Fantasy Football — The Fantasy Football Encyclopedia

Read in this order

Never watched a game? Start at the top and stop after Start Here. That is enough to draft.

How an NFL offense makes fantasy points — the zero-sum fact everything else rests on
What each fantasy position actually does — and which players on the field score nothing, ever
Player archetypes — the twelve labels every player reference in this vault resolves to
Reading an NFL depth chart — the WR1 name collision, which will confuse you within five minutes otherwise
What basketball teaches you wrong about football — the false-friend list, and the most dangerous note here
Fantasy football glossary — ~48 terms, one line each. Every note's first use of jargon links here
The 2026 season calendar — 17 games, 18 weeks, one bye each, and where the crunch falls
How the league is won — the payout table and the two-stage objective it implies
The four players you already know — Gibbs, McBride, Nix, Jones, each a door into a concept
Your league, in one page — the note to reread on draft day

Draft day

2026 draft board — full PPR, rendered from the frozen August 2 canonical input. Nothing on it was typed by hand
Tiers by position — five stacks cut at the gaps. Tiers, not ranks, are what you draft from
Value over replacement in fantasy football — the one concept that fixes a beginner's draft
Drafting from the 1.01 — the most important note here. The 10-team turns are planned as linked pairs, beginning at picks 20 and 21
Who to take at 1.01 — the most perishable note in the build. Recheck it immediately before the draft
How much to spend on running backs — Robust / Hero / Zero RB, and why published win rates describe a format you are not playing
Late-round quarterback — one QB starts, so the position is flat except for the runners
The last two rounds — kicker and defence — permission not to care; use the board's 10-team late-round slots
Reading the draft room — a draft is a live adversarial event, not a list you read down
The 32 offenses — one 32-row table, not 32 team desks
Availability and injury risk — who actually plays, measured. Running back is not the most injury-prone position
When to start drafting for upside — the 10-team simulation; refresh it after material status changes or before draft day

The season

The fantasy football week — day-of-week triggers, not theory
Waivers — use it or lose it. Priority resets weekly to inverse standings
Start-sit — a standing rule, not a research project — a rule you apply 17 times
Implied team total — the backbone of the in-season layer, and a substitute for watching games
Reading the NFL injury report — an officially mandated weekly artifact, unlike the NBA's daily churn
Bye-week planning — no basketball analogue, and tight with seven bench spots
Weather and the fantasy playoffs — weather bites in exactly the three weeks that decide the $900

Concepts

Timeless, no player names, no dates. The perishable notes point here instead of re-arguing.

Players and sources

Players/ — earlier turn-cohort prose is archival. Use the frozen August 2 board and current player status notes for live decisions.
The 2026 rookies who matter — where the information gap against the rest of the league is widest
Where fantasy football information comes from · ADP, rankings, and projections are three different things · What I checked and when · Evidence and confidence

The league — released 10-team state, 2026-08-02

This is a 10-team league with the 1.01 locked in a standard snake. The 16-pick sequence is 1 · 20 · 21 · 40 · 41 · 60 · 61 · 80 · 81 · 100 · 101 · 120 · 121 · 140 · 141 · 160.

Confirmed league settings: ESPN · full PPR with fractional yardage · 9 starters (1QB/2RB/2WR/1TE/1FLEX/1D-ST/1K) + 7 bench + 1 IR · no keepers · waivers reset weekly to inverse standings · regular season weeks 1–14 · six-team playoffs weeks 15–17 · drafting in late August. The exact draft date remains unknown.

Money, confirmed as stated: each of the 10 teams pays $100: $75 contribution plus a $25 refundable participation deposit. Prizes are $500 / $250 / $150, totaling $900. The 10 × $75 = $750 contribution total does not equal the $900 prize total; this mismatch is confirmed league information, not an error for this vault to silently reconcile.

Three things that follow, and drive everything else

The payout is convex, so build for ceiling. Finishing 4th through 10th pays nothing; three of ten teams reach the money, and first is worth more than second and third combined. Build a high mean in rounds 1–4 to reach the six-team playoff, then prefer ceiling as the roster fills. The prize/contribution mismatch above is a cash-flow fact, not a reason to change this strategic conclusion.

Waiver priority is use-it-or-lose-it. It resets each week to inverse standings rather than rolling forward. An unspent claim expires; winning reduces access to the next breakout; and losing teams get first claim.

Full PPR reshapes the board. A back who catches 60 passes gains 60 points relative to non-PPR. The frozen board uses that scoring model and the league's 10-team replacement baselines.

Data

The spreadsheet is truth and the notes are the rendering — the reverse of the basketball build's architecture.

Run order — the only ordering constraint in the build:

bash cd "Sports/NFL/Fantasy Football/Data" && ./fetch_nflverse.sh && python3 build_context.py && python3 build_board.py && python3 simulate_season.py

Data/players.csv — frozen August 2 canonical board input: 237 rows, sourced from the current projection/ADP import and scored for this league's 10-team setup
Data/player_context.csv — 197 skill-player context rows aligned to the promoted player pool; it supplies dated roster, injury, contract, and usage context rather than a second ranking system
Data/build_context.py — joins nflverse rosters, season stat lines, weekly injury reports and snap counts with OverTheCap's contract pages. Carries a join validator that catches wrong-player matches
Data/build_board.py — renders the board, the tier stacks and Availability and injury risk. --check runs its self-check
Data/simulate_season.py — the draft-and-season Monte Carlo behind When to start drafting for upside
Data/raw/ — the dated source pulls · Data/check_links.py — the link checker

Fresh research is promoted: FFToday stat-line pages updated Jul. 30, a Fantasy Football Calculator 10-team PPR window covering 4,121 drafts from Jul. 26–Aug. 2, and a FantasyPros PPR consensus audit inform the August 2 freeze. FFC remains a clearly labelled proxy for ESPN ADP. Kicker points, D/ST points, Avail, and Adj VOR remain model outputs.

The website

The whole vault also renders as a static HTML wiki at ~/Desktop/Code/fantasy-football-encyclopedia — same architecture as the fantasy basketball wiki, with an interactive Draft Room (sort, filter, position pills, availability bars) and player fact cards carrying the observed context data.

bash cd ~/Desktop/Code/fantasy-football-encyclopedia && python3 build.py && python3 serve.py

Why this is not a copy of the basketball build

2026-27 Fantasy Basketball Encyclopedia is 644 notes and roughly 852,000 words, written for someone already fluent. This is about 100 notes, for someone who does not watch NFL football.

One scoring format, one board — full PPR.
Position is the primary axis. The basketball tiers deliberately ignore position; here position scarcity, the tight-end cliff and bye weeks are the draft.
No projection engine. Consensus projections get scored under this league's rules; the effort goes into roster shape.
No categories, so no punt builds. Football is one summed number.
One 32-row table, not 32 team desks.
A literacy layer basketball never needed.

Open questions

Confirm the exact late-August draft date; the other 10-team ESPN settings are now confirmed.
Re-run the 10-team simulation if a material status change arrives before the draft; do not use a stale result to force an upside-round crossover or D/ST streaming conclusion.