Fantasy Football Guillotine Leagues: Rules, Strategy, Waiver Wire Tips

For a fantasy football player looking for a challenge, sprinkled with complete chaos each week on the waiver wire, a guillotine league is calling you.

Yahoo Fantasy Unveils Their New Guillotine Challenge

Even Yahoo Fantasy is now getting into the mix. This past week, they announced the brand new format on their platform. Don’t finish last—seriously. In a Yahoo Fantasy guillotine league, the lowest-scoring team each week gets chopped. No mercy. No second chances. One bad week and it’s game over.

NFFC Guillotine Leagues

The outline of this format consists of a 17-team draft covering 16 rounds. Each week, the worst team in the league gets eliminated, Squid Game Style!, leading to all of their players becoming available the following week in the free agent pool. The process repeats for 13 weeks, leaving four franchises to compete for one more waiver period, followed by a four-week postseason run. The top three teams cash.

The National Fantasy Football Championship offers this event. Their format has no trading. Here’s a link to their ADPs. This site allows the user to change between different formats and time frames to help see trending or fading players.

For reference, here’s a look at an ADP draft board with results over the past week:

Scoring

Six-point passing touchdowns

Minus two points for an interception

PPR scoring

.05 points for each passing yard

.1 point for each rushing or receiving yard

Starting Roster

QB, RB1, RB2, WR1, WR2, WR3, TE, Flex (RB, WR, or TE), K, and DEF

Bench Players

In this format, each fantasy manager can use their bench (six slots) for any combination of players they choose.

Playoffs and League Schedule

The four teams make the postseason

League Playoffs are in Weeks 14, 15, 16, and 17 (Total Points determine the order of finish for the three playoff slots)

Free Agency

Each team has a fictional $1,000 to add players each week. The waiver wire runs on Wednesday and Saturday nights, with a minimum bid being $1. When your team is out of free-agent dollars, you can’t add any more players.

Game Theory Thoughts

Team structure around bye weeks should be an important factor when building the foundation of your starting lineup. If given a coin flip decision, I would favor a player with a late bye week. With too many players off early in the year, there is more risk of a low-scoring week and an exit from the league.

I would focus on players in the free agent pool who have cleared their bye week, while treating the free agent process as a cleansing of my mediocre backend talent with late byes. Here’s a look at this year’s bye schedule:

Week 5

Atlanta Falcons
Chicago Bears
Green Bay Packers
Pittsburgh Steelers

Week 6

Houston Texans
Minnesota Vikings

Week 7

Baltimore Ravens
Buffalo Bills

Week 8

Arizona Cardinals
Detroit Lions
Jacksonville Jaguars
Las Vegas Raiders
Los Angeles Rams
Seattle Seahawks

Week 9

Cleveland Browns
New York Jets
Philadelphia Eagles
Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Week 10

Cincinnati Bengals
Dallas Cowboys
Kansas City Chiefs
Tennessee Titans

Week 11

Indianapolis Colts
New Orleans Saints

Week 12

Denver Broncos
Los Angeles Chargers
Miami Dolphins
Washington Commanders

Week 14

Carolina Panthers
New England Patriots
New York Giants
San Francisco 49ers

The first week of this league's postseason is Week 14, and there are no waiver picks after this scoring period. So it’s critical to have minimal star players off this week.

Teams looking for a quarterback upgrade could be helped after Week 7 (BUF and BAL) and Week 10 (CIN, DAL, and KC) if their fantasy teams finish last for the week. With six teams off in Week 8, the starting lineups with those players will be compromised.

Buying young breakout-type players can lead to small fantasy weeks out of the gate while offering minimal starting value. I get the attraction to invest in the next big fantasy player, but there is always a chance that they land on a team that gets “eliminated,” allowing him to be added in the free agent pool at a discount.

The Importance Of Depth

I would look to spend my free agent dollars on many players, rather than shove on the best available stud earlier in the year. Over the first four weeks, surviving the league should be easier with healthy lineups, which suggests saving your free agent money for later in the year. Holding the hammer in FAAB dollars should be an edge over the last month of the regular season.

The overall quality of the free agent pool is much higher than any other fantasy league due to the number of studs potentially available in many weeks.

I have never played in this type of league, but I have talked to a friend many times about this format for baseball. Understanding your team's strengths is a critical factor in making winning free agent bids. He also had success by conserving his bankroll.