How To Win Fantasy Football Guillotine Leagues: Rules, Strategy, Draft Targets (2026)

August 27, 2026

Nick's fantasy football Guillotine League strategy including how to win your Guillotine League, how to play, roster strategy, waivers, draft targets and more.

Everyone who has played fantasy football has their stories — the opposing running back who had a career day against you, the unknown rookie who changed the league, the backup QB who starred for one day — but the Guillotine format is a special kind of ride. 

I have teams in most formats, including dynasty, redraft, and IDP leagues, but Guillotine is the most fun (and the most stressful) of all of them. There is no opponent to scout, no matchups, no schedule, and, for one manager each week, no mercy.

We’ll take a look at how to wrap your brain around this format, how to devise a strategy, and which players are worth your time in 2026.

Know The Rules

Unlike redraft formats, there is no tomorrow in Guillotine leagues, also called chopped or death leagues. Teams do not compete head-to-head, but instead score individually against the entire league. Every week, the lowest scorer is eliminated, and their entire roster goes to waivers.

If you’re playing with 12 teams, only 11 will survive into Week 2. Then it will cut to 10, nine,  and so on, until one team wins.

The tough part: You can have great players and still get the ax! All it takes is one awful week.

How long can you survive?

Welcome to Guillotine Leagues — the most chaotic, cutthroat & insanely fun way to play fantasy football. This isn’t your typical fantasy football league, this is Fantasy for the Fearless. 🪓

Learn more: https://t.co/lxxekE3rAW or download our iOS app pic.twitter.com/nuBuKTodJM

— Guillotine Leagues (@GLchop) July 8, 2025

Given the stakes every week, understanding the scoring of your league before the draft is essential.

A PPR format will put heavy emphasis on elite wide receivers and running backs who catch passes. Expect the first wave of quarterbacks to come off the board earlier than you might think if it’s a Superflex league; TE premium will make that position a hot commodity in the early rounds.

What the scoring system should tell you is how to place value on each position going into draft night. In standard PPR or half-PPR formats, for example, you can attack running backs and receivers while waiting on a QB. You only need one.

In Superflex, though, snagging at least one top-tier quarterback is paramount — being the one standing when the music stops can be a recipe for disaster.

Regardless of the format, your draft night goal should be to have as many Tier I and Tier II starters as possible within your scoring system. Remember, you’ll have plenty of chances to improve the roster later — provided your initial roster is good enough to get you through the first couple of weeks.

Master Your Waiver System

If you take any shred of my advice here, make it this: You should know your waiver system inside and out.

The waiver process will be the primary avenue for top-end talent going from eliminated teams to the other rosters, and it’s far more competitive in this format than any other.

In redraft, you’ll certainly have the out-of-nowhere rookies and midseason injury replacements, but the rush to the front of the line is entirely different when you suddenly have players like Josh Allen, A.J. Brown, and Kyren Williams all hitting the waiver wire at the same time.

In chopped leagues, waivers typically operate with one of two systems: free-agent acquisition budget (FAAB) and priority (or rolling) waivers.

In FAAB, you have a set amount of money (typically $1,000 or $100) to spend on free agents awarded to the highest bidder in a blind auction. Your draft will get you through the first few weeks; being smart with your FAAB will win the championship.

In priority waivers, teams are ordered, usually in the inverse of the draft. In most leagues, the team that drafted 10th in a 10-team league would be first in waivers. Once they make a successful bid, they would go to the back of the line.

The most chopped players from Guillotine Leagues™ in Week 1! 🪓

1. Ja'Marr Chase
2. A.J. Brown
3. Joe Burrow
4. Bo Nix
5. Nico Collins
6. Joe Mixon
7. Xavier Worthy
8. Mark Andrews
9. Amon-Ra St. Brown
10. Rashee Rice

Need FAAB advice? We got you: https://t.co/nQRmg9sRMl pic.twitter.com/FiaPFaddaZ

— Guillotine Leagues (@GLchop) September 9, 2025

In either system, it’s a wise idea to have a strategy before draft night. Do you want to steadily spend a small amount of your budget to secure minor upgrades — a better backup, an emergency QB, a solid player to cover a bye week — nearly every week? Are you betting big early to secure top-level players and improve survival odds? Or are you saving for a midseason cannonball?

Knowing when to pull the lever and when to wait can be the difference between winning and losing.

Draft Like A Hater

If you’re reading this article, chances are pretty high that you have at least some familiarity with the standard PPR redraft league. Every August or September, you build your team through the draft, maintain the roster with the waiver wire, make a trade or two, and at the end of the year, clear the deck and do it again.

This is different.

When you select a player in redraft leagues, you’re largely looking at someone’s ceiling. In Guillotine formats, you should be far more concerned with a player's floor.

That means you have to draft like you’re the pickiest person in the world. Starting the season with an injury? No thanks. A No. 2 receiver on his own team going in the second round? Pass. A heralded rookie going for a premium draft pick without playing a down? Not to me, he isn’t.

It feels regressive. All of those things, in a standard format, can be overlooked because you always have the full season. It's fine if the rookie you like doesn't hit the ground running until Week 5 in redraft. But here, it's not fine.

Jeremiyah Love might have cured his early-camp indecisiveness

[image or embed]

— Scott Spratt (@scottspratt.bsky.social) August 13, 2026 at 9:17 PM

There is never a sure thing in a sport as physically demanding as football, but I want my first six picks, especially, to be high-floor players who have the chance for even more. You can always take risks in later rounds and build your reserves in future weeks, but you have to get there first.

Keep in mind that if you're going to advance deep into the season, a lot of the players you take after Round 10 will be droppable as you have better options. Ideally, the players you're taking in these spots will be solid Week 1 contributors who can plug gaps and keep you alive.

Let other managers assume high-stakes risks with their best draft picks.

Patience Is A Weapon

Whether you’re playing FAAB or priority waivers, waiting for the right moment is key. 

In priority waivers, I’m only interested in catching whales. If I don’t have a chance at a player at the level of, say, Ja’Marr Chase or Brock Bowers, I’m happy to wait, add what I can through free agency, and move up in line for the following week.

During a money-winning season last year, I used waivers only for Malik Nabers, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Bijan Robinson, and De’Von Achane. That’s it. I didn’t add anyone on waivers unless it was a huge upgrade, preferring to patch elsewhere with additions after waivers had been processed. Nabers’ knee injury was unfortunate, but his monster Week 2 single-handedly saved my team and bought me another week.

Later, I waited multiple weeks without a bid to add St. Brown, then did it again and found myself in the first spot when the manager who rostered Robinson surprisingly got cut. As the league dwindles, you’ll be competing against fewer and fewer managers, so rolling waivers highly reward those who keep surviving.

Take a look at the distribution of moves in a 10-team rolling waiver league from 2025 and notice how behavior changes as teams dwindle, then again as rosters get really stacked toward the end.

In FAAB, I like only small bids to reinforce the roster, or big bids to ensure I get the truly elite players I really, really want.

My rule of thumb is to keep at least 50% of my reserves through the halfway point. If it's a 12-team league, that means holding your water with only a couple big additions through the first six weeks. When, and if, you get to that point, having a FAAB advantage can literally change the outcome of the league.

Keep in mind that injuries will force your hand sometimes, so it’s best to still have a decent hand to play.

Balance Short-Term With Long-Term

One of my long-held positions in redraft leagues is that I don’t care about bye weeks. I view a 14-game regular season more like a baseball schedule where the complete body of work will prevail, so I’m willing to withstand a week where many of my heavy hitters aren’t playing.

Guillotine leagues do not afford that luxury. You’re always one bad week away from being out.

Let’s say you’re playing a Superflex Guillotine league and drafting at the back end of the first round. You get Justin Jefferson and Joe Burrow with your first two picks, and you feel great. After filling out your running back room, you pounce when Tee Higgins is still available, then take mid-round stabs at Sam LaPorta and Malik Willis to round out your starters.

You have a capable, high-ceiling starting lineup with a collection of players who could go off any time — except for Week 6, when every last one of the aforementioned names has a bye.

Sure, you have to survive until then, and there’s a full month to strengthen your bench. But how do you feel about a week without your three best pass-catchers and both of your top quarterbacks? Can you afford to bank on a flurry of talent acquisition in Weeks 4 and 5?

These are the calculations you have to weigh on draft night. Long-term worries like bye weeks matter, but the pressure-cooker, week-to-week format mandates that you prioritize short-term thinking, too.

On draft night, there is always a pivot point around Round 9. Once I like my starting lineup, I'm swinging for 500-foot home runs with many of my end-of-the-night picks.

The Guillotine format works both ways: With regular talent hitting waivers every week, I can take some big risks on draft night and know I'll have plenty of options to move on if it doesn't pan out.

Guillotine Draft Targets

Chase Brown, RB, Cincinnati Bengals

Brown is among the second wave of running backs with a current ADP of 27 in Superflex formats on Sleeper, which makes him one of my favorite players in this range. The situation has a lot of my normal green lights: I trust his quarterback, he’ll see a lot of single coverage and check-downs with Cincy’s talent at receiver, the Bengals are moving him all over the formation, and I can target other position groups first at this price.

Especially in PPR leagues, Brown’s receiving floor (5.18 targets per game in 2025) makes him an appealing starter.

Drake London, WR, Atlanta Falcons 

People are afraid of Atlanta’s quarterback situation, and that's a fair point. But answer this: who is the best quarterback London has played with so far? Kirk Cousins? London had a WR5 finish in 2024 with Cousins, despite Cousins getting benched late that season, and a WR19 finish last year despite playing in only 12 games, mostly with Michael Penix Jr.

WR vs. CBs one-on-ones:

Drake London vs. Sauce Gardner. Throw from Tua Tagovailoa. pic.twitter.com/4c1jKiU2sZ

— Daniel Flick (@ByDanielFlick) August 20, 2026

With an ADP of 25 in Sleeper Superflex leagues, the veteran's positioning gives room for maneuvering — like another receiver — earlier in the draft. Former NFL Coach of the Year Kevin Stefanski, now in Atlanta, should at least keep the Falcons' offense competent, and London is a lock for 100-plus targets. I like the floor even if I'm not enthused about the QB.

Kyler Murray, QB, Minnesota Vikings

You’ve heard all the short jokes and Call of Duty barbs, but Murray’s draft valuation shows how quickly people forget. In every year Murray has played 14 or more games, he has been a top-10 fantasy quarterback, including just two years ago.

The Cardinals have made the postseason 11 times in 80 years for a reason. Minnesota is a better situation in every way, and if Murray can stay healthy, he still has top-10 potential. Should the Vikings’ offense really take off, the former No. 1 overall pick could be even better than that. 

Murray is, on average, the 19th quarterback off the board, which prices in the injury risk. But for the price of a seventh- or eighth-round pick for a high-ceiling Superflex option, I’ll have a lot of Murray shares. 

Isaiah Likely, TE, New York Giants

The draft market isn’t quite sure what to make of Likely, who spent his first four seasons behind Mark Andrews in Baltimore. Likely followed former Ravens coach John Harbaugh to New York to be the Giants’ top tight end, providing TE1 potential with a TE2 price. 

Likely averaged 11.3 yards per catch and converted 72% of his targets into catches during the past two years, and now he’s on the precipice of a career high in volume. The Giants lost Wan’Dale Robinson to free agency, while Nabers (knee) is less than a year removed from ACL surgery. 

Still just 26 years old, the veteran has breakout potential from a pretty low-risk draft position.

Jaylen Warren, RB, Pittsburgh Steelers

Warren was quietly RB17 last season despite losing valuable pass-catching chances to Kenny Gainwell, who is now in Tampa Bay. Coming off back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons, Rico Dowdle signed with Pittsburgh, though Dowdle is best deployed as a rusher.

The pairing makes sense, but Dowdle’s presence has depressed Warren to RB26 in Superflex drafts. In PPR formats, targets are currency, so I like Warren as a mid-round flex option as the Steelers’ preferred option on passing downs. 

Jaylen Warren went crazy on this catch and run 🔥

SEAvsPIT on FOX/FOX Onehttps://t.co/HkKw7uXVnt pic.twitter.com/fKSeR78pKg

— NFL (@NFL) September 14, 2025

Stefon Diggs, WR, Washington Commanders

The veteran receiver is now on his fourth team in four years, but I’m of the opinion that his draft stock and his potential don’t match. Diggs was WR17 last season with New England — a year after ACL surgery — and now looks to have a clear pathway to 100-plus targets with Washington.

At a Superflex ADP of 126, Diggs is being drafted like a fringe WR4. And while he’s not at the peak of his powers anymore, he’s a player you can actually start in a flex spot from a pick that is closer to the end of the night than the beginning.

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