Hopefully, last season was a great one for you in fantasy football! However, you might be looking to spice it up a bit next year and implement some rule changes. Luckily for you, I’ve concocted a list of potential changes to your league, scoring, standing and rosters that you may want to consider. All these rule changes should be gone over with leaguemates, and they might require some planning.
Rule Changes To Freshen Up Your Fantasy Football League in 2025
League Changes
Are you tired of the “same ole, same ole” redraft or auction league and looking for a change? Well, wake up; it’s 2025, and there are plenty of options now!
Keeper/Dynasty Leagues
There’s always one player that makes you think, “Damn, he got me through that season, I wish I could keep him.” With keeper leagues, you can do just that, but it will come at the cost of a draft pick. Now, there have to be some rules to keep it even, like only keeping players for a certain amount of seasons or inflating the pick that it costs to keep the player by one or two rounds each year, depending on the player.
Or if you’re looking to run a dynasty, well, dynasty fantasy football is the format for you! You get the draft pool like you normally would if you start this year, but you also need to draft the young guns and rookies, either alongside or in a separate supplemental draft. In the following seasons, your league will only have the incoming NFL Draft class to pick from. If you’re a big fan of playing “Madden” Franchise Mode, this is the fantasy football league you want.
Best Ball
Are you really good at drafting players but yet have crappy start/sit luck? Best ball pretty much solves that problem. You don’t have to worry about start/sit decisions at all! You draft for the whole season and once that draft is over, that is typically your roster for the season, no changes are allowed. In a best ball league, you will never have any regrets about sitting that player who went off that week since it will automatically update your lineups to have the highest-scoring team possible. The only decisions you have to make are during the draft.
Guillotine League
In a guillotine league, all you need to do is not finish last. If you finish last in any given week, your season is done. Your entire roster goes to the waivers for the rest of the league to pick up, and play continues as such each week until there is one left standing who avoids the fate of the deadly guillotine.
Scoring Changes
Half-PPR or PPR?
The most common scoring type in fantasy football leagues is Points Per Reception (PPR). For every reception they make, a player gets a point. There is always a debate on how much that reception bonus should be. Personally, I’ve always found it more fair and equal if it’s half-PPR, meaning players receive 0.5 points for every reception. This scoring format tends to equalize production between the running back and wide receiver positions. Whether PPR or half-PPR, either option is better than “Standard” scoring leagues. Sorry, not sorry.
TE Premium
There’s a reason why you only draft one tight end in most starting lineups. The tight end position is not what it used to be, which is why Tight End Premium (TEP) scoring was introduced. Similar to PPR but positionally focused, it gives tight ends a premium of one point (or however much you would like the bonus to be) per every reception since they likely do not see the same output as a running back or a wide receiver. I definitely recommend leagues implement this if they want to improve the positional value in their fantasy leagues. The only downside is that someone will select Brock Bowers very early, as it makes a player like him even more powerful.
Fractional Kicker Scoring
Out with the old and in with the new. Kickers can be a sensitive subject in the fantasy football field, but one idea I like that has been floating around changes how kickers score their fantasy points. However long the field goal kick is, they get 0.1 points per yard. If Chris Godwin scores 5.8 fantasy points on a 58-yard reception, why can’t Brandon Aubrey score 5.8 when he drills a 58-yarder down the middle? We’ve adjusted to fractional scoring in fantasy football at other positions, and it is time for kickers to join in on the fun, too!
Points Per First Down
This one is self-explanatory. Did you achieve a first down? Get an extra point. This is situational football we’re talking about. It gives an extra boost for third-down running backs or tight ends in short-yardage plays who get the first down. It’s an easy and logical scoring change to up the ante a bit.
Bonuses
Who doesn’t like a bonus? For example, Justin Jefferson’s 97-yard touchdown against the 49ers this season was 16.7 fantasy points. However, it feels like a touchdown that long and impressive should be worth more! To put it in perspective, there were 1,317 offensive touchdowns scored this season, and only 133 were even 40+ yards. If there’s only a 1% chance that your player scores a touchdown that long, why not have a bonus? The longer the play, the bigger the bonus. These bonuses don’t have to apply to touchdowns; they can just be a big-play bonus or a 69-yarder (AKA, a “nice” bonus), but personally, I only like it for touchdowns. Sometimes, too many bonuses can lessen the fun of them, but to each league their own!
Kick/Punt Return Yards
Special teams are special; they even have it in their name! Although they’re not on the field for most of the game, they can change the course of the game in one play. In deeper leagues, you can even consider starting a player with return yard points over a weak flex. Some names that were versatile in both ways last year were Marvin Mims Jr., Austin Ekeler and KaVontae Turpin. By adjusting your league’s scoring to make these types of players more valuable, it adds a new level of strategy.
Six-Point Passing Touchdowns
If rushing and receiving touchdowns are worth six points, why are passing touchdowns not? I mean, it’s worth six points in real life! I don’t know what we’ve been doing here because passing touchdowns should also be worth six.
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Record/Standing Changes
“Wild Card”
To quote Fort Minor, “…This is 10% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentrated power of will, 5% pleasure, 50% pain.” In pretty much every season, there is a more deserving team that misses out on playoffs because of scheduling luck. This is where the “Wild Card” comes into play. Instead of basing all playoff teams on their record, the last seed to make playoffs is the team with the most points scored this season.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about this. I understand that the best teams should make playoffs, and fantasy football is supposed to be fun, but luck is part of the game. After all, we’re coming off an NFL season where the amazing Joe Burrow-led Cincinnati Bengals offense didn’t make the playoffs. So, it can go both ways.
League Median
One of the ways that I’ve seen to get rid of scheduling luck is to implement a league median. Instead of playing one game per week, you are playing two games per week: one matchup against your scheduled opponent and one against your entire league to score in the top half of points that week. This is quite the pain reliever when you lose a close game that happened to be against the best-performing team that week when you were the second or third-best. It achieves the goal of getting the better teams into the playoffs by rewarding their performance throughout the season.
No Playoffs
Cue the Jim Mora soundbite. It may sound wild, but this idea was brought to my attention by someone who plays in this type of league and really enjoys it. It makes sense; we have all played the whole regular season fighting for the top spot, only to get knocked out in the playoffs by a team barely over .500 on a run after finding a mid-season gem. This way, the best season-long team wins.
Personally, I find this similar to adding a “Wild Card” playoff spot. While you may have had the best team and, in some ways, likely deserved to win, luck is part of the game. We all saw the Washington Commanders upset the top-seeded Detroit Lions in the NFC Divisional Round. It can go both ways. Of course, if all your leaguemates are on board, shake it up and do away with the playoffs!
Roster Changes
Free Agent Auction Budget (FAAB)
This is the newest way of waivers and one that is almost universally liked. You have a set budget ($100 is the usual budget), and when waivers run, instead of the player going to the person with the worst record who put in a claim, the player is put into a blind auction. Because of this, I find this to be the fairest waiver method, and the budgeting aspect adds a unique twist. You want to have the highest bid and wind the waiver wire claims, but not overbid or blow your budget too early!
Get Rid of Kickers
I teased this earlier when discussing different ideas for kicker scoring. You either love or hate the kicker position. If you’re on the latter end of that and your leaguemates hate the kicker position, just get rid of it, and you can complain about them when you watch your favorite team.
Get Rid of Tight Ends… Kinda
We’ve all been there at least once every season. You look at the tight end landscape, and it’s just a constant headache, knowing you start at least one. This change won’t get rid of the position entirely like you might want to with kickers because there are times when the upside or potential is still there, and you want to start them. Instead, you can change the TE-only roster spot to a WR/TE position or a second flex spot. That way, you don’t kill the position, so if you stumble upon a reliable tight end like Jonnu Smith was last year, he can be a weekly starter without forcing the desperation streams.
2QB/Superflex
I’ve combined these two since they’re relatively similar but with slightly different strategies. Superflex is like other flex positions, but it can be any offensive player, even a quarterback. A 2QB format is where you have to start two quarterbacks because what is more fun than just one quarterback? Two quarterbacks! Either way, it makes the quarterback position more valuable and adds another challenge to a league.
Individual Defensive Players (IDP)
Do you know who else needs love rather than just being lumped into one D/ST (Defense/Special Teams) spot? The Individual Defensive Players (IDP)! This might take a bit more convincing for your leaguemates, but if you truly love the game of football and statistics, IDP can make it more fun by exposing you to the players who you might not know about on the defensive side of the ball. It adds another layer and brings more excitement to both sides of the field.
Whatever changes to your league, scoring, standings and rosters you may consider or implement heading into the 2025 season, I hope you have a fun fantasy football season!
RELATED: Way-Too-Early Fantasy Football Sleepers (2025)
Thanks for reading my “2025 Fantasy Football Rule Changes To Consider.” If you’re looking for more fantasy content like this or need help with the last-minute fantasy football start/sit decisions for your roster, you can find me on Facebook at “Fantasy Sports Start or Sit’Em Questions,” Twitter/X @FSSOSEQ or on BlueSky!
*Photo Credit: Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – USA TODAY Sports*
