Welcome to Fantasy Throwdown! Our unique game takes the best qualities of traditional fantasy football (the draft and head-to-head competition) and makes it a one-week, one-on-one challenge where you can play as much as you like, whenever you like.
The rules are below. If you have any questions please contact admin@fantasythrowdown.com.

Getting Started

Fantasy Throwdown begins with a challenge. You either issue a challenge or accept a challenge. In both cases you must be a registered user.

Issue a Challenge

To issue a challenge, log in to Fantasy Throwdown and click the "Issue a Challenge" button found on the right side of your My Throwdown page, select your options, and submit your challenge.

There are private and public challenges. Private challenges are emailed to your opponent. Public challenges are posted in the Throwdown Lobby for all other registered users to see.

Accept a Challenge

To accept a challenge, you must agree to one of three options to begin:

Choose the first two of three NFL games to form a player pool for the draft. OR...
Take the first pick in the draft. OR...
Defer the first draft pick to your opponent, and take the second and third picks.

Decline a Challenge

No worries. The appeal of Fantasy Throwdown is there is no commitment to play every week. If you are too busy to play one week, then take a break and play the following week.

Lineup Options

There are two lineup options for a Throwdown challenge, team defense or individual defensive players ("IDP"):

Option 1 (team defense): 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 DEF

Option 2 (IDP): 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, 3 IDP (can be any combination of DL, LB or DB)

The challenger chooses the lineup options when he or she creates a challenge.

Scoring Options

The two scoring options are one point per reception (PPR) for all positions and non-PPR. The rest of the scoring is standard performance. Check the scoring rules for more detail.

Game Page

Once you register or log in, you are directed to your My Throwdown page. This page includes your Throwdown notifications indicating required action in your Throwdown challenges. Clicking on the notifications takes you to the game page for the challenge it relates to.

Your Game Manager screen tracks all of your current and past Throwdown challenges, with links to the game page for each challenge.

As the initial challenge action steps are completed, the game page updates with available games to select from to determine the player pool. Once the player pool is finalized, then the game page shows the available players for the draft, a draft queue to pre-draft and/or confirm your picks, and the lineups of players each team has drafted.

After the conclusion of the draft, the game page shows the final lineups for each team. Once the stats are ready from the NFL games, then the score for each player and a team total is calculated to determine the winner of the challenge.

Action Steps

Completion of the action steps is initiated by the challengee on acceptance of the challenge, when that person selects one of these three options:

Choose the first two of three NFL games to form a player pool for the draft. OR...
Take the first pick in the draft. OR...
Defer the first draft pick to your opponent, and take the second and third picks.

If the challengee selected to choose the first two of three NFL games to form the player pool, then the challenger must select if he or she wants the first pick in the draft or second pick in the draft, before the challengee selects the first two games. The challengee is automatically assigned the alternate pick in the draft.

If the challengee selected to choose either the first pick in the draft or second pick in the draft, then the challenger is automatically assigned the alternate pick in the draft, and the challenger selects the first two of three NFL games to form the player pool.

Player Pool

Once the player pool is finalized, then the game page shows the available players for the draft. The table can be filtered by the following criteria:

Position
Team
Depth (starter or backup)

There is also a box to search for players by name.

To add a player to your draft queue, click the Draft button beside the player you want to select. Then click the Submit Changes button to submit your pick or save your pre-draft selections.

The Draft

Fantasy Throwdown uses serpentine drafts (Player A gets the first pick, Player B gets the second and third picks, Player A gets the fourth and fifth picks, etc.) to select players from the pool.

Challenge participants receive an email notification when their opponent makes a live (not pre-drafted) draft pick. Users can turn off email notifications from the game page, but this is only recommended if the user remains online to complete the draft.

Participants may either draft in minutes, or they can execute a slow draft over a period of hours or days leading up to the NFL matchups that week.

Block Position

Each participant has one "Block" per draft and this can be used to prevent your opponent from selecting a specific player by removing him from the player pool.

This can be an effective strategy when you have selected a particular player and know that there is only one other player in the pool with the likelihood to match or exceed your draft pick's performance.

For example, the participants in a challenge select three matchups:

Saints vs. Broncos
49ers vs. Browns
Dolphins vs. Seahawks

The draft begins with Player A selecting Reggie Wayne with his first pick. Player B has the second and third picks.

Player B determines that the best two quarterbacks in this player pool by a large margin are the Saints Drew Brees and the Broncos Peyton Manning. Player B decides to draft Brees with pick two, and block Manning with pick three. This move forces Player A to draft a quarterback far below the potential of his opponent's, and gives Player B a distinct advantage at that position.

Neither participant is required to use the block. If the block is used, the player is still allotted enough picks to fill out a team.

The block position is a unique strategy point to Fantasy Throwdown that can make the selection of the three NFL matchups and the draft position more important to the challenge.

Forfeiting

At any time prior to the completion of the draft a participant may forfeit a game. This might be necessary when a complication such as a time constraint prevents either participant from completing a challenge. At this time, no penalty results to either player due to a forfeit.