Players Who Are More Valuable in Redraft than Best Ball

Redraft and best ball fantasy football are both season-long formats, but the strategies needed for each differ vastly in some areas. For those who aren’t familiar, best ball is a format where you draft your team and the platform automatically fills your lineup with your highest-scoring players after the week ends. There is no waiver wire, no free agency, no trades, nothing — just draft and check back in January.

Because of that, certain player archetypes are far riskier in best ball because you can’t drop them in-season. On the other hand, there are some players who are ideal late-round redraft picks because you can draft them in August, see what happens leading up to the season, and potentially either drop them before Week 1 or right after Week 1 after you see how they’re utilized. Roster spots are valuable in redraft, and there will almost certainly be some waiver-wire darlings early in the year. It can be tricky to know whether you should hold onto a player you drafted with late-season upside or drop them for the new toy who popped off in Week 1. Today, we’ll discuss late-round players you can target in redraft, where it should be pretty clear pretty quickly whether you need to hold onto them or whether they’re droppable.

Anthony Richardson

Richardson averaged 47.5 rushing yards and 0.6 rushing touchdowns per game across 10 healthy games in 2024. The passing is certainly an adventure, but it’s well documented at this point that running is a cheat code for fantasy quarterbacks, and Richardson has that ability in spades. Richardson is locked into a starting quarterback competition with Daniel Jones at the moment, but he’s a legitimate fantasy starter at quarterback. He’s the best example of this because you don’t even have to wait until after Week 1 to drop him: Either you’re starting him if he gets the nod over Jones, or he’s waiver-wire fodder until Jones loses the job.