How to Draft From Picks 1-4 in 2025 Fantasy Football

Draft time is upon us. Your fantasy football draft strategy is obviously heavily dependent on what pick you have. In this article, we’ll dig into what we think is the optimal strategy if you have an early pick in the first round. For the purpose of this article, we will be using FantasyPros half-PPR ADP, though we understand many home leagues will not play out like this, and we’ll try to talk through multiple ways your draft could play out.

ROUND 1 STRATEGY

We’ll start with the top two running backs. In most leagues, Saquon Barkley will be the first pick fresh off an Offensive Player of the Year campaign in which he topped the 2,000-yard mark despite playing only 16 games. Saquon averaged a ridiculous 5.8 yards per carry on 345 carries and was a major reason why Philadelphia won the Super Bowl last season. With the Eagles still boasting one of the best offensive lines in football, Barkley looks poised to run it back in 2025.

With that being said, the Tush Push is still legal, and Jalen Hurts had 14 rushing TDs to Barkley’s 13 last year. Getting vultured at the 1-yard line is still a concern for Barkley, and he only had 43 targets in 16 games. Bijan Robinson, on the other hand, had nine rushing scores inside the 5-yard line in 2024 (Saquon had four) and had 72 targets. He might not have the otherworldly rushing efficiency like Barkley behind an inferior Atlanta offensive line, but Robinson gets equally ridiculous volume with 376 total opportunities last year. We actually have Robinson ranked ahead of Barkley in full-PPR formats because his target volume should be far better, but you can’t go wrong with either RB. We lean toward Saquon in standard and half-PPR leagues and Robinson in full-PPR formats, but both project as high-end RB1s.