How to Substitute Fantasy Football Players

Create a fantasy football team and live the dream of being able to substitute players with better players whenever you want. Most leagues will allow you a certain number of substitutions each week or throughout the season. There are several instances in which is is appropriate to switch players. You should substitute when a real-life player is on his bye week and you need to replace him, when he gets injured or when he shows a trend of bad play for several weeks.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Change Players on Your League website

1. Make sure the person you want to substitute in is not on his bye week. You cannot add him to your starting lineup that week.
2. Select the name of the person you want to remove from that week's starting lineup. Do this from your main roster page.
3. Choose a player that you want to add in place of the person you are taking out. Use your own strategy for picking players. Staying informed about the performance of real-life players each week will help you decide who is most valuable for your team. Generally, fantasy football team owners keep players who are playing well and drop players who are losing points for them.
4. Confirm the transfer. Some host servers will transfer players automatically when you update. On other sites you must click a button to make the transfer.
5. Verify on your main roster page that you have every slot filled in your lineup. Otherwise, you might end up without enough players. You will lose the points those players would have earned for you and you could lose the game because of it.

Tips & Warnings

• Confirm your fantasy football league's cutoff time for making changes to that week's starting lineup before you substitute players. In most leagues, it is set for the Thursday before the first NFL game on Sunday. This will vary if there are Thursday night games or holidays that week.
• Allow a couple of weeks to pass if a player is in a slump. Chances are he will pull out of it. Everyone has times when they play worse than others. However, three or four weeks of bad play indicates a trend and might be a good reason to substitute that player.
• Manage more than one team if you would like to employ different strategies during the season. Most host sites will allow you to do this.