Draft Strategy For Guillotine Fantasy Football Leagues

An Overview of What Guillotine Leagues Are

Guillotine fantasy leagues is a league format where you draft in a league of 18 teams and each week the lowest scoring team gets chopped (removed from the league), and each week the players from that team go back to the waiver pool. Waivers are done by FAAB where you’re given a $1000 budget at the beginning of the season. It doesn’t matter where you finish each week as long as you’re not last. There’s also new this year SuperChop Leagues where you compete against 12 teams and after week 11 each league winner gets regrouped and redrafts with winners of other SuperChop leagues.

Guillotine leagues are an interesting evolution to fantasy football. Guillotine leagues are kind of the anti-best ball format, where in best ball a player's consistency doesn’t matter as much because you don’t have to make the start/sit decision each week and you can stack players from the same team to try to accumulate the most points possible. Guillotine on the other hand requires you to roster players who you can depend on week-to-week as one bad week could end your season. Rostering players from the same team is especially dangerous if you’re going to be reliant on one offense to do well each week. Rostering too many players with the same bye week, especially if it’s an early-season bye, is another good way to get yourself chopped too early. You’re putting yourself at risk of having a poor performance by doing either of these.

Draft Strategy

While you need consistent players in both regular Guillotine leagues as well as SuperChop, draft strategies do differ a bit based on drafting an 18 team league vs 12. I’m more inclined in SuperChop leagues to grab a top WR or TE (Kelce) because the smaller league size allows you to fill in your roster with adequate replacements. Additionally, SuperChop champions redraft after week 11 so if you draft a player from the Chiefs you won’t have a bye week from your player as their bye isn’t until week 13 after you’ve redrafted a new team if you won your league.

Guillotine leagues start 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, and 2 flex. That means in the 18 team format there are a lot of players being started and your team may not be pretty at the beginning of the year. Week 1 players like David Johnson and Corey Davis are probably going to be relied upon to start. The guys you draft need to be able to hit the ground running as well, this format is not good for drafting a player you expect to get hot in the second half of the year like a rookie wide receiver, because by that point you may be eliminated, and the player pool is going to be a lot smaller so that rookie may not be relevant even if he did break out. This year I’m concerned about players like Saquon Barkley (may miss the first few weeks or be limited if he does play), Devonta Smith, Javontae Williams, and Trey Sermon to name a few.

The 2 flex spots really require you to focus on drafting the best team and finding value where it’s available. BPA is really the way to go, but with that, I’ve found that I do not like my teams as much if I don’t come away with at least 1 running back from the first 2 rounds. Running back gets very ugly very quickly when you draft with this many teams, as opposed to wide receiver where you can still find solid players in the mid-rounds. Additionally, the value of having a top-end tight end or quarterback is diminished a bit with the larger league size. The vast majority of teams especially at the tight end position that drops off more suddenly, do not have one of the top options at the position. And with the lack of difference between quarterbacks after the top 6-8 or tight ends after the top 2-3, it doesn’t matter as much where you grab your guys at these positions.

In-Season Management

When it comes to in-season management, every team starts off with $1000 FAAB. If you’re not familiar with FAAB it stands for Free Agent Auction Budget and essentially replaces weekly waivers from priority to a blind bidding system. You bid how much of your FAAB you’re willing to spend on a player and if you bid the most you get him for that price. Managing your FAAB is going to be the most important part to having a successful Guillotine league team.

It’s going to be very tempting to want to spend your FAAB week 1 to give yourself an edge on your opponents by adding Saquon or Calvin Ridley after the first team is eliminated. That may help get you to weeks 8-12 but it’s usually not going to be the best way of increasing your odds of winning your league. If you think about it from a supply/demand perspective, when there’s 17 teams and 238 players being rostered after week 1, the supply is going to be incredibly low, and the demand is high with 17 teams with full $1000 budgets to spend. As you get further along in your season and the teams/# of players being rostered/FAAB budgets continue to decrease, the value of having FAAB to spend becomes more powerful. And once you’re down to the final few teams having more FAAB than your opponents is such a huge advantage because it means you can have any player you want from the roster of the team who was eliminated who by this point has great players at every position.

Now you’re not going to have $1000 remaining and survive until week 15, you do need to upgrade your team along the way, but be wise about how, when, and on who you spend your money on. You need to have a good understanding of how your team fares to the rest of the league, and if you’re one of the weaker squads and potentially at risk of getting chopped that week by all means spend some of your money that week. Just remember it’s not important to be the strongest squad early on, as long as you’re middle of the pack you’re in a good spot.

Early in the season don’t overlook players who were undrafted who may be breaking out ala James Robinson or Myles Gaskin last year. These guys were available for cheap because they’re overshadowed by the flashy big name players appearing on waivers after the first team gets chopped. These undrafted players can still be valuable contributors to your team, especially in the first half of your season when the player pool is still very diluted.