What Is a Fantasy Football Keeper League?
If you are active on fantasy Twitter, almost every bit of analysis and information you consume will be about redraft or dynasty. As a result, modern fantasy football managers will often jump straight from redraft into dynasty when they feel ready. In the olden days, there was a stop along the way: keeper leagues.
Even though dynasty has really overtaken keeper leagues as the second-most popular format, keeper leagues are still quite popular. So, what are they?
Think of keeper leagues like the story of Goldilocks. You have three bowls of porridge — err — fantasy leagues. A redraft league is too cold, with each season having absolutely no bearing on the next. A dynasty league is too hot, with each season entirely connected to the previous one. Keeper leagues are just right.
In keeper leagues, each season is connected to the one after it. Managers retain some of their players year after year, but not all of them like in a dynasty league.
Much like any other fantasy football format, there isn’t any set of objective rules as to how your keeper league must operate.
Before drafting for the 2024 fantasy football season, each manager must designate a specific number of players they would like to keep from their 2023 roster. How many? That’s up to your league rules.
Say you drafted Christian McCaffrey third overall in 2023. While keeper rules across leagues may vary, I struggle to think of a scenario where you’d be allowed to keep McCaffrey but would choose not to. Assuming you keep the best running back in the NFL (and fantasy) when your 2023 draft begins, you already have McCaffrey on your roster.
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With each of your fellow managers keeping players, the annual draft pool is never going to consist of the full set of players like in redraft leagues. Instead, it will be limited to the veterans not kept and this year’s rookies.
This style of play provides a nice middle ground between redraft and dynasty. You still get to draft some new players but also stand to benefit for multiple years when you get something correct.
Common Rules for Keeper Leagues
Like any fantasy league, the rules must be clear from the start. Whether you are forming a new league or converting an existing redraft league into a keeper, the decision to make a league keeper needs to be conveyed and agreed upon well before your draft occurs. It is important for managers joining the league to enter the draft knowing that what they do matters beyond the upcoming season.
I only bring this up due to experience. It may seem obvious that your league rules should be decided in advance, but I’ve seen this issue happen with friends and acquaintances. I don’t want your experience to be ruined by avoidable mistakes.
If it seems ridiculous that leagues would convert to a keeper format on a whim midseason, good! It should! But I’ve seen it happen before. A commissioner decides to make a league keeper and then tells everyone they can retain a couple of players from last season. The problem is when last year’s draft occurred, the league was a redraft. That is not the right way to do it.
If you want your league to utilize keepers, you can’t make that call during the season — it has to happen before the draft. This way, managers can strategize midseason or take a few more risks on younger players they might not otherwise target in a traditional redraft fantasy league.
One of the first rules to be hammered out is when managers must declare their keepers. As with any rule, there are commonly accepted practices, but there’s no objectively correct system.
Typically, managers must declare their keepers at a date shortly before your league’s draft. This can be the day before the draft, or even a week or two earlier. I am partial to sooner, as it enables managers to strategize based on the players they know to be available in the draft pool. But even one day, in theory, should be enough to come up with a plan.
While the keeper deadline matters, it won’t fundamentally alter your league. It’s a necessary rule but far from the most important. That title goes to the cost associated with keeping players.
Deciding what fantasy managers must sacrifice to retain a player is the single most important driver of strategy in a keeper league.
The first step is determining if you want any cost at all. In the first keeper league I ever did, we had a maximum of three keepers per season. That was the entirety of our restrictions on keepers.
This format is simple and easy to understand. However, it’s boring and devoid of strategy. Without any cost to keep players, every single manager is incentivized to do the exact same thing: keep their three best players.
If you’re looking to play in a keeper league, it stands to reason you appreciate the strategy element. Therefore, I strongly advise linking keepers to your draft.
In doing so, keeping a player will cost a manager a particular draft pick. A common way to do this is one or two rounds above where that player was drafted the previous season.
For example, if you drafted Michael Pittman Jr. in the seventh round last season, you could sacrifice your upcoming sixth-round pick to keep him. When your draft begins, your sixth-round selection is already Pittman.
Assuming your league does choose to go with a progressive increase in keeper price, this inevitably leads to the question of what to do with first-round picks. After all, there’s no such thing as a zeroth-round pick.
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There are two ways to handle first-round picks. You can opt to allow first-rounders to be kept for first-rounders. This would prevent any team from keeping more than one player from the first two rounds unless that team trades for an additional first-round pick.
The other option is not to allow players taken in the first round to be kept at all. There is value in this option because it guarantees a handful of elite players returning to the draft pool each year.
How Many Players Do You Keep in Keeper Leagues?
There’s no hard rule on how many keepers you must use. As mentioned above, my first keeper league had us keep up to three. I am currently in two keeper leagues. In one, we can keep up to five players. In the other, we keep up to six.
In a previous version of one of my keeper leagues, there was no limit on the number of players you could keep as long as you had the draft capital to afford them. This results in a lot of players being kept, though. If you opt to go this route, I would advise making it more expensive to keep players so not every keepable player is worth keeping.
If you’re unsure how drastic of an impact you want keepers to have on your fantasy league or are worried about super teams being formed, opt for fewer keepers. In a 10- or 12-person league, allowing three keepers provides a solid middle ground.
It should also be noted that managers are not forced to keep the maximum, or any at all. They would be starting the season with a clean slate.
How Long Can Players Remain on Your Roster in Keeper Leagues?
Not to sound like a broken record, but, again, this is entirely up to you. If you want to set a limit, you can, but you don’t have to. In the first keeper league that I keep referencing, there was a three-year limit. So, any player you draft in 2024, if kept in 2025 and 2026, will automatically return to the draft pool in 2027.
The above system artificially limits how long a team can keep a player. I prefer rules that make it more organic. If you were to implement a progressive cost structure, which is most effective in an
auction format, eventually, in theory, players will simply cost too much to keep.
This system is not without its flaws, though. Say you drafted Puka Nacua in the 13th round last year. It’s rare to find a player that good for that cheap. But when you do, it’s going to be very difficult for the price structure to ever force that player back into the draft pool.
Even if the cost goes up by two rounds each year, Nacua won’t reach third-round value until 2028. If he continues to perform like he did as a rookie, he’s going to be a no-brainer keeper for another five years.
To be clear, this is neither good nor bad. I am just explaining how it works so you can be informed on whether it’s something you want in your league.
In fantasy baseball keeper leagues, the prevalence of elite late-round values, the duration of careers, and the larger rosters make time limits almost essential. Imagine drafting the baseball equivalent of the aforementioned Nacua in the 19th round. You would have him quite literally for the rest of his career.
In fantasy football keeper leagues, it’s not as important. Sure, there will be Arian Fosters and Alvin Kamaras who pop up, but they’re few and far between. For the most part, the elite players are the elite players.
Even when you find that late-round gem you know will be keepable his entire career, that career isn’t usually that long. Take 2023 Kyren Williams as an example. He sure looks like that type of guy, but the odds are against him being this good for more than a couple of years.
As a league, you must balance the desire to reward managers who get something very right like that against the inherent advantage that comes with having a high-end player locked onto a roster for a very low price.
Keeper leagues create a bit of a conundrum for commissioners. The goal of each individual fantasy manager is to create a super team, but super teams are inherently bad for the league. One or two managers dominating a league for years with no real end in sight is how leagues fold.
I could go on for thousands of words talking about all the various iterations of fantasy football formats. Hopefully, you have enough of an idea as to how keeper leagues work to get started if the format is something you feel you might enjoy.
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