Fantasy football leagues come in all shapes and sizes. I know this better than most, as none of the dozen or so teams I manage (not to mention countless best ball and mock drafts) is exactly the same, with a steady mix of redraft, dynasty, keeper, IDP, super-deep lineups and/or very creative scoring.
One of my past leagues even had punters and head coaches! (Yes, you can use both in the ESPN game -- and there are projections.)
I am often asked about how to adjust strategy based on these leagues, so without getting too far into the weeds, here are ways I do that in specific areas.
Dynasty leagues
As much as I enjoy a good redraft league, there is nothing I love more than dynasty leagues. It's the closest you can get to playing GM, as you retain your players year to year and can make moves at nearly any point on the calendar. There are few better feelings in fantasy than hitting a home run on a rookie pick (just ask those who spent a late first-rounder on Justin Jefferson in 2020 or took a late flier on Puka Nacua in 2023) or watching one of your sleepers or bench stashes emerge (those of you who identified Jalen Hurts, Chase Brown and Nico Collins in years past, take a bow).
Oh, and the season never ends. Sure, it stinks to have a bad team, but if you fall out of contention in dynasty, the offseason begins -- at least for you -- and you can immediately begin making trades and waiver moves to set yourself up for future success. As odd as it sounds, sometimes that can be more of an enjoyable ride than a stressful playoff run. And when it eventually leads to a title, there are few better feelings in this game.
Consider perceived value: This is the best advice I can give in this format. Dynasty managers love unproven youngsters and first-round draft picks way more than they like established veterans, excluding obvious superstars in their early prime. We get bored with guys who just get the job done year after year, and we are easily distracted by the shiny new toy.
You can and should take advantage of this, and one way to do that in a startup draft is to go extremely young at the expense of winning in the short term. That might seem counterintuitive to what I just said, but bear with me. Aim for players 24 years old or younger (adjusting slightly by position), and do your best to fade everyone else. Not everyone you pick will pan out, but enough will; and within a year or two, your roster should be peaking while the managers who drafted depreciating assets will be fading. The odds are, your slow start also will net you another potential superstar via an early pick in the Year 2 rookie draft.
This strategy sets you up with a good, deep roster of young players entering their prime and also an extremely attractive roster on the trade market. That reminds me of one of my championship-winning teams from back in 2020. Prior to that season, my roster was talented, young and deep, which allowed me to make a push for one more superstar. I traded Terry McLaurin, Raheem Mostert and a pair of future second-round picks for some guy named Davante Adams. That was fair market value at the time and proved to be a title-winning move. Which brings me to my final dynasty tip ...
Don't be afraid to trade rookie picks: I swap them often, especially if it lands me an established good player. We tend to overestimate the hit rate of rookies; like it or not, a lot of the rookies you're excited about right now will bust. Turning what is essentially a lottery ticket into a weekly starter should be a no-brainer. I'm especially aggressive in trading away picks if I expect my team to be good; my picks would, in turn, be late in the round the next year.
Rookie drafts
Perhaps the most important element of any dynasty league is the annual rookie draft. Unless you're a very aggressive trader, your roster isn't going to change a ton from year to year, with the largest impact coming via the rookie draft. These drafts might seem fairly straightforward, but I see people make avoidable mistakes quite often.
One error is reaching for a player to fill a positional need instead of taking the best player available. An even bigger one is not considering draft history. As mentioned in the predraft playbook column, most fantasy-relevant players were drafted on Day 1 or 2 of the NFL draft. It's easy to pick on GMs for occasional misses: Howie Roseman might never live down choosing Jalen Reagor over Justin Jefferson despite an incredible track record. But they are very good at their job for the most part.
Year after year, I see drafters desperate for RB help reaching on Day 3 fliers with seemingly little competition for snaps in the short term over Round 1 or 2 wide receivers with a substantially better chance to be long-term fantasy starters. Simply taking the best prospect on the board -- regardless of position -- is your best path toward building a powerhouse.
Keeper leagues
Do you prefer seasonlong leagues but hate the feeling of not getting to hang on to that amazing, late-round, home run pick you made for multiple years? A keeper league is your new best friend.
It's hard to give detailed advice here, as keeper leagues are known for having all kinds of rules and regulations pertaining to whom you're allowed to keep, how many players you can keep and, in many cases, which picks you must surrender in order to keep them. That said, I get a lot of keeper questions, and usually they are incredibly easy to answer.
Look, if you're able to keep only a few players or less, you're basically playing in a seasonlong league and thus should keep the players who help you in the short term, adjusting only slightly for age. The best advice in these scenarios is to consider average draft position (ADP).
A realistic question I get is something like, Should I keep A.J. Brown for my second-round pick or Jaxon Smith-Njigba for my 12th-round pick? Most agree Brown is the better short-term asset, but both players have a similar ADP. In this scenario, you can keep Smith-Njigba and still get a player similar to Brown (if not Brown himself) when you're on the clock in the second round. I can't stress enough how easy it is to make keeper decisions simply by considering ADP.
Field Yates shares why Travis Hunter should be taken early, especially in IDP leagues.
IDP: Individual defensive players
There are some hard-core IDP leagues out there, but I'd guess most of you who are in a league with defensive players have a fairly normal set of starting slots at the offensive positions then something in the range of one to six IDP starters. In this scenario (and assuming default scoring), you simply don't need to value defensive players very highly in your draft or on the trade market. Sure, a standout linebacker such as Zack Baun can give you an edge and has middle-round value, but because IDP scoring is generally a step or two below offense, and because you're likely to start only one or two players at very deep positions, you're going to have plenty of good options to choose from, both during the draft and on waivers during the season.
Also, casual players know offense significantly better than defense, so identifying and finding good starters on defense will generally be easier. In a nutshell, in leagues with fairly basic IDP settings, you should focus on offense first and worry about defense later.
There is one disclaimer here: Travis Hunter. The Jaguars' rookie WR/CB is adding a fun wrinkle to fantasy football this season and perhaps for years to come. If you're in an ESPN fantasy league that only uses the standard positions and scoring settings, this won't affect you much, as Hunter will get points only for non-IDP categories, the same as all players. However, if you use defensive players (or decide to utilize custom scoring settings to count defensive stats), Hunter will earn points for contributions on both sides of the ball. This makes Hunter an extremely valuable option in IDP formats, because he can (and should) be slotted into your lineup as a CB or a DB. Be sure to consider this when evaluating Hunter on draft day.
Superflex
Superflex means that your starting lineup includes a flex spot that can be filled with a quarterback. (In ESPN leagues, this is the "OP" spot.) Because the worst starting QB option in a given week is generally going to be projected to outscore the best flex options, this means that each team in your league will ideally be starting two quarterbacks.
Therefore, QBs are significantly more valuable in this format. You should move all quarterbacks up your draft board and plan to roster an extra player or two at the position, as starting two good QBs each week needs to be your primary goal. Whereas top QBs Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Jayden Daniels and Jalen Hurts are going in the third- and fourth-round range in one-QB leagues, you can expect all four to be off the board in the first round of superflex leagues.
Knowing that the early QB run will lead to stars at other positions falling in the draft, my goal is almost never to open a superflex draft by picking two consecutive QBs. Instead, I'll aim for one star QB then grab an elite back or wide receiver.
Once the initial rush of QBs ends, it tends to quiet down significantly for several rounds. So, I simply monitor the situation and eventually pounce on a good second QB when the opportunity presents itself -- generally one in the 10-to-18 range at the position, though players in that tier are so similar in 2025 that you really don't need to push it.
I also make sure to grab either a reliable or upside third QB once the starters begin to dry up. You have to be careful to walk the line of not reaching too early and jeopardizing the rest of your roster while also not getting stuck with a really poor QB situation that handcuffs you all season long.
In a perfect world, I have a very good QB1, a reliable QB2 (guys such as Justin Herbert, Dak Prescott and Jared Goff are perfectly reasonable QB2 targets) then someone with upside. This season, you'll want to keep your eyes on second-year players such as J.J. McCarthy and Michael Penix Jr., as well as Bryce Young, for example.
Best ball
If you're not familiar, in traditional "best ball" leagues you simply draft your team and it requires no additional action. There are generally no trades or waiver adds, and your weekly starters are determined by your highest scorers at each position that week.
For the most part, your strategy isn't changing massively from a normal league, but you do need to ensure you have more depth at each position since you can't trade or add players, even in the event of an injury. In a standard format, for example, you might draft 20 players, so you'd want two or three QBs, five or six RBs, seven or eight WRs, two or three TEs and two or three D/STs. (These formats rarely use kickers and sometimes don't include D/STs.)
If you're in a fairly straight-up best ball league with 10-plus teams, you don't need to adjust your strategy much from the usual. However, in a tournament setting, you'll want to employ additional strategies like stacking -- which is when you draft a QB and WR or TE from the same team (drafting both Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase last season would've been a massive edge, for example) -- and considering matchups during championship week (almost always Week 17).
Six-point passing TDs
I don't adjust too much for leagues that award six points for a passing touchdown, as opposed to the standard four points. As a whole, quarterbacks are more valuable, but there is still sufficient depth at the position, so we don't need to move them up our ranks significantly.
The key is bumping up QBs projected to throw a lot of touchdowns at the expense of quarterbacks who do a lot of damage with their legs. The likes of Hurts, Kyler Murray and Justin Fields take a hit, whereas Burrow, Goff, Baker Mayfield, Matthew Stafford and Tua Tagovailoa get a boost. A quick scan over projections and/or historical stats is your friend here.
TE premium
Leagues that award 1.5 or even 2.0 points per reception to tight ends are becoming more popular and have been common in high-stakes leagues for many years. It makes sense when you consider that the No. 5 TE in 1.0 PPR leagues last season (Travis Kelce) scored 195.4 points, which would've ranked 31st at wide receiver, 24th at running back and 20th at quarterback. In a 1.5 PPR TE premium league, Kelce would've scored 243.9 points, which would've ranked 11th, 14th and 17th, respectively. Perfect? Perhaps not. Better? Of course.
In this setup (this also applies to leagues in which you must start two tight ends), you'd bump up the value of all tight ends and could consider top options such as Brock Bowers and Trey McBride as early as the late first round. You also should make it a priority to stash a tight end with upside on your bench: Ben Sinnott, Brenton Strange and Theo Johnson come to mind, as do rookies Colston Loveland, Tyler Warren and Mason Taylor.
If you're interested in trying this format, you can customize your league scoring by position in the ESPN fantasy game.
Punters
Just kidding. Or am I? I want punters from offenses likely to struggle, so I'm targeting the likes of Corey Bojorquez (Browns) and Matthew Hayball (Saints).