Fantasy football during the NFL playoffs (and how to be ready for it)
Your league crowns a champion in December, and then the NFL plays its best month with nobody's fantasy team in it. There are still ways to play in January, they are listed below with what each one costs. And playoff football is coming to DraftIcon, which is the argument for starting in September rather than in January.
Yes, you can play fantasy football during the NFL playoffs, but not with your season league. Almost every league finishes its final in week 17, so the roster you spent four months on stops existing exactly when the football gets good.
What you can do instead is start something new for the postseason: a playoff draft with the same friends, a best ball entry on one of the daily apps, or the do-it-yourself format where each manager takes one player from every playoff team. The catch is the same in all of them. You have about ten days to organise it, and the free option everybody used to reach for no longer exists.
Five ways to play the postseason
Sorted by how much organising each one needs. The tag says what it costs, the line at the bottom says what usually goes wrong.
A playoff draft with your league
The same friends, a new draft from the players still alive. The big platforms let you create a fresh league in January and set it to score only the postseason weeks.
The snag: somebody has to set it up and chase twelve people during the holidays.The one-per-team format
The version that circulates on forums every January: take one player from each playoff team, fill fixed position slots, no trades and no waivers afterwards. It works in a spreadsheet and needs no platform at all.
The snag: scoring it by hand gets old by the divisional round.Playoff best ball
The daily fantasy apps run postseason best ball: you draft, your best scorers count automatically, and there is nothing to manage afterwards. Ready the moment the bracket is set.
The snag: every entry costs money, which is a different hobby from a league.A hosted playoff league
Several sites exist purely for this, with full rosters, round-by-round multipliers and the scoring handled for you. If you want a proper twelve-man postseason league without building it, this is the route.
The snag: a hosting charge on top, for four weeks of football.Survivor and pick'em pools
Pick winners, or pick one player you have not used yet, and keep going until you are wrong. The lowest effort of anything here and the easiest to run in a group chat.
The snag: it is a bracket game, not fantasy, and it is over fast.The NFL Playoff Challenge
For years this was the answer: free, official, pick a roster from the remaining teams and keep the ones who survive. It is no longer running, and the address it lived at now lands on a news page.
The snag: it is the reason January searches for a replacement every year.All of it comes down to the same problem. In the ten days between your league's final and Wild Card weekend, somebody has to invent a competition, explain it and get everybody signed up, and that person is usually the one who was already the commissioner all season.
The free one that everybody used is gone
The NFL Playoff Challenge was the default for a long time. It was free, it was official, it took two minutes to enter, and every January a few million casual fans played it without joining a league. It has been discontinued, and the address it ran on now redirects to the league's fantasy news page. The NFL's own fantasy game points to a partner platform instead.
Search interest never went away, which is why the question keeps being asked in the same week every year and the top result is usually somebody on a forum asking it too. What replaced it is the list above, and most of the list either costs money or costs an afternoon of admin.
Checked on 10 September 2026: the old playoff challenge address no longer serves a game, and the league says so itself on its support site. If a straight swap is what you are after, the replacements compared measures each one against what the original actually did.
Playoff football is coming to DraftIcon
This is our own game, so weigh it accordingly. DraftIcon is a weekly draft: packs of NFL cards open, a clock runs on ten picks, the real games score it, and then it clears. The postseason is coming to it, and when it arrives it will work the way the rest of the game does, with no league to found in December and nobody to chase in the group chat.
The useful part of knowing that now is what it does to September. Everything you play between now and January accumulates, so the people who start in the autumn walk into the playoffs with a table, a rival and a record, while everybody else arrives in January with an empty profile.
- A place in your friends table. Ranked on the average of your three best weeks, so it rewards turning up rather than one lucky Sunday.
- A rivalry with a history. Star up to three friends and every meeting is counted, which means January has a scoreline behind it instead of starting at nil.
- A best week in the Hall of Fame. Your own record, dated, with the rank it earned. It is the number you will be trying to beat when the field narrows.
- Drafting under a clock, as a habit. Sixteen or seventeen live drafts before the postseason begins is a real edge over somebody drafting their first one in January.
Draft on Friday, settled by Monday.
A pack opens, the clock runs on each pick, ten cards become a team. The real games decide it and then everybody is level again.
Nothing to wind up, nothing to restart
A season league has one champion and then stops. Here the week that just ended is simply the last one scored, and the next draft opens on schedule whatever the calendar says.
- A new team every week, with nothing carried over
- Free to enter, with nothing on sale inside it
- A practice draft against the coach bot without an account
What a playoff league does better
A postseason draft with your own league has something we cannot manufacture: the same twelve people who spent four months arguing, doing it once more with a shrinking player pool. Choosing between four quarterbacks knowing two of them will be eliminated on Saturday is a genuinely good puzzle, and it only exists because the field narrows.
If your group is up for organising one, organise one. The one-per-team format in the list above takes ten minutes and costs nothing, and it is the version most groups end up keeping.
What we offer is the thing that runs either way, so that January is not the first time you have drafted since August. When the season is over covers the same gap from the other side, and weekly redraft explains the format itself.
Quick answers
Can you play fantasy football during the NFL playoffs?
Yes, but not with your season league, which finishes before the postseason starts. You need a new competition for January, either a playoff draft with the same friends, a paid best ball entry or a do-it-yourself format run in a group chat.
Does my regular league keep going into the playoffs?
No. Almost every league schedules its final for week 17, so the champion is crowned before the NFL postseason begins and the rosters stop scoring at that point.
What happened to the NFL Playoff Challenge?
It was discontinued. The free official game that ran every January no longer exists, and the address it used now redirects to the league's fantasy news pages, which is why the search for a replacement comes back every postseason.
How does a playoff fantasy league work?
You draft only from players whose teams are still alive, and your scoring runs through the postseason rounds. Most versions have no waivers or trades, so a player knocked out on Saturday is simply gone, and picking survivors matters as much as picking scorers.
What is the simplest playoff format?
One player from each playoff team, filling fixed position slots, with no trading afterwards. It needs no platform, takes about ten minutes to draft and can be run in a spreadsheet.
Is there a free playoff fantasy game?
Free options exist, but they are the ones you organise yourself: a new league on a big platform, the one-per-team format, or a survivor pool. The turnkey postseason leagues generally charge a hosting fee and best ball entries cost money each time.
When do I need to set a playoff league up?
In the short gap between your league's final and Wild Card weekend, roughly ten days. That timing over the holidays is the reason most groups talk about doing one and then do not.
Will DraftIcon have playoff football?
Yes, it is coming. It will work like the rest of the game, with a draft you turn up for rather than a league somebody has to found in December.
What is the point of starting before January?
Everything you play accumulates: your position in the friends table, the record against your rivals and your best week in the Hall of Fame. Starting in the autumn means arriving at the postseason with a season behind you instead of an empty profile.
Is DraftIcon free?
Yes, with no entry fee and nothing to buy, and the practice draft needs no account. It is our own game and it is not affiliated with the NFL or with any fantasy platform.
Turn up in September, arrive in January with a record.
Runs in the browser, costs nothing, a fresh team every week. Try the draft against the bot without signing in.