By MIKE HERNDON

As summer flies by and fantasy football season nears, you’re probably hearing a lot about “draft strategy.” Which positions should you target in the early rounds, and which should you wait on? It is better to go Zero RB or Hero RB? Receiver-heavy early rounds? Jump on an elite quarterback or wait?

Any of these strategies can work, but none are likely to work every year. It’s important to be flexible. I’m never going to stubbornly stick to one year after year. There’s only one primary rule for drafting in my book: Value.

All that means is getting the most bang for my buck in each round of the draft, while still fielding a balanced roster.

But how do you gauge that value? It’s more than looking at ADP (average draft position); that’s just following the crowd. You need to make your own decisions on who your primary targets are and how high you’re willing to draft them. And you need to be prepared with fallback options should those favorites get sniped away from you, as they often will.

Doing this means coming up with your own rankings – and preferably, your own tiers, which group players that you consider comparable in value. You can use expert rankings as a guide – and hopefully you’ll find the ones we’ll soon offer here helpful – but they’re all going to differ and none of them will bat 1.000. So ultimately, you need to make these evaluations yourself.

There are scores of different statistics and advanced metrics you can use in making these evaluations, most of which are available through various fantasy sites on the internet. Most of them are quite useful, when taken in context, but it can be confusing to know which to prioritize in your particular league.

The first thing to know is your league scoring settings, because they’ll affect your rankings and your draft strategy. If you play in a PPR league, you’ll consider pass-catching running backs more valuable than in a standard league. If you play in a Superflex league that gives crazy bonuses for quarterbacks, like one league I’m in, you can’t afford to wait on quarterback.

Secondly, use your evaluations to determine what positions are deepest. If you feel confident there are only about eight elite fantasy receivers, but twice as many potential RB1s, it makes more sense to draft receivers early. If you see several receivers that could be late-round steals, maybe you wait on a WR2 (we’ll take a look at some of these potentially undervalued players later this summer). If you think there are more starter-worthy quarterbacks than the number of teams in your one-quarterback league, it makes sense to wait at that position.

I have some primary factors I’m looking for at each position when prioritizing for my drafts. They’re by no means the only factors to consider, and it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t draft players who are weaker in these areas. They’re a starting point. There are no players I absolutely will not draft – there is a point at which the value will be worth it. I may not like a 1,000-yard receiver who doesn’t score touchdowns, for example, but if he’s still on the board late in the draft, the value becomes worth it.

So let’s look at where to start:

Running back: Volume

For our purposes in fantasy football, it doesn’t really matter how efficient a running back is or how many yards per carry they get, except as it projects volume. If they don’t get the ball enough, none of it is going to matter. Whether a back needs 40 carries to get 150 yards or goes it with 20, the 150 yards count the same for us.

Over time, backs with high mileage – 300 carries a year or so – tend to wear down quicker, which is particularly something to consider in dynasty. But in redraft, our primary concern is finding running backs who are going to get the rock with the least chance of breaking down – which is why age is also a concern (backs not named Frank Gore tend to wear down by age 30). These bell-cows are few and far between in this age of committee backfields, which is why they go quickly in the first couple rounds.

Gauging a committee backfield is trickier but is going to be necessary in filling out your roster. In those backfields one back typically gets more carries and goal-line opportunities and the other gets more receptions. Forecasting the split in touches (use past tendencies as a baseline guide) and your league scoring settings (standard or PPR) should help you prioritize.

Receiver: Touchdowns

Thousand-yard seasons are nice, but if you’re looking to score points in fantasy football, you’re going to need touchdowns. With running backs, one typically comes with the other. But for receivers, that is often not the case.

Take, for instance, Bears receiver D.J. Moore. He had over 1,000 yards in three of his five years with the Panthers, but he scored no more than four touchdowns in any of those three seasons, leaving his fantasy value stunted when compared with other top receivers reaching the end zone twice as often. There was a lot of promise there with the targets and the ability. But the numbers didn’t follow because of the lack of scoring. Whether that changes in Chicago will likely depend on another important consideration when drafting receivers – his quarterback’s ability as a passer.

With early picks, I also lean toward go-to receivers – players who are typically going to be the primary option on passing downs. They usually aren’t difficult to spot: Justin Jefferson in Minnesota, Stefon Diggs in Buffalo, Davante Adams in Las Vegas. This is why I’m typically lower on receivers like Tee Higgins, Jaylen Waddle and Devonta Smith. While legitimately good players, they are sharing targets with even better receivers in Ja’Marr Chase, Tyreek Hill and AJ Brown.

As with anything else, that doesn’t mean we don’t target these players at all. These are just tools with which we prioritize and create our tiers.

Quarterback: Average total yardage and touchdowns

As in actual football, there’s no position that has more variables than quarterback. We’re looking for a lot of yards and multiple touchdowns, but that production can come in a variety of ways. For some, a significant portion of it will come on the ground. For some, a lot of it will come in garbage time, as bad teams will be throwing often in the second half because they’ll likely be trailing. We don’t particularly care how we get it as long as we get it consistently.

That word “consistently” is important. That’s why it makes more sense to look at what a quarterback – or any player – does week to week, as opposed to basing the whole evaluation on his yearly numbers. He may have gotten the majority of those yards in three or four monster games, which would leave you high and dry for the rest of them. We’re looking for consistent scorers.

Many fantasy experts will tell you to prioritize quarterbacks with rushing upside. This is because most scoring systems give more value to rushing yardage and touchdowns than passing yardage and touchdowns. However, rushing yardage is often a highly volatile stat for even the best running quarterbacks – ideally, you want some bankable passing numbers to go with it. I’ve got no problem taking a shot on Lamar Jackson or Justin Fields with a high draft pick, but don’t forget about pure throwers like Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert as elite options as well.

Tight end: Targets (primarily downfield)

This is a position in which there are few elite options. Those who are elite are getting targeted like receivers – Travis Kelce, Mark Andrews, maybe George Kittle. Along with quarterback, one of the primary considerations in any draft is how high you’re willing to take a tight end. If it isn’t early enough to get one of these top options, then be sure to see what kind of volume your sleeper of choice is getting and, since it won’t likely be much, what they’re doing with those targets. Can they bust seams and create big plays downfield or are they just a checkdown receiver? Consider also the philosophy of the offensive coordinator and the tendencies of the quarterback – do they tend to target tight ends often? Are they downfield or checkdown looks?

Kicker: Opportunities

There are two things to balance when selecting a kicker. We want one whose offense is good enough to offer him plenty of opportunities. We also want one who is good enough to make those most of those chances. A key for me is looking at how many opportunities they get from beyond 50 yards and how accurate they are from that distance. If your kicker has that kind of range, they’re going to get more opportunities to kick than others who don’t – and those opportunities will be worth more points under most scoring systems. Justin Tucker has been an elite option who covers all these bases.

Defense: Matchups

Rarely is there a defense good enough that you don’t have to consider the strength of the offense they’ll be facing week to week. That has to be an elite defense and there have been precious few of them over the last decade. With that in mind, I’m typically going to stream defenses throughout the season, looking to match a decent defense against a struggling offense week to week. With that in mind, I’m going to be looking at the first few weeks of the schedule when drafting a defense and trying to find one that will be facing weak offenses – particularly in Week One. Trying to project interceptions or defensive touchdowns is a fool’s errand. Sacks are the only individual defensive stat that can be reasonably projected year-to-year.

Categories: Fantasy Football

Tags: draft strategy