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John recommends the most fun fantasy football league formats for the 2025 NFL season. There are a lot of fun, exciting, and interesting formats that aren't as popular.
Most fantasy football managers stick to the league default settings on ESPN, Sleeper, and other fantasy football websites and applications like Yahoo. However, the best way to play fantasy football isn't just a single way, but by finding as many interesting formats as possible, some of which are extremely fun!
There are a variety of league types now, largely because the game of fantasy football has been around so long. Interestingly, PPR formats, or points per reception league types, didn't come around until the dominant workhorse running backs of old tipped the scales of standard (i.e., non-PPR) leagues so far in their favor that winning your league was as simple as drafting LaDainian Tomlinson some years.
Fantasy football isn't terrorized by such prolific scorers as Tomlinson anymore, but if you're getting bored with simple PPR or just want to branch out and find more fun formats to enhance your overall experience, this is the perfect article for you. Let's dive into 2025's most fun fantasy football league formats!
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Dynasty Fantasy Football
I'm sure plenty of you reading this are aware of what dynasty fantasy football leagues are, and still more are in at least quite a few leagues.
This is still a new format for many people, though, and as this game grows, there will be more and more new players, which is exciting! In case you don't know what this is, dynasty is a format where you keep players year after year rather than drafting a new team before every season.
At the beginning of a dynasty league's founding, there will be a startup draft, where all players are fair game, and each team drafts the players they want normally. You'll want to be careful who you draft, though! You'll never have a chance to draft another non-rookie player after the startup draft. In future years, there will be rookie drafts, where each team will have its chances to select first-year NFL players.
My attempt at a MasterClass on Dynasty Fantasy Football
Dynasty 101: What is it?
Dynasty 201: How do I dominate it?YouTube: https://t.co/PMKAaLZTFs pic.twitter.com/s83r9TeWaA
— Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) June 24, 2024
You'll get to keep all your best players, offer trades to other teams for their players or future picks in rookie drafts, or drop players you no longer want. The most fun aspect of dynasty fantasy football is that trading and making moves become more relevant all year! You can sell out your picks to try to put together a win-now team or stockpile picks when your team isn't as good as you want and hope the rookies you choose give you a boost.
In redraft leagues, the offseason is a time for ... well, nothing. Because there aren't any games going on and because everyone "loses" all their players between seasons, there's not much to do other than wait. Additionally, the rookie players aren't quite as impactful in redraft because it's usually tougher for them to become immediate league-winners in Year 1, and they get pushed down draft boards.
When you explain Dynasty Fantasy Football to your redraft friends, what is their reaction?
*gifs encourage pic.twitter.com/po7zxTLZyF— Dynasty Trade Calculator™⚖️ (@FFDynastyTrades) August 18, 2023
Hopefully, you don't have this look on your face by now. Seriously, it's fun to have your team persist year after year and be able to benefit from all the good draft picks you make for multiple years to come. It also gives you incentives to do more research and learn more about the sport, if that's your thing!
There's no better way to feel like a general manager of a real sports team without going too wild and committing your life to the game.
Guillotine Leagues
After hearing literal nonstop raving about how unbelievably fun Guillotine leagues were, I finally decided to join one ahead of the 2024 season. And it was ... exactly as described. Guillotine leagues are a completely different approach to fantasy football, in that the lowest-scoring team each week gets chopped completely from the league and eliminated.
Additionally, that team's players become available for the rest of the teams to bid on, meaning that if you play your cards right, you can pick up star players from other teams as they get cut and add them to your rosters. You only have a certain amount of spending money, so you have to be wise with whom you pick up! And even if you don't win, it feels pretty cool to make it near the end of the season and be one of the final teams standing.
Guillotine leagues are pretty fun, I definitely recommend them! Here's my team from last year, which made it all the way to Week 12 before I lost, despite scoring over 130 points. It's tough, but was thrilling! pic.twitter.com/DBhuULApP3
— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) April 15, 2025
All you have to do each week is not be the team that scores the fewest points. So, rather than trying to score as much as possible each week, you're just trying not to be the worst. Of course, scoring a lot makes you more likely to advance, but taking "safer" players with lower scoring floors becomes much more incentivized.
There are quite a few players who have wildly unpredictable seasons, with some games featuring them scoring a boatload of points and others having minimal scoring output, so they are riskier earlier in the season. And when you need higher-upside players late in the year, you can generally count on eliminated teams' players to bolster your rosters!
Guillotine leagues are hosted on guillotineleagues.com and host free leagues for those who aren't looking to bet money. The feeling of just making it to the next week and the "near-death experiences," where my team barely scraped by through scoring the second-fewest points of anyone in the league, were both hilarious and fun.
Superflex/2QB 6-Point Passing Touchdown Leagues
One of the biggest pitfalls of normal PPR leagues is how devalued the quarterback position is. The most important position in football by a wide margin is quarterback, yet in fantasy football, that's not the case.
While QBs do score the most points in most seasons, there is a big cluster of them who can give you solid value. Additionally, there are 32 NFL teams, and most fantasy leagues have 10-12 teams.
So, there are often solid options on the waiver wire or in free agency you can pick up, and there isn't much risk to completely ignoring QBs in the draft and picking up a solid player on waivers or just for free. Superflex and 2QB leagues attempt to address this by having two spots on the roster, one that must be a QB and the other that is optionally a QB (in Superflex) or required (2QB).
DYNASTY SUPERFLEX RANKINGS 📊
🔗 https://t.co/89SlcGTcjG pic.twitter.com/JQF2Adg27Q
— PFF Fantasy & Betting (@PFF_Fantasy) April 15, 2025
Most dynasty fantasy football leagues are Superflex or 2QB leagues, in part due to this fact as well. So, the best quarterback prospects become absolute gold in terms of value. Additionally, teams' scoring outputs tend to more closely match the importance of the QB position. Two excellent quarterbacks having great seasons can easily elevate your fantasy team to the playoffs, and scoring for the position as a proportion of total team points is much higher.
Typically, these leagues award six points for a passing touchdown, while normal leagues only award four because it's much easier for a QB to throw 35 touchdowns (happens all the time) than it is for a receiver or running back to score 35 touchdowns (that has never happened before). In many Superflex leagues, a touchdown is a touchdown, no matter how it's scored!
Superflex leagues are more popular than straight 2QB leagues, mostly because there's more flexibility on who you can put in your lineups. Sometimes, due to bye weeks, injuries, or both, teams don't have a second viable quarterback to start. So, those are what I recommend. And they're fun, especially because some matches can turn into heavyweight battles with a ton of scoring!
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