League Guide

Every team scores every week: there are no weekly matchups or opponents. Your weekly score is the total points earned by your 12 starting players. Season standings are determined entirely by cumulative total points.

All teams make the playoffs. Playoff weeks (Wild Card through Super Bowl, weeks 19–22) follow the same scoring rules: everyone keeps playing. The final champion is whoever has the highest cumulative total at the end of Week 22: regular season and playoff points combined.

Ties are shared, not broken. There is no tiebreaker. Owners level on points finish in the same place and both are credited with it: the standings run 1, 2, 2, 4, and that applies to the championship as much as to any other position.

Cumulative season total determines waiver priority: teams with lower cumulative points have higher waiver claim priority (they get first pick at contested adds). Level on points, the earlier claim wins. Playoff scores count toward this total.

The draft is 15 rounds, snake order: 14 regular rounds plus one supplemental round at the very end. The limits in the table above apply across rounds 1–14, so you cannot take a 5th RB or a 5th WR/TE in the middle of the draft and call it your supplemental. The live board will refuse the pick.

Round 15 is the one that's exempt. That pick can go past the RB or WR/TE limit, or take a backup QB from a team you already own. It does not count toward the WR/TE and RB caps, and it sits on your bench until you start it with a lineup change.

Kicker and Defense slots are team-based, not player-based. When you hold a team's kicker slot, you earn points from whoever kicks for that NFL team that week: the slot follows the team, not the individual player. This applies to every NFL team.

If a kicker changes teams mid-season (e.g. moves from Team A to Team B), the owner of Team A's kicker slot retains the Team A slot only. That player's stats on Team B are not tracked: Team B's kicker slot belongs to whoever drafted it. Defenses work exactly the same way.

Team slots can't be claimed or dropped on waivers. Every owner must finish the draft holding two of each: the live board warns you if your remaining picks are running out before you have them. The Add / Drop form refuses a claim or drop that names a kicker or defense, and nothing in that submission is filed, so leave them out of it.

When you draft a quarterback, you hold exclusive rights to that NFL team's QB position. No other fantasy owner can roster or start any QB from that same NFL team. You own the team's QB slot, not just the individual player.

The 2-QB roster limit means 2 NFL team slots, not 2 individual players. If your QB is injured mid-season, you can add the backup from that same team via waivers without violating the roster limit. You'd then hold the starter, the backup, and your second team's QB: three physical QBs, all within the rules, because they come from only two NFL teams.

Your Supplemental pick can also be used to draft a backup QB ahead of time as insurance: entering the season with both the starter and the backup from one of your teams already on your roster.

During playoff weeks, if you're holding multiple QBs from the same NFL team and both play, both score independently for you. No lineup is submitted during playoffs: every player on your roster contributes.

Each team may designate one player as Injured Reserve. While on IR, that player does not count against position limits, freeing a roster spot to add another player.

When the IR player returns to your active lineup, they do count toward limits again. If activating them would push you over a position limit, you must drop a player first.

New for 2026. The wire runs on a fixed weekly schedule. It is open twice, and the two windows work differently: the first is settled on waiver priority, the second is a straight race. All times Eastern.

Separate from the schedule above, and it catches people out in the second window: once a player's game has kicked off, he can be neither added nor dropped for that week. The first-come window runs from noon Thursday, so Thursday night games and December Saturday games are played while the wire is open. You cannot watch someone score on Thursday night and then claim him on Friday, and you cannot dump a player who has already posted a zero.

The lock is per player, not per week: a Sunday player stays available on Friday even though Thursday's games are over.

You can't submit while the wire is shut: it will tell you so, and tell you when it reopens. Nothing is silently queued.

If a claim does end up sitting past its round (an IR request submitted during the first-come window, for instance), it rolls to the next Thursday rather than being thrown out. One catch worth knowing: ties are broken by who submitted first, so a rolled-over claim still loses a tie in its new round to anyone who was in early.

This applies to the Tuesday–Wednesday window only. If two owners claim the same player there, the owner with the lower cumulative season total wins. Lower total = higher waiver priority. If you're level on points, the claim that was submitted first wins. That's what decides Week 1, when nobody has scored yet. When you type a player into the add form, you're told how many owners have already claimed them, but not which ones. That's your cue to set a backup add; who you're up against stays private until Thursday noon settles it.

In the first-come window from Thursday noon there is no conflict to resolve and priority is not consulted at all: the player goes to whoever asks first, and the second person is told he is gone.

When submitting a waiver add in the Tuesday–Wednesday window, you can specify a backup add. If your primary is denied because someone with higher priority claimed the same player, your backup is processed automatically: no need to resubmit. The backup follows the same conflict resolution rules.

Backups do nothing in the first-come window, and the form does not offer one there. There is no contest to lose: if the player you wanted is gone you are told immediately, and you can claim somebody else on the spot.

Lineup changes let you sit one rostered player and start another in their place, temporarily adjusting your active lineup for a week without permanently changing it. The Lineup tab is where you do it by hand, and a waiver claim can also change your lineup for you when it is granted.

Open the Lineup tab on My Team and pick your name. Click a bench player to move them into your starters, or click a starter to send them to the bench. If that position is already full, the site benches an eligible starter for you. Kickers and defenses always start and can't be moved. Then click Save Lineup. Until you do, the page shows Unsaved changes and nothing has been submitted. If you try to leave the page then, your browser asks first, because leaving saves nothing. Once it saves you'll get a confirmation with the week, the time it went in, and how many starters you set. No approval needed; this takes effect straight away.

On the Add / Drop form, tick Start this player if I get him and choose the starter to bench in his place (or an open slot). To make more changes that only make sense if the claim goes through, such as also starting a player already on your roster, use + Also change my lineup if I get him. If the claim is granted, the changes are made for you in the order you listed them: in the first-come window as you submit, otherwise when the Thursday round settles. None of them happen if the claim is denied.

A change that can't be made is skipped, and your lineup is left as it was. You are told why: you were granted your backup instead of the player you asked to start, a player in the swap has already kicked off, the slot is full and you picked nobody to bench, you had already set that week's lineup yourself after the claim was granted, you have never set a lineup (so your whole roster is scoring), or it is a playoff week. Each change's outcome is in your claim email and on My Team.

Writing it in the Notes box works too. If your note reads like a lineup request ("start Vele over Marvin"), the form shows how it read it and offers Use these, which fills in the changes above for you to check. Nothing in a note acts by itself: only what is filled in when you submit is carried out.

After each NFL week, a pipeline runs automatically to fetch ESPN play-by-play data, apply the Jenny Circle scoring formula, and publish the results to this site. Standings, team stats, and player stats all update without any manual steps.

The pipeline runs on a schedule tuned to the NFL calendar: every 15 minutes while games are being played, with a final pass at 10am Eastern each Tuesday to catch any plays that ESPN reports late.