 Just like Reese's peanut butter cups there is no right way to fantasy football and so while most leagues use the same standard settings there's plenty of fun ways to mix things up as well. Some of these leagues are required just as much if not more prep than traditional standard fantasy leagues but others are just a bit of fun on the side and one caveat on all of these I do have suggested scoring for most of these leagues but obviously take them and change them how you think is necessary. In an elimination league the team with the lowest score at the end of each week is just completely kicked out of the league boom gone and that eliminated teams players will then become free agents. I played in this kind of league a few times and it's pretty awesome well unless you get knocked out early then it's kind of lame and because of that I would not make this the only league that I play in. One key note on strategy weekly waiver pickups become a huge part of this league so keeping with a standard serpentine non-resetting order is intriguing because it's a big risk to pick someone up and then lose your top spot on the waiver wire. On the other hand you can spice things up a little bit by making the waiver wire pickup order reset each week in reverse order of the number of points scored that week. This would make the ideal spot to finish in each week actually to have the second lowest number of points if you really like to live on the edge. For simplicity's sake you can set this league up to have normal head-to-head matchups even though you know the outcomes don't matter even after they're eliminated even teams will kind of remain in the league but just with a blank roster in order to keep an even number of teams. You don't usually see many roto leagues in football a rotisserie league just means that there are no head-to-head matchups and points are added up for the whole season to determine the standings but it can come in handy sometimes. If you've ever had the second most points in your league in any given week and still lost because you just happened to be playing the team that was on top that week you know what I mean. This league standings are determined by awarding a team for winning their head-to-head matchup but also for finishing with a higher number of points relative to the whole league. So each head-to-head matchup earns one point for the winning team ties are worth a half I guess if that ever happens and then in addition each team finishing in the top half by overall points that week is also awarded one point so the top five teams for our 10 team league. Another way to accomplish this would be to have every team play every other team every week although it might be a little less confusing to just do a straight roto league at that point. In a poacher league each week the winner of each head-to-head matchup can select a player on the team he has just beaten to join his team. In return he must trade a player of the same position to his opponent and this player that he trades must have been on his roster during the matchup. He can't just pick up a bad player off the free agent list in that trade immediately. This weekly trade would be mandatory for all the matchups and it must obviously be accepted by the losing team. If this league is left unchecked it could quickly allow the rich teams to get richer and just destroy those that happen to lose in the first few weeks which is why I like to refer to this league as the American Economy League. There's a few ways to combat this you can either eliminate or severely limit bench spots this will keep the free agent list stocked of stronger players and will also mean that while the winning team will have to trade one of their players he'll still be of a reasonable talent level. You can also allow each losing team to protect a certain number of players on their roster. If the balance is still out of whack though you could go with what I think is more intriguing. This is the reverse poacher league or sometimes called the Bernie Sanders league. This is similar to the poacher league only now it's the losing team in each matchup that gets to choose the player for the trade. So even if you lose you know that your team is going to get better for the next week. If you're going to have playoffs in this league though then you can flip it around for that one or two matchups and let the winner choose the trade in that scenario. A predictions only league would take very little amount of your time relatively speaking and put your prediction skills to the test. The rosters are standards there is no bench once everyone drafts rosters are locked for the whole season and may the best man win. If you can only find a few friends interested in another league why not use a lots of starters league there's no reason to allow a bunch of players to sit unused. So each team in this league would have four each of quarterbacks running backs wide receivers flexes and defenses scoring totals will be extremely high week to week relative to regular leagues so you can't have too many weak spots. If you don't want to get too extreme here's a few quick ways to alter any traditional league and maybe shake things up just a little bit. Have two flex players after my league tried this the first time everyone loved it will never go back. Having two quarterbacks on your roster has become a fairly popular tweak because quarterbacks tend to score the most points in traditional formats and they can really boost team even if a few other players are having a poor day. Not having any bench is a personal favorite of mine I don't want to draft guys and then just watch their points get wasted on the bench or if you're not quite ready to go so hardcore maybe just have two bench spots so you can keep your top guys on their by weeks risk-free either way you're really going to have to weigh free agent pickups. At first a lot of people are afraid of getting rid of kickers and then when they try it then they love it. Another kicker variation is to switch kick point values up because obviously not all kicks are created equally. As for my recommendation if you can use 0.1 points for each yard made of a field goal so a 31 yard field goal would earn you 3.1 points. If your site can't support that though for kicks 30 yards or under three points for a make minus three for a miss between 40 and 50 yards four points for a make and negative one for a miss and 50 yards are over five points for a make and no points for a miss. Kickers can now become pretty valuable. Everyone knows that the most exciting part of a game is touchdowns so why not dedicate a league to them. A scoring only league would only factor in scoring plays. In this case larger than usual rosters are probably a good thing to have. The opposite of a scoring only league is a yards only league and anyone who's ever had their running back rush the ball down the field all the way only to have a full back fall over into the end zone for a one yard touchdown run and steal all your points you get it. This league would allow you to eliminate defaultures. A punters only league is a league that I have done and not to brag but I did win. This league was born out of an idea that would make fourth downs relevant to fantasy owners and at best make someone in a crowded bar yell at a punter on a tv while the other people give them funny looks. Each team consists only of two punters. If you hate long drafts this is the league for you and scoring is all head to head. It admittedly is a pretty silly league. There are no bench spots so a major decision is do I drop a good punter on their bi-week and risk losing him. As strange as it may sound I do believe there's a legitimate strategy to win this league but I'm not going to tell you what that is. These next two are a bit more in-depth. The alternate points league is one that I found on reddit a few years ago so I'm just going to link it in the description. The main feature here is that it actually has different values for certain actions depending on which position a player is. So the guy who came up with it includes his reasons for everything in the description. The only drawback is most fantasy sites cannot handle this degree of customization so to my knowledge the only two sites that can are Fligflicker and Phantrax. The expected points added or EPA points league is another one I'm just going to link to from Deadspin. It's actually based on the amount of expected points added by each particular action in a football game. Think football saver metrics. They describe reasons for everything in their article as well so I'm not going to re-bore you with them here. Finally some leagues do include individual defensive players in their leagues. These are called IDP leagues but why not just make defensive players the only focus. So this would eliminate all offensive players from your league and point totals would look something like this. Hopefully one of these will peak your interest. Remember you don't always have to play fantasy football for money so why not give one of these a try with a group of your friends just for the fun of it. If you don't think that you can trash talk in a league based solely on punters you are mistaken.