Fantasy Football Draft Strategy - 2024
You can ask ten different people for the best way to draft in Fantasy Football, and you'll get 10 different answers.
Advice is usually some combination of research, best available, or "go with your gut." And none of that is inherently wrong.
I'm far from a pro, but after over a decade of redraft, dynasty startups, and rookie drafts, I've gotten semi-decent at planning my drafts. You can definitely win your Fantasy Football league after a mediocre draft performance, but you'll be fighting from behind and hoping on the luck of injuries and good bye weeks. Getting a leg up at the beginning of the season with a solid draft result makes you competitive early, and powerful on the trade block.
I think it's important to take your draft serious if you're serious about winning the league.
Below I'll outline 8 tips for winning your Fantasy Football Draft. These tips are applicable to any draft format: snake, linear, or auction; and for any draft type: redraft, keeper, rookies, or dynasty startups.
How To Draft In Fantasy Football: 7 Tips
1 - Familiarize Yourself With League Settings
This seems like a no-brainer, but the first step in getting an advantage over your opponents in a Fantasy Football draft is understanding all the nuances of your league. Some of your league settings will have more bearing on your draft strategy than others, but they'll all help you plan ahead in some regard.
Draft Settings: To state the obvious, be well aware of how your draft is laid out, and research accordingly. If you're in an Auction Draft, you'll want to understand how the budgeting works, what your limits are, and how nominations and bids work.
If you're in a snake draft, pay attention to your draft position. Will you be on the end with some back-to-back picks, or in the middle with time between?
League Scoring: This is probably the single most important piece of information you can have going into your Fantasy Football draft.
As we'll talk about in the next step, understanding player value is crucial in getting the best picks, but to do that you first need to understand your scoring so you can research appropriately. Does your league offer bonuses for Points Per Reception (PPR)? Do quarterbacks get 4 or 6 points per touchdown? Is there a Tight End or First Down bonus?
All of these questions affect the way you rank and prioritize players.
Key Takeaway: Any good draft strategy sits on a foundation of understanding your draft settings and league scoring. Every other strategy is build on this knowledge.
2 - Value Based Drafting (VBD)
While Average Draft Pick is a great way to use Wisdom Of The Crowd to inform your draft strategy, it's the bare minimum of research. All your opponents will be using it— even if they're using Auto Pick.
I've always been a big fan of the Value Over Replacement (VOR) approach to assessing player value in a Fantasy Football draft. The Value Based Drafting strategy uses VOR, and assumes a baseline player at each position. Usually the first true "bench spot" for your league at that position. The projected points of every other player at that position is compared to the projection of the baseline, to give the VOR offset.
This, again, is why understanding your league settings is so crucial. The first replacement Quarterback in a Superflex league is going to be different than the in a 1-QB league— and it also varies by league size (10-team? 12-team?)
Value Over Replacement Player is a metric that gives you a more quantitative assessment when deciding between two players of similar ADP. Our Value Over Replacement charts help compare the two and identify good players to reach for or wait on.
Our VOR Analyzer can compare VOR to ADP with your specific league settings. What can you tell about the circled groups of players in the plot below?
Key Takeaway: Players are more than their ADP. Use more sophisticated means of player value to help compare players at all rounds of your draft.
3 - Leverage Positional Scarcity
Once you understand player value, you can start to assess player scarcity. Some drafts and positions, especially Quarterbacks, see very little variation between value over the course of several rounds, while top-tier running backs are way more scarce.
Understanding how large each tier of players at a given can help you plan up to several rounds in advance. If Wide Receivers are running off the board, you might need to get one early before the next tier drop. Or, you might reach for a Running Back because you know the caliber of player won't drop to you in the next round.
Key Takeaway: Use charts and tables to highlight tiers and know how many players are left at each position in a tier, and plan accordingly while thinking ahead to future rounds.
4 - Practice, Practice, Practice: Mock Drafts
Like any good skill, practice is invaluable. While your league opponents will be unpredictable, you can get a great sense of how your draft will go by doing lots of mock drafts. You can run the whole thing yourself and use the knowledge you have of Player Value and scarcity, or you can start/find a mock draft with others on a platform like Sleeper.
Doing at least a few mock drafts from your draft position will help get you acquainted with Average Draft Picks and the scarcity we already talked about. You'll get more comfortable making decisions on the fly and creating good draft habits.
Key Takeaway: Practice makes… prepared.
5 - Watch Your Bye Weeks
This is a simple yet often overlooked aspect of having a successful draft strategy: watch your bye weeks. Some might tell you it's best to pile up on one week and write it off as a loss. That's a bad idea. Spreading out your bye weeks gives you the best chance to backfill with bench players and win each week.
This is especially important when considering the first 6-7 rounds of your draft. These are likely going to be your top players throughout the season, and missing three or four of them in the same week will almost guarantee a loss.
Having said all that, don't reach too far out the current tier of the positions you need just because the only players left share a bye week you've already got covered. Use this as a guiding metric between
6 - Avoid Risky Players
When possible, try to avoid risky players. The two main risk factors are injuries and boom-or-bust players.
As for injuries, consider both history of injuries and "older" players. A running back may have a big upside by being the bell cow for their NFL team, but this could also result in a higher likelihood of injury.
Boom-or-bust players share similar projections and value with more consistent players, but those points will be harder to predict. These players can help you win in a pinch, but can also disappoint when you need them the most.
Key Takeaway: Be aware of which players are least likely to make it through the entire season, and think about how consistent a player might be.
Bonus tip: Look for deep players that are currently injured, but may heal up early in the season.
7 - Late Round Sleeper Picks
A late round sleeper pick is a player that can have a lot of value but is going late in draft (with a deep ADP).
Being able to identify these players can be a huge advantage when your opponents feel like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel.
The same tool we showed above can help you identify some great late round picks. Look for player in the later rounds with higher VOR.
Key Takeaway: Fantasy Football Drafts don't end after the 5th round. Play hard until the whistle and make each round of your draft count.