So, You Joined a Fantasy Football League: A Girl-to-Girl Guide
Editor’s note from Julia Papworth: This article offers one woman’s perspective on getting started with fantasy football. It may not reflect every woman’s experience, but the guidance is intended for anyone looking for a clear, approachable introduction to this hobby. Enjoy, and most importantly, have fun!
Okay ladies, this is the moment none of us have been waiting for, and the one you are probably a little nervous about.
If you are new to fantasy football, let’s just say I’ve been there! I hate losing, and I hate embarrassing myself even more, so naturally, I decided I needed to figure out what the heck I was doing. Nothing will motivate you to learn fantasy football faster than watching a two-minute draft clock tick down while you have six tabs open, three completely different rankings in front of you, and absolutely no idea what you are supposed to do.
I do not want you to experience that same panic.
Because here is what I have worked hard to learn, and what I want you to take away from this article: you are not going to win your fantasy league by drafting the biggest names you recognize from ESPN, picking the players everyone else seems excited about, or blindly taking whoever Sleeper is pushing you to add to your team.
Fantasy football rewards production, opportunity, and consistency, not name recognition. Learning how to spot the difference is what this guide is all about.
But I promise, it is not nearly as complicated as everyone makes it sound. By the end of this article, you will understand what all those annoying little numbers next to each player’s name actually mean, why your leaguemates keep throwing around terms like ADP and PPR, which positions you should be targeting in each round, and, most importantly, what to do when the person picking right before you takes the player you wanted.
Open your draft board, settle in, and whatever you do, do not panic. This is your chance to trust yourself, have some fun, and prove that you know exactly what you are doing.
What Exactly Are We Doing?
Fantasy football is much less complicated than people make it sound. Essentially, your goal is to draft players who will score fantasy points based on what they do in real football. But that does not necessarily mean you are looking for the best player on the field. In fantasy, you are looking for consistent production.
When your running back (RB) gains yards or scores a touchdown (TD)? That’s points for your fantasy team. When your wide receiver (WR) catches a pass? That’s points for your fantasy team. When your quarterback (QB) throws a TD? You guessed it, more points for your fantasy team.
When you are staring at a list of 200 NFL players that you may or may not recognize, you shouldn’t be trying to figure out who is the best football player. You are trying to figure out who is most likely to consistently score fantasy points for your team. And trust me, there is a difference.
For example, Travis Kelce is actually a really good football player; I’m not denying that. He quietly finished as the TE4 (tight end) in 2025 and has never finished worse than TE8 in a season as a starter. The man is a fantasy football legend. He is also probably one of the first TEs you recognize when you open your draft board. But fantasy football doesn’t give out points for your résumé. Kelce is now 36 years old, entering his 13th NFL season, and as much as it pains me to say it, the Travis Kelce you recognize may not be the TE you should be drafting first. He is far from Brock Bowers or one of the other elite fantasy TEs we will talk about later, and that is important when you are deciding where to spend your picks.
Travis Kelce and Deebo Samuel fighting over who’s more washed pic.twitter.com/DPWiAVlb1n
— GhettoGronk (@ghetto_gronk) October 28, 2025
TEs also typically do not get the ball nearly as much as RBs or WRs, which means most of them do not have the same opportunity to pile up fantasy points. So, if you use one of your first picks on Kelce because he is a great football player and a name you know, you could be passing up an RB or WR who has a much better chance of scoring you more points every week.
Ultimately, I am not saying you shouldn’t draft Kelce. If you want him on your team, absolutely go for it! The point is that you do not have to draft him the second you see his name. Pay attention to where he is projected to go, understand what you are giving up by taking him there, and wait until the value makes sense.
Travis Kelce is just an example; in fantasy football, it is not just about who you draft. It is about knowing when they are worth drafting.
1 more week until my 1st round pick in fantasy looks like this pic.twitter.com/UBVPOogJaD
— NFL Hate Memes (@NFLHateMemes) September 2, 2026
Before You Draft Anyone: What Do All These Numbers Mean?
For your fantasy draft, there are only a few numbers and terms I want you paying attention to.
Fantasy Points
I touched on this a little bit earlier, but now let’s actually define what fantasy points are and why they matter. Fantasy points tell you how many points a player earns for your team based on what he does on the field. If one RB scored 300 total fantasy points last season and another scored 175, that should immediately give you a sense of the difference in the production they brought to fantasy lineups. For example, Jahmyr Gibbs finished last season with 328.4 total fantasy points, which should tell you just about everything you need to know about the kind of production he is capable of bringing to your team.
If you are still a little confused, think of fantasy points like roses on The Bachelor. There are a million things that can happen before the rose ceremony: one-on-one dates, group dates, making out in a hot tub, crying about whether someone is “here for the right reasons.” But ultimately, the roses are what keep you in the game. Fantasy football works the same way. A player can make a crazy catch, break off a jaw-dropping run, or have one play that takes over your entire group chat, but at the end of the day, all of that production gets translated into the number we actually care about: fantasy points.
And just like one great date doesn’t guarantee a rose, one great play does not make someone a great fantasy player. What matters is how consistently all of those catches, yards, and TDs add up to points for your team.
So, when you are looking at players like Jahmyr Gibbs, Puka Nacua, or Bijan Robinson and see huge fantasy-point totals from last season, think of them as the contestants who walked away from every rose ceremony with a flower in their hand. They consistently produced, and that track record gives you a pretty good reason to believe they can do it again. But this is The Bachelor, and sometimes a new season changes everything. Take Justin Jefferson. He didn’t collect nearly as many roses, or fantasy points, last season as fantasy managers are used to seeing from him, but that does not suddenly mean he forgot how to play football. He is coming back for a brand-new season with a brand-new bachelor under center, aka a new QB, and there are plenty of reasons to believe he could start collecting those roses again.
If you see a player you recognize sitting there with surprisingly low fantasy points from last season, here is some advice. Do a quick Google search before you cross him off your list. Was he injured? Did his QB get hurt? Did he change teams? Is he entering a completely different offense this year? Sometimes there is a very good explanation for why the roses stopped coming.
Use previous fantasy points as a starting point, not your entire decision.
PPR
This stands for Points Per Reception, which is exactly what it sounds like: players earn fantasy points for catching the football. In a full-PPR league, every reception is worth one point. In half-PPR, every reception is worth half a point. You do not need to become an expert on scoring settings before your first draft, but you do need to know whether your league is PPR, half-PPR, or standard, because it can change which players are more valuable in your draft.
Think about it this way: If two WRs both finish a game with 100 receiving yards, they each get 10 fantasy points for those yards. But in a full-PPR league, they also get one point for every pass they catch.
- If one receiver caught 10 passes for 100 yards, he scores 20 fantasy points: 10 points for the yards + 10 points for the catches.
- If the other caught five passes for the same 100 yards, he scores 15 fantasy points: 10 points for the yards + five points for the catches.
They had the same number of receiving yards, but the player who caught more passes scored five more fantasy points. That’s PPR.
ADP
This means Average Draft Position, and if you remember nothing else from this section, remember this one!
ADP tells you approximately where a player is being selected across fantasy drafts. If a player has an ADP of 8, people are generally taking him around the eighth pick in the first round. If his ADP is 35, he is generally going somewhere around the third or fourth round, depending on the size of your league.
Think of ADP as your spoiler alert. It simply gives you an idea of when everyone else is likely to want the same guy you want. Let’s say you are obsessed with a player whose ADP is 65. Chances are, you can wait several rounds and still have a shot at getting him. On the other hand, if you are eyeing someone with an ADP of 17 and your next pick isn’t until 32, you need to know there’s a pretty good chance he won’t make it back to you. If you want him that badly, don’t overthink it. Just pick him.
ADP helps you figure out when you actually need to make your move.
And that brings us to the part you actually came here for.
Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Now, Who Do I Pick?
I know you probably have a million other things going on, and you most likely did not open this article because you wanted to spend the next three hours reading scouting reports. So I am going to make this as painless as possible. If you only have 30 minutes to figure out what the heck you are doing before your fantasy draft, spend them here. I am going to walk you through what actually matters, what you can ignore, and what you need to know to draft a team you’re excited about.
There are a lot of different ways to draft a good fantasy team, and there is no magical list of players that guarantees you a championship. But if this is your first draft and you want a straightforward game plan, I can give you a few names to look out for, and make sure to prioritize RBs and WRs early.
If Jahmyr Gibbs, Bijan Robinson, Puka Nacua, Ja’Marr Chase, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Christian McCaffrey, Jonathan Taylor, CeeDee Lamb, or James Cook are sitting there when you make your first pick, congratulations. You have good options. Pick your favorite, take your rose, and move along.
Current rankings have Gibbs, Bijan, Chase, Puka, JSN, Amon-Ra, and McCaffrey all firmly in that elite early-draft conversation. The exact order changes depending on the rankings and scoring format you are looking at, which is why I do not want you panicking over whether the player ranked fifth on your screen is actually better than the player ranked seventh.
There is rarely one correct answer.
After that first wave, players like Kenneth Walker III, Omarion Hampton, Drake London, Nico Collins, Kyren Williams, De’Von Achane, George Pickens, Chase Brown, and Saquon Barkley are all names I would be very happy to see on my roster.
But What About QBs?
This is where fantasy football gets slightly counterintuitive. Your QB may be the most important player on an actual football team, but that does not automatically mean you should draft one first.
There are fewer truly elite RBs and WRs available, and you usually need to start several of them every week. Meanwhile, you typically only start one QB.
So while everyone knows names like Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Jayden Daniels, and Jalen Hurts, you do not need to see QB next to their names and immediately assume one of them should be your first-round pick. If one of the truly elite fantasy QBs falls to a spot where you like the value (Josh Allen), maybe the third or fourth round, take him. Otherwise, keep building your RB and WR room and come back to QB later.
There will still be plenty of guys who can throw a football later in the draft. I promise.
Tell Me About TEs
TE is similar to QB. There are a handful of TEs who can give you a legitimate advantage because they receive the ball far more consistently than most players at their position. Brock Bowers, Colston Loveland, and Trey McBride are the obvious examples heading into this season. But once they are gone, you do not need to frantically draft a TE. This is where knowing ADP and understanding positional value saves you from yourself.
Take George Kittle. He is injured, and it is admittedly hard to get behind an almost 33-year-old TE heading into his 10th NFL season while recovering from an Achilles injury. But if anyone can make that gamble pay off, it’s Kittle. He has finished as the TE5 or better for six seasons and has publicly said he is targeting an early-season return.
Kyle Terada-Imagn Images
If he falls far enough in your draft, George Kittle could actually be a great value. Pair him with a boring-but-reliable TE you can confidently start during the first half of the season – Tyler Warren, Harold Fannin Jr., Tucker Kraft, maybe even Isaiah Likely – and if you are feeling crazy, stash Kittle in one of your IR spots (injured reserve) and wait. If he comes back anywhere close to his old form, suddenly you have another weapon for your playoff push.
*One major disclaimer: I would not even entertain this strategy unless your league gives you multiple IR spots. You do not want an injured TE taking up valuable space while you wait for him to come back.*
When Your Draft Plan Goes Out the Window
If you are in the middle of your first fantasy draft and things have already gone awry, do not panic.
Here is the game plan:
Rounds 4 – 8: Start filling in the gaps.
Players like Jaylen Warren, Terry McLaurin, Rico Dowdle, Rashee Rice, Jameson Williams, Emeka Egbuka, Quentin Johnston, and Kyle Pitts can all become interesting depending on where they are still available in your draft.
These are talented players who will absolutely be on other people’s radars, but if one of them is still sitting there at the right point in the middle rounds, you want to be ready to take advantage of it.
Rounds 9 and beyond: This is where you can have some REAL fun.
You are no longer looking exclusively for safe players. Now you are looking for upside or potential for a player to come out of nowhere and succeed.
Maybe it is a rookie who could have a much bigger role than people expect. Maybe it is a receiver joining a new offense. Maybe it is an RB who could suddenly dominate the offense.
This is where names like Chig Okonkwo, KC Concepcion, Stefon Diggs, Alec Pierce, Terrance Ferguson, Braelon Allen, Courtland Sutton, Bhayshul Tuten, and other late-round upside players start entering the conversation.
These are not necessarily players you are drafting because you expect them to start for you in Week 1. You are drafting them because they are cheap, they have a path to a bigger role, and if things break their way, they could end up being worth it. Will every one of them work out? Probably not. I took Cam Ward with my 14th pick last year, convinced I had found something everyone else missed. He did absolutely nothing for my fantasy team other than star in Quarterback on Netflix.
But that’s okay. That is the point of late-round picks. You are taking swings, not looking for guarantees.
What If Someone Takes the Player I Wanted?
Don’t worry, they will.
When someone drafts the player I wanted in fantasy football 1 pick before me: pic.twitter.com/3fKhxQPldw
— FanDuel (@FanDuel) August 15, 2023
I am telling you this now because there will inevitably be a moment during your draft when you have your next pick perfectly planned, you are staring at his name, and then the person drafting immediately before you takes him. First, do not panic.
Second, do not immediately draft the next player at the same position just because you are annoyed. Go back to your rankings. Look at the next few players available. Check their ADPs. Look at your roster and ask yourself what you actually need.
Fantasy drafts never go according to plan. That is part of the fun.
Important Tips to Remember
- Do not draft someone three rounds too early just because you recognize his name.
- Do not take a defense in the fourth round because you heard they are really good. Wait until at least the seventh or eighth, at the earliest.
- Do not draft three QBs while you have one RB.
- Do not completely ignore bye weeks, but also do not obsess over them. If two of your good players happen to have the same bye week, you will survive.
- Do not assume the projections on your screen are gospel. They are helpful estimates, not prophecies.
And please, please do not spend your first-round pick on a player solely because you recognize his name, love his team, or saw one highlight of him on TikTok.
We are trying to win here, ladies.
Finally: Trust Yourself!!
I believe in you, girl! I know it can feel overwhelming at first, but here is the secret nobody tells you before your first fantasy draft: your league-mates also don’t know exactly what is going to happen this season.
Before you draft, take five minutes to check your league settings, especially whether you are playing standard, half-PPR, or full-PPR, and keep The Fantasy Footballers rankings pulled up alongside your draft board. Your fantasy platform will give you its own rankings and projections, but you do not have to treat it like a Bible. Use it as one piece of information, compare it with The Fantasy Footballers’ rankings and analysis, and make the call you feel best about.
At the end of the day, nobody knows exactly what’s going to happen. You are simply using the information you have to make the best possible bet on how you think the season will play out. Fantasy football is ultimately a prediction game, but once you get into it, it is incredibly fun. You are using the information you have to make the best possible bet on what you think is going to happen. So pick the players you believe in. This is YOUR team. Trust yourself, have fun with it, and make sure you are picking players for the right, and actual, reasons.
And if you beat every guy in your league with the team you drafted after reading this article? Then mission accomplished. But do not get too comfortable; this was just draft day. You haven’t even met the waiver wire yet.
