Beginner's Guide

Never played? Start here.

So you've never played fantasy football, or you've played it badly enough that you don't really understand what you were doing. Either way you're in the right spot. This page covers the whole thing from zero, then explains the one weird wrinkle that makes MFL Fantasy different from ESPN or Sleeper.

What Fantasy Football Actually Is

You build a team out of individual football players. Real games happen. Your players earn points for what they do in those games (yards, touchdowns, catches, that kind of thing). Your team's score for the week is the sum of all your starters. Another manager's team is doing the exact same thing. Whoever scored more points wins the matchup. Win enough matchups and you make the playoffs. Win three playoff weeks in a row and you've won the league.

That's it. There's a draft, weekly lineup decisions, trades, waiver pickups, and a championship. None of it is complicated once you've done it for a few weeks.

MFL Fantasy works exactly the same way as ESPN, Yahoo, Sleeper, any other platform you've heard of. Same draft, same scoring, same playoff structure. The one difference: the players come from a Madden franchise sim (we call it the MFL) instead of the real NFL. Mechanics identical. Player pool different. So if you've played fantasy before, you already know how this works.

The Five Things You'll Actually Do

1. Make an account and either join a league or start one
2. Draft a 15-player roster on draft day
3. Set your starting lineup every week
4. Pick up free agents, make trades, fix mistakes from your draft
5. Try to be one of the top teams when playoffs hit in Week 15

If you have to skip a few weeks of attention the platform won't fall apart. CPU teams keep playing, your lineup auto-fills from your bench, you'll just lose those weeks. Most beginners overthink the time commitment. You need maybe 20 minutes a week to be competitive.

How Scoring Works (PPR)

MFL Fantasy uses PPR, which stands for "point per reception." It's the most common format in fantasy football. Receivers and pass-catching running backs get a slight boost over rushing-heavy backs. Here's the breakdown for skill players:

Quick math: a receiver who catches 6 passes for 95 yards and a TD scores 6 (catches) + 9.5 (yards) + 6 (TD) = 21.5 points. That's a great week. A receiver with 2 catches for 18 yards scores 3.8 points. That's a punt-the-week. Most starting lineups will put up somewhere between 90 and 140 total points on a given Sunday.

Kickers and defenses score differently. Full breakdown on the Scoring page.

Your Starting Lineup

Nine spots. Same as most leagues:

• 1 QB
• 2 RB
• 2 WR
• 1 TE
• 1 FLEX (this can be a third RB, WR, or TE, your choice)
• 1 K (kicker)
• 1 D/ST (a team's defense and special teams as a single unit)

Plus 6 bench spots that don't score but are there for injuries, bye weeks, and players you're stashing as upside bets. Total roster: 15.

The Draft

Draft day is the most important day of your season. You'll take turns with the other managers picking players. 15 rounds, snake order, meaning the manager who picked first in Round 1 picks last in Round 2, then first again in Round 3. Keeps things fair.

Default pick clock is 90 seconds. If you don't pick, the system grabs the best available player from your queue (or just the top-ranked player if your queue is empty). Most managers run their queue during the draft so they're never caught off guard.

The order most people draft in: running backs first (Rounds 1-3), receivers next (Rounds 2-6), then a tight end or quarterback if value falls, then more receivers and bench depth, then kicker and defense as the very last picks. Don't take a kicker or D/ST before Round 13 or 14. You'll feel smart for "locking up the best kicker" and then watch a breakout running back get drafted three picks later. Painful.

If you want the full strategy breakdown, check the Draft Strategy page. For the room mechanics (timer, queue, auto-pick rules), see the Draft page.

Weekly Lineups

Once the season starts you've got a job every week: pick which 9 of your 15 players actually play on Sunday. Sit the rest on the bench.

The four things that decide this:

1. Byes. If your starter has a bye that week they score zero. Bench them, start someone else.
2. Injuries. Anyone listed OUT is staying home. Questionable usually plays. Doubtful usually doesn't.
3. Matchups. A receiver against the worst pass defense in the MFL will probably score more than the same receiver against the best. Sometimes a lot more.
4. Volume. Players who get a lot of touches every week are safer than boom-or-bust guys who need a long touchdown to matter.

Lineups lock when the first MFL game of the week kicks off. After lock you're stuck with whatever you set. Set lineups early in the week and then check back Friday or Saturday for late injury news.

Trades and Waivers

Your draft roster is the start, not the finish. Almost every championship team made 2-4 key roster moves during the season.

Trades. Open another team's roster, pick the players you want, offer some of your own. They can accept, decline, or counter. CPU teams will think about it and respond like a human would, sometimes accept, sometimes counter, sometimes just say no.

Waivers. Every week after the games finalize a claim window opens. Anyone not on a roster is available. You submit claims, the system processes them in priority order (worst record gets first pick), and successful claims drop you to the bottom of the priority list. The best waiver pickups of the season are usually backup running backs who suddenly become starters because of an injury. Snag those fast.

Free agency. After waivers clear, anyone left on the wire is first-come-first-served. No priority cost. Useful for streaming kickers and defenses week to week.

Playoffs

Regular season is Weeks 1 through 14. Playoffs are Weeks 15, 16, and 17. Top 6 teams in a 10-team league make it. Top 2 seeds get a Week 15 bye, the other 4 play in the quarterfinals, semifinals are Week 16, and the championship is Week 17.

Single elimination. Lose and you're done. Win and you get a permanent banner on your team profile. The championship is archived in your account history forever.

For more on playoff strategy specifically (when to play safe, when to swing for the fences) see the Playoff Strategy page.

What Makes MFL Fantasy Different

Three things you should know going in.

The players are from a Madden sim, not the NFL. So Patrick Mahomes isn't here. Instead you've got hundreds of fictional players from 32 original MFL teams. Every season is a fresh discovery exercise. You won't draft "your favorite player," you'll draft the best players available based on what the Stats Hub tells you.

Stats come from real Madden games. The MFL's underlying commissioner runs a Madden franchise league. Each week the Madden Companion App exports stats, which the MFL Fantasy import pipeline ingests. So fantasy points come from actual played games. No simulated nonsense.

CPU AI teams are first-class citizens. If you don't have 9 friends ready to play you don't need them. The CPUs will draft, set lineups, propose trades, send DMs, and trash-talk a little. Some leagues are entirely CPUs except for you. Some leagues mix humans and CPUs. Both work. Details on the CPU AI page.

The Things Beginners Mess Up

Drafting their "favorite" players. You don't have favorites yet, you've never seen these players before. Draft by what the rankings say, not by attachment.

Ignoring bye weeks. Drafting four players with the same Week 8 bye is a classic. When Week 8 hits your lineup falls apart and you can't fix it in one week of waiver claims.

Refusing to drop bad picks. Your 3rd-round running back has averaged 4 points through four weeks. Drop him. Yes you used a high pick. Yes dropping feels bad. He's still bad. Move on.

Setting the lineup once and forgetting. Lineups need attention every week. Five minutes Tuesday and another two minutes Saturday morning. The managers who win their leagues are the ones who actually check in.

Skipping the waiver wire. Almost every championship team made at least one league-winning pickup off the wire. Set a Tuesday reminder.

What to Do Right Now

If you've never played, here's the path:

1. Sign up. Takes 30 seconds, no credit card, no download.
2. Either join a friend's league with their code or start your own and invite people.
3. Fill any empty slots with CPU teams. If nobody else joins, your league is just you and 9 CPUs. Totally fine, lots of people play that way.
4. Run the draft. If you want to practice first the Mock Draft Guide shows you how.
5. Set your Week 1 lineup before the games start.
6. Check back Monday or Tuesday to see your score and start scouting waiver pickups for Week 2.

The rest you'll pick up by playing. Honestly the best thing you can do is just start. Reading more pages about fantasy football doesn't teach you nearly as much as losing your first matchup and figuring out why.

Related

Glossary if you keep hitting terms you don't know. Scoring for the full point breakdown including kickers and defenses. Draft Strategy when you're ready to actually win your draft. Lineup Tips for weekly start/sit help. How It Works for a tour of the app itself. FAQ for stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else.