REDRAFT REAPER — PLAYOFF FANTASY GUIDE
NFL Playoff Fantasy Football: A Beginner's Guide
Your regular fantasy season ends before the NFL postseason does. Playoff fantasy football fills that gap: you build a roster from the teams still playing and score points off their real playoff games. This guide covers how the postseason is structured, the main ways playoff fantasy games work, and where to start.
How the NFL Playoffs Are Structured
Fourteen teams make the NFL playoffs, seven from each conference. The postseason runs from mid-January into early February over four rounds:
- Wild Card -- twelve teams play six games. The top seed in each conference gets a first-round bye and sits this round out.
- Divisional -- eight teams play four games, including the two teams that had a bye in the Wild Card round.
- Conference Championship -- four teams play two games to decide who reaches the Super Bowl.
- Super Bowl -- the last two teams play one game for the championship.
Why Playoff Fantasy Is Different From a Regular Season
A regular fantasy season is a long grind: draft in August, manage waivers and trades for months, and hope your roster stays healthy. Playoff fantasy compresses everything into about five weeks, and the player pool keeps shrinking because every game eliminates a team.
That changes the strategy. A great player on a team that loses in the Wild Card round is finished for the year, so the question is not just who is good, but whose team is still playing.
How Other Playoff Fantasy Games Work
Before getting to Redraft Reaper, here is how most other playoff fantasy products work. These are not Redraft Reaper formats. They come from daily fantasy sports (DFS), regular-season-style fantasy leagues, and prediction contests:
- Draft once (regular-season-style fantasy). You build a roster before the playoffs begin and keep it all the way through. Players on eliminated teams stop scoring, so the roster thins out.
- Pick per round or per slate (common in DFS and weekly games). You choose a small set of players or teams before each round, often under a salary cap, without a draft.
- Pick'em or bracket contests. You predict winners rather than score fantasy points. That is a different kind of game from fantasy football.
Where Redraft Reaper Is Different
Redraft Reaper is not any of those. Every manager drafts a completely new roster before each round, in a live draft, from the teams still playing that round.
How Redraft Reaper Works
In Redraft Reaper you draft a new ten-slot roster (QB, two RB, two WR, TE, FLEX, K, D/ST, and one bench spot) before every round, in a live snake draft with a pick clock. The pool only contains teams still playing that week, and after each round the lowest-scoring managers are eliminated. The field goes from up to 12 managers at Wild Card to 8, then 4, then 2.
In Head-to-Head leagues, the Wild Card round has one exception. 12 managers make 6 pairs, but 8 advance to the Divisional round, so the 2 highest-scoring losers advance along with the 6 pair winners. A manager who loses their matchup can still move on if their score is one of the 2 best among the losers.
Because you redraft every round, you do not have to guess which teams will go deep. You only need to find the best roster for the games being played this week.
Tips for Your First Playoff Fantasy Game
- Check the bracket first. Know which teams are in the pool and which are on a bye.
- Draft for one game. In a redraft format each round is a single-game sample, so matchup and health matter more than season-long stats.
- Know the roster rules. Position caps and team positions (QB, K, D/ST) change how a draft plays out.
- Practice. Free mock drafts let you learn the format before you pay for anything.
Try a Free Mock Draft
Free, unlimited mock drafts use the 2025 NFL playoff teams so you can practice the format. A free account is required; no payment is needed. When you are ready for the real thing, see how the leagues and pricing work in the FAQ.