Scoring

Now that you have a team selected, its time to see how good your selections were. Using these simplified scoring rules, figure out how many points your team scored.

TDs thrown by your QB: 6 pts
TDS caught by your WRs or TEs: 6 pts
TDs scored by your RBs: 6 pts
Interceptions (INT) caught by your Def: 4 pts.
(INT) caught by your Def that are immediately returned for a TD on the same play(this is called a "Pick 6): 8 pts
Field Goals kicked by your PK: 3 pts.
Passes caught by your WR or TE for 10 yards or more: 2 pts. (2 pts for every 10 yards.)

This is a very simplified scoring scheme. You'll find leagues that give points per reception (PPR), leagues that take away points for fumbles and interceptions, leagues that award pts for keeping the opponents score below certain thresholds. It can get very complex. Be wary of those who are eager to complicate it. Chances are, they don't think their team is stacked enough to win the trophy and are looking for ways to add points for things their team is good at. Guys like this can take all the fun out of it and I do my best to avoid them.

Each week, you will submit a lineup of the players you want to "start." This is why you select more than one player at each position. The players you don't "start" are called your "bench." You decide before kickoff on Sunday (and sometimes on Thursdays-but that's not important right now.) what players you think will score the most points in their position and submit that list as your "starting lineup." You'll take into consideration things like who your QB is playing against, not just how good they are as a QB. For instance, if Tom Brady (arguably the best Fantasy QB this season) is typically your starting QB and Jay Cutler is your "backup," you'll probably be "starting" Tom Brady every week. But there may be a week when Tom Brady is playing against a team with a very good defense and Jay Cutler is playing against a very weak defense. For that week, it may be better to "start" Cutler and "bench" Brady. You'll use this same process for each player on your team. If you neglect to submit a lineup by the deadline, the League will use the last lineup you submitted. In that case, if Jay Cutler is still in as your starter instead of Tom Brady, things could go very badly for you.

The league you belong to will already have a scoring mechanism in place. You don't have to do your own calculating. The League office website will be calculating the scores throughout the day on game day and usually refreshing every 60 seconds. Typically, owners are glued to this screen on Sundays. DO NOT gripe and complain about how unfair the scoring is and DO NOT start throwing out accusations about how the "website is screwed up! It's not counting the points up right." Only sore losers say stuff like this. The scoring tools are 100.99% accurate. That's right 100.99%! For an example of just how complicated it gets take a look at these scoring rules used by ESPN. Scoring rules.