Levitan: My Strategy For Fantasy Football Drafts This Season

The landscape of fantasy football has changed. Wide receivers are going earlier than ever, tight end is stronger at the top than ever, and the overwhelming majority of running backs are in committees. We need to adjust our strategy. This article will serve as a “Draft Strategy 101” as we take a macro-level look at the landscape to get you started on your way to a fantasy championship.

EARLY-ROUND STRATEGY & USING RANKINGS

We want to stick mostly to our rankings in the first few rounds, while also considering the ADP (Average Draft Position) on your platform.

That said, we really need to understand what our opponents will do — especially at the WR position. In most home leagues, we expect very strong wide receiver values to fall through the cracks. Players such as Malik Nabers, Tank Dell, Tee Higgins, Christian Kirk, Rome Odunze, and Jaxon Smith-Njigba are likely to slip far past our rank. That allows us to break ties in the early rounds of home leagues by leaning into other positions.

In other words, we want to catch the falling receiver values in the middle rounds more than we want to reach for dead-zone (Rounds 3 through 6) running backs. For example, if we take two RBs in the first three rounds, we can then load up at WR, TE, and QB. We don’t want to be in a spot where we are compelled to take Rachaad White or Josh Jacobs over Malik Nabers, Michael Pittman, DK Metcalf, Josh Allen, DeVonta Smith, Trey McBride, Dalton Kincaid, etc.

WHERE DO WE PREFER TO PICK?

As I noted here, Round 2 of fantasy drafts is very flat this year. Case in point: We bumped Jonathan Taylor‘s yards-per-carry projection by 0.1, and that caused him to jump four spots in our rankings. That’s very unusual, and it just goes to show that there’s not that big of a difference between a mid-second-round pick and a late one.

Because of that, if you have the option to choose what pick you get, we prefer the top five spots. We aren’t giving up much at all in projection by picking late in Round 2 vs. early in Round 2. And then we get to pick early in Round 3.

Note that we don’t think there are any QBs or TEs worth a Round 1 or Round 2 pick this season.

HANDLING QUARTERBACK

The smaller the league, the more we want to emphasize getting an elite quarterback. For more on 8- and 10-team leagues, head here.

In normal 12-team half-PPR leagues, we’d think of QB in a few tiers:

• In the first tier, a Round 3/4 pick on Josh Allen or Jalen Hurts is certainly strong, especially if we’re in a weak room where we can out-value our opponents at RB and WR.
• Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes are in the next tier and are strong Round 4/5 targets.
• We suspect C.J. Stroud will be over-drafted due to his lack of rushing. But he’s in the tier with Anthony Richardson (who is a priority target in redraft leagues — people are scared off by the injury risk, but in most redraft leagues, we can easily replace injuries at QB off the wire), Joe Burrow, Kyler Murray, and Dak Prescott.

Ideally, we’ll land one of the dual-threat QBs: Allen, Hurts, Lamar, A-Rich, or Kyler. If we get caught at QB and have to wait, Jayden Daniels is a priority target for his rushing ceiling.

HANDLING RUNNING BACK