If you’re a fantasy football veteran, this article is probably not for you.
However, this game constantly grows, with new managers entering the fold every year. At some point, all of us experienced managers had to learn everything about this game for the first time.
If you’re new to fantasy football, you’re going to encounter dozens of terms and abbreviations, many of which you’ve probably never seen before. It may seem a bit overwhelming. That’s where we come in.
Allow this to be your one-stop shop for everything you need to know about fantasy football terminology.
What Does aDOT Mean?
aDOT stands for average depth of target. This term refers to how far a ball travels in the air past the line of scrimmage before it reaches its intended target.
What Does ADP Mean?
ADP is one of the most important terms in fantasy football. It’s probably the term you will hear the most in the months of July and August and the single most important term for drafting.
ADP stands for average draft position. It is the average spot at which a player is selected in fantasy drafts. ADP can be relative to a specific fantasy platform (i.e., Yahoo, Sleeper, ESPN, etc.) or across multiple platforms.
What Does BN Mean?
BN is short for bench. When looking at your roster on whatever fantasy platform you play on, you will most likely see this abbreviation to designate what players are on your bench.
What Does FAAB or FAB Mean?
FAAB stands for Free Agent Acquisition Budget. A couple of years ago, Yahoo opted to remove an “A” and go with FAB, which stands for Free Agent Budget. Either way, we’re talking about the same thing.
MORE: What Is FAAB?
FAAB refers to the designated amount of virtual dollars allocated for managers to spend on waiver wire players throughout the season. FAAB or FAB waivers is a blind-bidding system where each week, when waivers clear (typically on Wednesday morning), the platform awards the players to the teams according to who bid the most, just like an auction.
IDP Defintion
IDP stands for “Individual Defensive Player.”
Most fantasy leagues only start offensive players, with defense represented as a starting roster spot in the form of a Team Defense. However, some leagues opt to include actual defensive players. Those leagues are known as IDP leagues.
IR Definition
Much like the NFL, IR stands for injured reserve. In the NFL, these are players who are out for at least four weeks.
In fantasy football, the IR spot represents a spot where you can place players listed as Out, IR, or PUP, and they won’t count against your total roster size.
The benefit of having IR spots is fantasy managers who lose players to injuries don’t have to drop those players, or other healthy players, to pick up a replacement.
What Does PPD Mean?
PPD stands for postponed. You will only see this next to a player’s name when his game is postponed. It specifically refers to a situation where a game is not played on the week in which it was scheduled.
Even if a game is moved from Sunday to Monday, it won’t be considered postponed. There is a 99.9% chance you never see this designation unless you play fantasy baseball.
PPR Definition
PPR stands for point per reception. This is a specific scoring format where players are awarded a point for catching passes.
PUP Definition
PUP stands for Physically Unable to Perform. Training camp PUP doesn’t actually matter for fantasy football, but if a player remains on the PUP list to start the regular season, he is not eligible to play until at least Week 7.
YPC Definition
YPC stands for yards per carry. This refers to the average yardage a player accumulates each time he carries the ball.
What Does YPR Mean?
YPR stands for yards per reception. This refers to the average number of yards a player accumulates each time he catches the ball.
What Does RZ Mean?
One of the most popular acronyms you’ll see throughout the NFL on different apps is ‘RZ.’ This stands for “red zone,” which is the area on a football field in which the team on offense is within 20 yards of scoring a touchdown. What this alert essentially means is the team, or in the fantasy football world, your player is inside the opponent’s 20-yard line.
What Does OPRK and OPP Rank Mean in Fantasy Football?
OPRK or OPP Rank tells the user how the opponent of their fantasy player does against that position in terms of fantasy points allowed this season or over a certain time frame. This information can be misleading, especially early in the season, because if teams have faced teams that are bad at a certain element, they will have gotten a boost, which could mean they appear better than they are.
For example, through two weeks of the 2024 season, the Chargers had faced Gardner Minshew and Bryce Young, and accordingly ranked first against the QB position. Facing two bottom-five passing offenses has got them off to a flying start. They may not be able to sustain that when they face better offenses later in the season.
What Does TOT TD Mean in Fantasy Football?
While the acronym of TD is commonly known as touchdown, the acronym TOT is not one we see often in fantasy football. The reason for that is that it is not specific to the game like many other acronyms but rather it is short for the word total. The reason you may see it is if a QB has both a passing and a rushing touchdown, or a RB has both a rushing and receiving touchdown. Rather than show the touchdowns by specific field, fantasy sites will often combine them and call them total TDs or TOT TD.
Fantasy Football Positions
As with the NFL, fantasy football follows the same positional naming in most cases.
D/ST: Team Defense/Special Teams. This represents all the production from a team’s defense and special teams. It does not include kicker scoring, as that is a separate position.
DEF: An alternate abbreviation for D/ST.
K: Kicker
QB: Quarterback
RB: Running Back
TE: Tight End
WR: Wide Receiver
Flex: Any RB, WR, or TE
W/T: Wide Receiver or Tight End
W/R: Wide Receiver or Running Back
Q/W/R/T: Superflex, or, any QB, WR, RB, or TE
For those of you in an IDP league, you may encounter the following abbreviations as well:
CB: Cornerback
DB: Defensive Back
DE: Defensive End
DL: Defensive Lineman
DT: Defensive Tackle
FS: Free Safety
LB: Linebacker
MLB: Middle Linebacker
OLB: Outside Linebacker
S: Safety
SS: Strong Safety
What Are Some of the Most Popular Fantasy Football Formats?
There is seemingly no limit to the creativity of those in the fantasy football community. The new and innovative ways to play this game that they come up with are nothing short of incredible. Here are some of the common terms used to describe various fantasy football formats.
All-Play
Most fantasy leagues are traditional head-to-head formats. Each manager will have one opponent per week. Your sole objective is to score more points than the team across from you.
In All-Play, every team plays every other team every week. So, if you’re in a typical 12-team league, that means you have 11 matchups each week. The highest-scoring team would go 11-0, and the lowest-scoring team would go 0-11.
Autopick Draft
An autopick draft is a form of drafting where managers do not make any picks for their rosters. Instead, your fantasy platform automatically drafts each team for the league. Fantasy managers can preset their rankings to help guide the autodraft algorithm.
Auction
The most common draft format remains snake, but auction has been growing in popularity over the years.
In an auction draft, which can also be referred to as a salary cap draft, fantasy managers select players via a nomination and bidding system. One by one, teams go in order nominating players. Every team will have the opportunity to bid on that player. As with any auction, the highest bidder wins.
MORE: Auction Draft Strategies | Best Ball Strategy
Auction drafts differ from FAAB waivers in that the bidding is not blind. You know exactly how much you need to bid to win, and you just need to decide if it’s worth it.
Best Ball
Best Ball refers to a fantasy league format where managers draft their teams but don’t have to set lineups. On platforms such as Underdog Fantasy, once you draft your team, that’s it — there is no further action to be taken.
There are some versions of Best Ball where you can make adds and drops throughout the season, but the basic tenet of the format is every team will have their optimal lineup every week.
Best Ball does not use a weekly head-to-head format. Instead, whichever team has the most points after 17 weeks wins.
Devy
Devy is short for Developmental. This is a very advanced format of fantasy football where you really need to know your stuff. Devy leagues consist of drafting not only a full roster of NFL players but also a full roster of college players.
As those players enter the NFL, they join your NFL roster. It’s an extremely challenging format, but it can be incredibly rewarding when you pinpoint that college freshman who becomes the next great NFL superstar.
DFS
DFS stands for Daily Fantasy Sports.
DraftKings and FanDuel are the two most popular platforms for DFS, but contests exist on a whole host of platforms, including Underdog. Daily fantasy leagues are fantasy football contests limited to just one week, one day, or sometimes even one game of the NFL season.
There are numerous ways to play DFS. Formats vary from drafting rosters via snake draft to building a lineup based on a salary cap. The nature of the contest will impact strategy, but the goal is always to score as many points as possible.
Dynasty
Dynasty fantasy football is a format where you do not draft a new team each season. Instead, you have one initial startup draft, and then you keep as many players as you want on your roster for as long as you want (or until they’re out of the NFL).
There is still a draft each year, but it will consist exclusively of rookies. This type of fantasy league is designed to emulate being an NFL general manager as best as possible.
Empire
An Empire league places a fun little wrinkle on dynasty fantasy football. One of the pitfalls of dynasty leagues is that the ultimate goal is to completely dominate. Well, that’s no fun for the other 11 teams. So, in an Empire league, half the pot goes to the year’s winners, with the other half set aside in a rolling Emperor pot.
The Emperor pot does not pay out until someone wins consecutive championships. Once that happens, that manager takes both pots, and the league either disbands or undergoes a hard reset (which is simply restarting from scratch).
Guillotine
The Guillotine league is one of the newest formats of fantasy football. This type of league is NOT a traditional head-to-head setup. Instead, each manager has one goal every week — don’t come in last.
Each week, the lowest-scoring team is eliminated from the league. Unfortunately, that means someone only gets to play for one week. That team’s entire roster becomes part of the following week’s waiver pool. At the end of the season, the last team remaining is the champion.
Head-to-Head
If you’ve read this glossary in order, you’ve already seen this term several times. Head-to-head is the most common league format. Each week, teams will have one opponent. The goal is to score more points than the team you match up against to secure a victory.
Keeper
Keeper refers to a player you retain on your roster from one year to the next. Keeper leagues serve as a middle ground between redraft and dynasty.
MORE: Dynasty vs. Keeper Leagues
Whereas in dynasty leagues you keep all of your players and in redraft leagues you keep none of your players, keeper leagues allow managers to keep some of their players.
In a keeper league, managers retain a designated number of players from one year to the next. Before the draft, each manager declares the player(s) they intend to keep, and then they enter the draft with these players already on their roster.
Linear Draft
You probably won’t encounter a linear draft unless you play in a dynasty league. Linear drafts are conducted like the NFL Draft. They do not reverse each round like a snake. Instead, teams select 1-12 and then 1-12 again.
Offline Draft
Offline drafts occur when your league chooses to conduct its draft without using the fantasy platform’s online software. This is how everyone drafted in the before times (read: before the internet), or so I’m told.
After an offline draft, your commissioner must manually input each team’s roster onto the platform you are using to host your league unless you’re scoring by hand (don’t do that).
Online Draft
An online fantasy draft is a draft conducted on the fantasy platform itself. This is the easiest and, by far, the most common method of drafting. Everyone signs into the draft room at a designated date and time to draft their teams. After the draft, everyone’s rosters are automatically populated by the platform.
Redraft
Forever the most popular version of fantasy football, redraft probably refers to the league format you’re playing in — or at least one of them.
Redraft leagues treat each season as an entirely new year without connection to the previous one. Managers draft new teams each year.
Rookie Draft
Rookie drafts are an integral part of dynasty leagues. After the initial “startup” draft, each successive year’s draft consists of only rookies. This draft is typically linear and known as the dynasty rookie draft.
Snake Draft
This is the most common form of drafting. In a snake draft, the order in which teams pick players reverses each round. For example, in Round 1, the order is 1-12, and in Round 2, the order is 12-1.
Third-Round Reversal (3RR)
This drafting style is starting to gain popularity to balance out the value of each draft slot. Statistically, the earlier you pick in a snake draft, the more likely you are to win.
Third-round reversal means the order in which your draft snakes reverses in the third round.
Rounds 1 and 2 proceed as normal, with Round 1 going 1-12 and Round 2 going 12-1. However, Round 3 once again goes 12-1, with Round 4 then going 1-12, and so on.
2QB/Superflex
Two-quarterback leagues require teams to start two quarterbacks every week. Superflex is similar and more common because it accounts for the fact that there are only 32 starting quarterbacks in the NFL.
Managers are still expected to start two quarterbacks, but the Superflex position allows fantasy managers to start running backs, wide receivers, or tight ends in the spot as well.
Common Fantasy Football Scoring Formats
There are far too many variations on scoring to mention here. We will focus on the most common scoring formats you will encounter.
Full-PPR
As indicated above, PPR stands for point per reception. In full-PPR scoring formats, each reception is worth 1.0 points.
Half-PPR
In half-PPR scoring formats, each reception is worth 0.5 points.
Non-PPR
In non-PPR scoring formats, no points are awarded for a reception. You may also see this format referred to as “standard.”
MORE: How Fantasy Football Scoring Systems Work
This is an antiquated term based on the fact that this scoring format has been the standard for a very long time, mostly in the pre-internet days. It has not been the standard scoring format for several years now, but if you see someone use it, know that they probably mean non-PPR.
TE Premium
TE Premium refers to a scoring format where tight ends are awarded additional points for the same actions as other pass catchers. Typically, the bonus will occur with receptions. An example of a TE Premium league is awarding tight ends an extra 0.5 points per reception on top of whatever all pass catchers receive.
Tiered PPR
Tiered PPR adjusts the number of points awarded for a reception based on the length of that reception. For example, a reception that doesn’t gain any yards might not receive any points, but a 10-yard reception might receive 0.5 points, while a 20-yard reception would receive a full 1.0 points.
General Fantasy Football Terms
If you’re reading fantasy football articles or listening to podcasts, you will undoubtedly hear many of these terms. It’s important to know what they mean.
Boom-or-Bust
This term refers to a very volatile weekly player. A boom-or-bust player has a wide range of scoring outcomes each week.
Breakout
This term typically refers to a player who has been in the league for more than a year but has yet to realize his full potential. He is someone with a chance to perform significantly better than he did the previous season or produce at a level significantly higher than expected based on where he is selected in drafts.
Bust
This is the opposite of a breakout. A bust is a player who severely underperforms relative to where he is taken in fantasy drafts.
Ceiling
This refers to the best possible season or performance a player can realistically produce.
Commissioner
This is the person who runs your league. The commissioner is tasked with all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into making your fantasy league happen.
It is the commissioner’s job to create (or renew) the league, schedule the draft, set the rules, ensure they’re being followed, and arbitrate any issues that may arise during the season.
Consistency
Much like the name suggests, this term refers to a player’s ability to produce results fantasy managers can rely on. A consistent player is the opposite of a boom-or-bust player in that his fantasy scoring is more stable every week.
Drop
This is the act of removing a player from your roster. When you drop a player, he will hit the waiver wire and be eligible to be claimed by any team in the league.
You may also hear a player referred to as a “drop.” That means he is someone that person feels should be cut from rosters.
Flex
This refers to the spot in your starting lineup where more than one position is eligible.
Unless otherwise indicated, you can start any running back, wide receiver, or tight end in a Flex position. As you may have deduced, the term was derived from “Flexible.”
Floor
This represents the worst realistic season or performance that a player can have. The floor is the opposite of the ceiling.
Free Agent
In the NFL, a free agent is a player not currently signed to an NFL roster. Based on that, I’m sure you can figure out what it means for fantasy football — any player that has cleared waivers and is not on any manager’s roster.
A free agent can be added to any team at any point, subject to your league’s waiver wire rules.
Game-Time Decision or ‘GTD’
This refers to a player whose game status is truly up in the air. When a coach labels a player as a game-time decision, in most cases, fantasy managers will not know if he is going to play until inactives are announced 90 minutes before kickoff.
Handcuff
This term is exclusive to the running back position. A handcuff is a backup running back who doesn’t possess any fantasy value at the time but could become significantly valuable if the starter ahead of him were to get injured.
Injury Report
NFL teams are required to provide daily injury reports for their practice sessions held four days, three days, and two days before each game.
The first two injury reports indicate what the player is dealing with and his practice participation level. The third and final injury report provides the player’s status for the upcoming game, which will be listed as questionable, doubtful, or out.
If nothing is listed, then the player is good to go.
Mock Draft
This refers to a fantasy football draft that is purely practice. The draft has no real implications, and the teams selected won’t be in any league.
You can conduct mock drafts with other people or against the computer to test out different strategies and ideas. Fantasy managers participate in mock drafts to help prepare for the real thing.
Reach
You will hear this term when someone in a fantasy draft selects a player significantly ahead of their ADP. For example, if a player has a Round 8 ADP and you draft him in Round 5, that would be considered a reach.
Sleeper
Traditionally, this term would describe a player that not many other fantasy managers might be aware of. It refers to a guy flying under the radar.
In modern fantasy football, with the prevalence of information out there, pretty much everyone knows who every player is.
MORE: What Is a Sleeper in Fantasy Football?
Nowadays, a sleeper is typically just a player going later in fantasy drafts who has the potential to perform at a level significantly higher than where he is drafted.
Spot-Starter
This term refers to a player you add from the waiver wire to make one singular start the upcoming week. Of course, that doesn’t preclude you from keeping him around if you think he will remain useful for future weeks.
Stack or Stacking
Stacking is a fantasy football strategy where you pair your quarterback with pass catchers from his NFL team. The most common form of a stack is drafting a quarterback and one of his wide receivers.
Stacking is beneficial because it reduces the amount of predictions you need to get correct. If you correctly predict that an NFL offense will be very good and draft its QB and WR, you can get just about double the points every time your pass catcher does something productive.
Stream, Streamer, or Streaming
This refers to the strategy of rotating players from the waiver wire for a particular position.
Instead of having one set starter, you pick up a new one each week based on matchups. Streaming most commonly occurs with kickers and defenses, but it can apply to any position.
Taxi Squad
This term refers to a specific set of players in certain dynasty leagues.
MORE: Fantasy Football Taxi Squads — What Are They, and Should You Use Them?
Taxi squads usually consist of rookies. It’s an area of your roster where the players will not count against your total roster spots. A taxi squad is akin to an NFL practice squad.
VBD
VBD is short for value-based drafting. It’s a strategy that assigns a value to every player by comparing that player’s fantasy points to the fantasy points of a baseline player at the same position.
Waiver Wire
The waiver wire is the pool of NFL players currently not on any roster in your fantasy league. These players can be added to your roster each week.