fortune, try not to go emotionally bankrupt! Let’s get started breaking down the essential terms to have a successful season:
First off, your league format may be described by three letters (with no vowels I wasn’t kidding), PPR, or points per reception. This style of league values the number of catches a player makes not just how many yards the player racks up (volume matters, think big hair!) which is what you would find in a standard league.
Second, let’s get all the player positions out of the way!
QB– quarterback, duh
WR– wide receiver- skinny boys that catch the ball
RB– running back- think of them like little bowling balls rumbling down the field trying to score!
TE– tight end- the position not the body part, don’t be gross! Think wide receiver on steroids (can you make steroid jokes these days?)
W-R-T or FLEX– this is a slot on your roster you can fill with any of the above, excluding the QB of course
BN– an oft used abbreviation for bench, why use 5 letters when you can use 2! Park your average players here until the BYE week or worse, an injury.
DEF or D/ST– defense, you get the whole squad! AND bonus if they have good special teams (ST) more points for you! YAY POINTS!
K– kicker, I know this isn’t helpful but as a scientist, K could mean potassium so whatever
IR– injured reserve- I always wish I had two more IR spots, but you only get one so when your best player gets hurt, slide them into this IR slot and pick up someone new off the waiver (unless they are done for the season in which case cry yourself to sleep and pray your mortal enemy has the same fate).
If you read our first fantasy football post, you know injuries are the biggest obstacle to any successful fantasy football team (assuming you are a competent manager who didn’t draft Tom Brady first overall), which is not much different from my everyday life where a sprained ankle has literally turned my world upside down…anyway…injury designations are as follows:
IR– listed as a position on the roster above, IR is also noted for players whose actual REAL teams have placed them on REAL, not fantasy IR. When this happens early in the season, they may return so stashing them on your IR or bench may be wise. If the player is done for the year (i.e torn ACL or Achilles) then you DROP THEIR A**!
O– one round letter, so many bad implications! O means OUT so by the start of the game this player will give you as many points as the letter represents, ZERO! This designation may come minutes before the start of the player’s game so pay attention to…
Q- or questionable! If a player has this little Q on a Monday after the slew of Sunday games, fear not! Often Q’s change during the week into P’s (we’ll get to that), but sometimes they can become O’s (omg I sound insane why do we do this to ourselves?).
Finally, there’s a P or probable. Probable is good, we like probable but be warned, a probable can become a Q or O quite quickly (lol at all the Qs in this sentence). Also, a P may play and find out he doesn’t quite have it- we’ve all been there- so then he bows out for his own good and we are left to pick up the pieces of a score of 0.3. This my fellow sun-babes is the life of a fantasy owner.
This entire post has felt like a bad game of Scrabble mixed with Wheel of Fortune, so let’s buy a vowel and pray for the best as we inch closer to the start of Sweet Sweet Fantasy Sunday season!
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