Fantasy Football: Playoff Challenge Group Invitation

The NFL Regular Season is officially in the books after a thrilling week 17 which gave us one of the best days of wall-to-wall NFL action ever. Whether your team made it to the playoffs or not, there’s plenty of reasons to be excited for this postseason.

One way to increase your interest in the playoff games is by playing postseason fantasy football. If you had a season like those owners in the NFL.com commercial with the pathetic records, the postseason is the perfect place to get some payback with a fresh start. If Eli Manning was your QB leading to a fantasy disaster, you get a chance to start with a better option. On the other hand, if you dominated your league and showed your fantasy knowledge, you get the chance to keep your roll going through the playoffs.

The game itself is pretty basic and easy to follow, but it does require some serious strategy too. We have a FanSided group on NFL.com which is free to play and easy to join. Our group is called FanSided and you can join by searching for us or following this link.

For the NFL.com version of the game, your roster consists of eight players: 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, TE, K, and D. If a player’s team wins and advances, you get a multiplier for each week they are on your roster. For example, if you go with LeSean McCoy and the Eagles win their Wild Card round game you would get a 2x multiplier in their Divisional Round game, a 3x multiplier in the NFC Championship, and potentially a 4x multiplier in the Super Bowl.

You’ll also see some experienced players putting players on their roster for Wild Card Weekend even though the teams have bye’s to start the multiplier’s working. For example if you stash Peyton Manning this week you’ll get zero points, but you will get double his points for the Divisional Round, potentially triple for the AFC Championship, and potentially quadruple for the Super Bowl. If you’re confident a team will advance that far, it’s a risky strategy that could pay off.

The tricky thing is trying to predict the outcomes and keeping players on your roster for as long as they are in the playoffs without taking valuable roster spots which could start players building their own multiplier (If you have McCoy in the second round and the Eagles lose, you can’t have Knowshon Moreno in the same spot.)

The Postseason version of fantasy football is a blend of picking the right players and picking who you think has a good chance to advance deep into the playoffs.

Come back later this week to FanSided for my breakdown and picks for the first round on our Fantasy Football page. Whether you play postseason football every year or are trying it for the first time, come join our group and see how your picks stack up against readers, bloggers, and editors from across the FanSided network.