The Playbook · Chuckwagon Gang FFL

The Whole Idea

In One Sentence

You pick real NFL players. What those players do in real games on Sunday turns into points for you. Whoever scores more points that week beats their opponent. That is the entire game.

You are not playing football. You are the general manager. You choose who is on your team and who plays each week. You never make a play call, and nothing you do changes what happens on the field.

You draft a team

Before the season, all twelve of us take turns picking real NFL players from one shared pool. Once somebody is taken, he is gone. No two teams in the league can have the same player, so every pick matters to everybody else.

Our draft is 16 rounds, so everyone ends up with 16 players.

Every week you set a lineup

Only some of your players count. In our league 9 of your 16 start and the other 7 sit on the bench.

Bench players score nothing. If your best player is on your bench, those points are gone. Setting your lineup before games start is the single most important habit in fantasy football, and it is where new managers lose games they should have won.

Your players earn points

Yards gained, touchdowns scored, passes caught. A running back who runs for 100 yards and a touchdown is a good day. A quarterback who throws four interceptions is not. Every league sets its own values, and ours are in Part Two.

You play one person, head to head

Each week the schedule pairs you with one other manager. Add up your nine starters, add up theirs, higher number wins. That is one win or one loss in the standings.

You are not competing against everybody at once. You only have to beat the one person in front of you that week.

You can change your team all season

Players get hurt. Backups turn into stars. Anyone not on one of the twelve rosters is a free agent and you can add them, dropping somebody to make room. This is where good managers make up for a bad draft.

You can also trade with another manager, as long as you both agree.

The best records make the playoffs

The regular season runs most of the NFL year, then the top teams play a short bracket at the end. Win that and you are the first champion this league has ever had.

Learn From Ours

Four Things That Cost People Games

Bye weeks

Every NFL team takes one week off during the season. If your quarterback's team is on bye and you leave him in your lineup, he scores zero. Sleeper warns you. Read the warning.

Injured players still sit in your lineup

Nobody moves them out for you. A player ruled out on Sunday morning scores nothing if you left him starting. Check your lineup the morning of, not just on Wednesday.

Points on your bench do not count

It stings, everyone does it, and there is no rule that saves you. You get the nine you chose.

Missing the Wednesday or Saturday deadline

You cannot pick players up whenever you feel like it here. Bids resolve at 10 PM Eastern on Wednesday and Saturday, and those two moments are the only times all week that a roster changes. Miss them both and you wait. There is a whole section on this further down.

The Lineup

Nine Starters

This is what you put on the field every week. Nine slots, and each one only accepts certain positions.

QB1

RB2

Flex1

WR / TE3

K1

DEF1

Bench7

Two things here are not standard, and both are worth having in mind on draft night.

1. You start exactly one quarterback. There is no second QB slot and no superflex. A quarterback cannot go in the flex. Twelve of us start one QB each, out of 32 NFL starters. There are more startable quarterbacks than there are teams that need one, and what that is worth to you is your call.

2. There is no dedicated tight end slot. The three receiver slots take a wide receiver or a tight end, whichever you prefer. You are allowed to start zero tight ends. You are also allowed to start four.

What fits where
Slot	Accepts	How many
QB	Quarterback only	1
RB	Running back only	2
FLEX	Running back, wide receiver or tight end, but not a quarterback	1
W/T	Wide receiver or tight end	3
K	Kicker only	1
DEF	Team defense / special teams	1
BN	Anybody. Scores nothing.	7

Because the flex can take a running back or a receiver, the most you can ever start is 3 running backs or 4 receivers, and the fewest is 2 and 3.

When it has to be in

There is no single deadline for the whole lineup. Each player locks when his own game starts. Until then you can move him in or out as often as you like. After it he is frozen exactly where you left him, starting or benched, and nothing you do for the rest of that week changes it.

Set it before the game, not at the game. A player in the Sunday 1:00 PM window locks the moment the clock reads 1:00. Twelve fifty-nine works. One o'clock does not. Every other kickoff on the schedule behaves exactly the same way.

Your deadline, by when that player's game starts
His game	Usual start	Be set by
Thursday night	8:15 PM ET	8:14 PM Thursday
Sunday early	1:00 PM ET	12:59 PM Sunday
Sunday afternoon	4:05 or 4:25 PM ET	one minute before
Sunday night	8:20 PM ET	one minute before
Monday night	8:15 PM ET	one minute before

Most of any roster plays in the Sunday early window, so 12:59 PM Sunday is the one number worth remembering. It is not the whole answer though, and the Thursday game is the one that catches people: a player in it is gone two and a half days before the rest of the league locks. Sleeper shows every player's kickoff time next to his name, and that is the version that is always right.

Two things this does not mean. The lineup screen never closes, so it will always let you in; what changes is which players it will let you touch. At half past one on a Sunday the early-game players are greyed out while your afternoon and night players are still fully editable. And the bench is not frozen in our league. Anybody whose game has not kicked off can be swapped in, whether he started the week in your nine or on the bench. The only thing that blocks a move is one of the two players involved having already played.

The habit that never fails. Set the whole lineup Wednesday night, when you are already in the app putting in waiver bids, then take one more look Sunday morning for injuries. Do that and the Thursday game can never catch you.

Build a Legal Lineup

Tap a player, then tap the slot you want him in. Tap a filled slot to empty it.

Your starting nine

Your 15 players

Pick a player to get started.

The Scoring

What Things Are Worth

These are our actual settings, pulled from the league. Three of them are unusual enough to be worth knowing before you draft.

Nobody gets a point for catching the ball. Not receivers, not tight ends, not running backs. A catch pays nothing on its own. Only the yards it gains and any touchdown count. Most leagues you have heard of pay 1 point per reception, and most of the advice you will read online assumes it. Ours does not.

So volume on its own is worth nothing, everywhere. Ten catches for 40 yards scores 4 points; three catches for 90 scores 9. The player who goes the distance simply outscores the one who piles up short catches. That is simply the arithmetic, for a running back exactly as much as for a receiver.

The milestone bonuses do a lot of the work instead. 100 rushing yards is worth +5 on top of the yardage, 100 receiving yards +4, 300 passing yards +4. With no PPR anywhere these are the biggest swing available, and they reward the boom game over the steady one.

A passing touchdown is 6 points, not the usual 4. That lifts quarterbacks, though you still only start one of them, so the two facts pull against each other.

Offense
Stat	Points
Passing yards	0.04	1 point per 25 yards
Passing touchdown	6	higher than standard
Interception thrown	−1
Rushing yards	0.1	1 point per 10 yards
Rushing touchdown	6
Reception, any position	0	no PPR anywhere: the catch alone pays nothing
Receiving yards	0.1	1 point per 10 yards
Receiving touchdown	6
Two point conversion	2
Fumble lost	0	no penalty in our league

Bonuses: these stack on top
Achievement	Extra
300 passing yards	+4	in a single game
400 passing yards	+6
100 rushing yards	+5
200 rushing yards	+10
100 receiving yards	+4
200 receiving yards	+7
Touchdown of 40+ yards	+4	passing, rushing or receiving
Touchdown of 50+ yards	+6	passing, rushing or receiving

Kicker
Stat	Points
Field goal, under 40 yards	3
Field goal, 40–49 yards	4
Field goal, 50–59 yards	5
Field goal, 60+ yards	7
Missed field goal	−1
Extra point	1	missed extra point −1

Team defense
Stat	Points
Sack	1
Interception	1
Fumble recovered	1	forced fumble also 1
Touchdown	6	defensive or special teams
Safety	4
Blocked kick	1
Shutout, 0 points allowed	15
Allowed 1–6 points	8
Allowed 7–13 points	3
Allowed 14 or more	0	never goes negative in our league
Held under 100 total yards	+2

Score a Stat Line

Put in a game and see what it is worth in our league. Try adding catches without adding yards and watch the total sit still.

Fantasy points 0.0

Long-touchdown bonuses are in the table above but are left out of this calculator on purpose, because whether a 55-yard score collects the 40+ bonus, the 50+ bonus or both is a Sleeper detail nobody here has confirmed with a real game yet. Everything the calculator does show is exact.

The Draft

How The Snake Works

Our draft order was randomized on August 10 and it is locked. The draft is a snake, which is the part that confuses people the first time.

Round one runs 1 through 12

In pick order, first to last.

Round two runs backwards, 12 through 1

Then round three goes forwards again, and it keeps alternating for all 16 rounds.

This is what keeps it fair. Picking first is great in round one and terrible in round two. Picking last is the reverse: you pick 12th and 13th back to back, which is two good players in a row.

Nobody has a real advantage

Every slot averages out. Do not worry about where you landed.

When Do I Pick?

Choose your team and see all 16 of your picks, and how long you wait between them.

Draft Night

Things Worth Considering

None of this is a rule, and none of it is a prediction. These are the places where our settings differ from a normal league, so they are the things worth thinking about while you draft. Plenty of people have won leagues doing the opposite of every one of them. Draft the players you like.

Running backs and receivers fill the most slots

Six of your nine starting spots take an RB, a WR or a TE, and those are the positions with the thinnest replacements on the waiver wire. Where that lands in your draft order is up to you.

Catch totals score nothing, at every position

This one is not a matter of opinion. It is the setting. Eight short catches are worth less than three deep ones, for a running back exactly as much as for a receiver. It is worth knowing because most fantasy advice you will read online assumes points per reception, and that advice does not describe our league.

What that does to running back arithmetic

A third-down back who catches six passes for 30 yards scores 3 points here. A back who carries it twenty times, breaks 100 and punches one in scores 20-plus. Both kinds of player still go in every draft. The difference is just that our scoring pays them differently than the league you played in last year might have.

The 100 yard bonuses are worth real points

100 rushing yards is an extra 5 points and 100 receiving yards an extra 4, on top of the yardage itself. That makes a big game worth more here than in most leagues, and a steady one worth relatively less. Whether you chase that is your call.

Only one quarterback starts

Twelve quarterbacks start each week across our league, out of roughly 32 who start in the NFL. Passing touchdowns are 6 here rather than the usual 4, which cuts the other way. Those two facts are the whole picture; what you do with them at the table is yours to decide.

Tight end is genuinely optional

No slot forces you to own one, because our W/T spots take a receiver or a tight end. Take an elite one early, skip the position entirely, or land somewhere in between All of those are legal lineups here, which is not true in most leagues.

Kicker and defense

Two of your sixteen rounds go to positions where the gap between the best and the worst is small and hard to predict in August. Most drafters leave them until the end for that reason. Some do not.

If you cannot make it, you are not stuck

Sleeper will auto-draft for you off a ranking list, and you can set your own preferences beforehand. It is worse than showing up, but it is not a disaster.

After The Draft

Adding And Dropping Players

The draft is one night. The season is seventeen weeks. Anyone not on one of the twelve rosters can be picked up, and this is where a lot of the season actually gets decided. Our setup here is stricter than most, so read this part even if you have played before.

There is exactly one way to get a player: win a bid for him. You cannot walk in on a Monday and grab somebody off the pile, no matter how obvious he is or how fast you are.

You get two chances a week. Bids resolve Wednesday at 10 PM Eastern and again Saturday at 10 PM Eastern. Whoever bid the most on a player wins him.

Every other day, the rosters are frozen. Nothing can be added and nothing can be dropped. Five days a week there is simply nothing to do, which is the point: nobody wins this league by refreshing the app faster than everyone else.

The week
Day	What happens
Monday	Locked. No adds, no drops.
Tuesday	Locked. No adds, no drops.
Wednesday	Waivers. Bids resolve at 10 PM Eastern.
Thursday	Locked. No adds, no drops.
Friday	Locked. No adds, no drops.
Saturday	Waivers. Bids resolve at 10 PM Eastern.
Sunday	Locked. No adds, no drops.

The two things to take from that table: get your bid in before 10 PM on Wednesday or Saturday, and do not expect to fix anything in between. If your starter gets hurt Sunday afternoon, you are starting somebody else from your own bench that week. That is the trade-off the whole league is making on purpose.

The money

You get $125 for the entire season. It is not real money. It does not reset, it does not refill, and it does not carry over to next year. When it is gone, you are done adding players for the year.

Bidding
Rule	Value
Season budget	$125	every team gets the same
Minimum bid	$5	you cannot bid $1 or $0
Above the minimum	$1	$6, $7, $8 and so on are all fine
Most claims you could ever win	25	$125 at $5 each
Bids are secret	yes	nobody sees your number

You only pay when you win. Losing bids cost nothing, so there is no penalty for trying. If two people happen to bid the same amount on the same player, the tie is broken by waiver priority.

Waiver priority

Waiver priority is just a line. Everybody has a number from 1 to 12, and 1 is the front of the line. That is the whole idea.

It does exactly one thing, and only one thing: it breaks tied bids. If your bid is the highest, you get the player and your priority number never enters into it. Priority only ever comes up when two people put in the identical number on the identical guy, which happens most often at the $5 minimum.

And it is use it and lose it. Any time you win a claim you drop to the bottom of the line at 12, and everybody who was behind you moves up one. So the people who have not been adding anybody slowly float to the front, and whoever has been the busiest ends up last. Nobody sits at number 1 for long.

Here is the order right now. This is read live from the league every time this page loads, so it is current rather than a snapshot, and it will shuffle all season as people win claims.

Waiver priority, live
In line	Team
Loading the current order from Sleeper.

One thing worth saying plainly: do not try to work this order out from the draft order. Sleeper keeps the two as separate lists and they do not necessarily line up. The table above is read straight from the league, so it is the one to trust, and it is the one that will still be right in November.

How it plays out

Your starting back gets hurt Sunday afternoon

Sunday is locked, so there is nothing to do that day. You start somebody already on your bench. Then you put a bid in on his backup, and that bid resolves at Wednesday 10 PM.

Nobody else wants him

You get him for exactly what you bid. If you bid the $5 minimum, he costs $5 and you have $120 left.

Somebody else wants him too

You bid $12, they bid $30. They win him and their budget drops to $95. Your $12 never leaves your account, because losing bids are free. You just do not get the player.

You both bid exactly $12

Waiver priority breaks the tie and the team with better priority gets him.

Putting in a bid, step by step

These screenshots are from the Sleeper website on a computer. The numbers on each picture match the numbered steps under it.

The Players tab of the Chuckwagon Gang FFL league on Sleeper, with the Players tab, the Find player search box, the Free agents checkbox and a player's name each outlined and numbered 1 to 4.

1Open the league and click Players.
2Search for a name if you know who you want, or use the position buttons beside it (QB, RB, WR and so on) to browse.
3Leave Free agents checked. That keeps the list to players nobody has on their roster.
4Click the player's name. His player card opens. The little W with a day under it, on the left of each row, means he is on waivers and can only be had by bidding.

The top of a Sleeper player card for Aaron Rodgers. To the right of his name are a star button and a button reading W (Wed), which is outlined and numbered 5.

5Click the W button at the top of the card, just to the right of the star. It shows the day the bids resolve, like W (Wed). The star only adds him to your watchlist; the W is the one that opens the bid.

The Make Waiver Bid window on Sleeper. The Bid Amount box, labeled $125 remaining and $5 minimum, is outlined and numbered 6.

6Type your bid in the Bid Amount box. The box starts at 0, so you have to change it. The label above it shows how much of your $125 you have left, and the $5 minimum.

The same Make Waiver Bid window. The list of players on the bidder's roster is outlined and numbered 7, and the Make Waiver Bid button at the bottom is outlined and numbered 8.

7If your roster is full, pick who goes. A yellow bar says so, and your own roster is listed underneath. Click the player you would drop if the bid wins. That player only leaves your team if you actually win.
8Click Make Waiver Bid. That is it. Nothing happens right away: the bid sits until 10 PM Eastern on the next Wednesday or Saturday, and then the highest bid wins.

You can bid on more than one player. Each bid is separate, so if several of them win, you pay for each one that wins.

Trades

Trades are the one exception to all of the above. They are not bid on, they do not cost budget, and they are not limited to Wednesday and Saturday.

Trade rules
Rule	Value
Review window	2 days	after both sides accept
Trade deadline	week 11	nothing after that, all season
Draft pick trading	on	picks can be part of a deal

What the two day review window actually is. Once both managers accept, the trade does not go through right away. It sits for two days and then becomes final on its own. Nobody has to approve it and nothing else needs to happen.

There is no league vote on trades here. You do not get to block a deal because you do not like it, and neither does anybody else. If there is a real question about whether a trade is legitimate, Shawn handles it as commissioner. That is for actual problems, not for second-guessing a deal somebody came to regret.

Anyone who has already played that week is stuck. If you trade for a guy whose game has kicked off, his points that week still belong to the team he started on. Trade early in the week, not Sunday afternoon.

Check Yourself

Ten Questions

If you get these right you know enough to draft well. Answers explain themselves as you go.

The Playbook Quiz

No score is recorded anywhere. Nobody will know.

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