Traditional fantasy football leagues are great. That’s the format my father introduced me to, and I’m sure that’s how the vast majority of beginners start off. 

But you’re no longer a beginner. You’re a serious fantasy football player!

How do I know that? Because you’ve got yourself a copy of the 2024 Fantasy Football Draft Guide!

 

 

 

So, you’re ready for newer and bigger challenges. Look no further than Guillotine Leagues, one of the more advanced (and fun!) varieties of fantasy football around.

This Guillotine League Strategy Guide will cover everything from the basics to draft strategy to managing your team to the top throughout the season.

What Is A Guillotine League In Fantasy Football?

There are a lot of things that will feel familiar about a Guillotine League format, even for folks that have only played in more traditional, season-long fantasy formats.

There is still a draft. You still field a starting lineup and a bench full of QBs, RBs, WRs, TEs, etc. Points are generally calculated the same way in terms of half-PPR, full-PPR, etc. So many fundamentals will be familiar. But here’s where it’s different – and where your Guillotine Fantasy Football League strategy needs to adjust accordingly.

Number Of Teams

Most leagues have somewhere between 8-12 teams, maybe 14 if you are feeling wild. These leagues, on the other hand, typically have 18 teams. And the reasoning becomes clear with the elimination system. 

Elimination System

The way these leagues work is that one team gets eliminated each week. So, you don’t have head-to-head matchups but, instead, the lowest-scoring team each week is out. By the time you get to Week 17, there will be one head-to-head matchup to determine the winner.

Waivers

Here’s the kicker – when a team gets eliminated, their players go BACK into the waiver pool. So each week you need to decide whether you want to use your FAAB to acquire the players that just hit the wire or if you want to hold out for longer and try in the future. Obviously the farther you get down the road, the better the players in the pool are. 

Guillotine League Strategy

Obviously, Guillotine League strategy is a different beast. There are going to be some changes you need to make to your approach compared to a normal league. And a lot of your decision-making will boil down to how risk-averse you are (or aren’t).

Let’s start with your Guillotine League draft strategy and how that will transition into your winning Guillotine Fantasy Football League strategy from an in-season management standpoint.

Guillotine League Draft Strategy: Be Weary Of Injuries, Suspensions & Rookies

At first this seems obvious. You don’t typically go out of your way to target players in your fantasy football draft who who are going to miss time from the get-go.

If we follow a sound Guillotine League draft strategy, we’ll want to avoid these guys because we might get eliminated before they can even help us win. Rookies are notorious for slow starts. A guy like Jonathan Brooks is also coming off an injury, making him a double-risk.

We expect some sort of suspension for a player like Rashee Rice, so drafting him today could be a huge problem if every week is a must-win for us. But on the flipside, if this Guillotine League draft strategy is that obvious, everyone else will be thinking the same, right?

And that’s exactly where the “risk vs. reward” part comes into play. 

You can often get a pretty big discount on these types of players in your draft. Do you trust your ability to win games early on with the athletes you actually will have available? If so, then your strategy might have a higher tolerance for risk.

A good example from 2023 is Breece Hall, who came on right at the right time a few weeks into the season. Having him stashed away as part of your Guillotine League draft strategy would have allowed you to use your precious FAAB elsewhere and given you a winning edge.

The Schedule Is No Small Part Of Your Strategy

We already know the schedule is not created equal for every NFL team, but that’s especially true for a Guillotine League format.

For instance, every team has a bye week, which is fair at face value. However, the location of those bye weeks hit a lot harder in this format. There’s a degree of “do-or-die” each week in Guillotine Leagues, so you can’t allow bye weeks to gut your team and give you a guaranteed L.

For example, if you start your draft Amon Ra St. Brown, Jalen Hurts, Travis Kelce and DeVonta Smith, that feels like a really great start until you realize they all have bye week 5 and you run a high risk of being eliminated. This should be factored in to your Guillotine League draft strategy.

Bye weeks start at Week 5 and end at Week 14. Hypothetically, the player pool in your league will be split among 14 teams at Week 5, and then divided between five teams by Week 14 after the majority of folks have been eliminated. In this case, it’s a lot easier to deal with those bye weeks in Week 14 when you have better players to choose from.

You might also want to consider early matchups. If you are going with a high-risk strategy, you might just need a few good matchups early on to hold you over. For instance, Tampa Bay has some pretty soft matchups early in the season, so maybe you can get away with starting Baker Mayfield for a few weeks before you buy yourself a new quarterback on waivers. 

Remember – it's an EIGHTEEN team draft, so sacrifices in your lineup will need to be made somewhere. Somebody will be starting some sketchy quarterbacks and tight ends each week. In terms of specific suggestions, if you’re feeling REALLY froggy, rookie quarterbacks Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels have fairly soft schedules to start the season. 

How will the schedule ultimately affect your Guillotine Fantasy Football strategy?

Waivers Get Wild

I’ve got to be honest with you – your Guillotine League strategy is going to have a fair share of “gut feelings” involved in your decision-making on the waiver wire each week. You need to assess whether your team can weather the storm early on and wait for better deals later, or if you need to go all in early to keep the ship afloat. 

As always, you can post your team in the Fantasy Alarm Discord and ask our thoughts if you still need to make the call on spending early or not. Just know that FAAB can be relative and the same player that goes for $20 out of $100 Week 2 might go for $2 in Week 12. Beyond that, here is some general advice:

If you REALLY want a player, especially a super elite one, you have to pounce when they are available. You might think “oh I’ll just buy that guy next time when the team that buys him loses”, but a player like Christian McCaffrey might never hit the wire because that team will be good. And there is no guarantee you won’t get outbid later, either. So, you have to take your shot.

The other piece of Guillotine League strategy advice is to focus on your weaknesses even more than we do in redraft. With redraft or dynasty waivers, we often go “best player available” because it’s all about the long term. In this format, you are done if you lose. That’s it. 

So, if your quarterback or your tight end stinks, you need to buy one ASAP. You can only get away with it for so long because the other teams WILL be adding pieces and getting better and better and better. By midseason, this will be a 10-team league and the lineups will already be pretty stacked. And it only gets worse from there.

Strategy For The Home Stretch

There is really no other way to say this – you have to be RUTHLESS to win your Guillotine League. (This is one of the many reasons why it’s so much fun!) Expect your strategy to not just involve spending up on the guys you want, but also spending up to block your opponents.

If you have the top three quarterbacks in the league and one guy’s only weakness is QB, don’t let them get a good QB! After all, boxing someone out on a key player could make all the difference if you face them championship week.

This is also where the actual NFL schedule circles back around. Look at how the season ends for a team like the Dolphins, Jets, Texans, 49ers and Browns. That’s pretty rough sledding and not necessarily what you want to willingly have to wade through to take down your league’s title.

If you survive that late into the NFL season, you’re going to have an absurd selection of players to choose from. By that time, we’ll have a much better idea of what the good or bad matchups really will be.

And with that, we’ve reached the final step in your Guillotine League strategy. Center your squad around those players, survive the last week of the season and win your league!