How to Win Your Fantasy Football League
If you’re looking for a quick, down-and-dirty approach to your upcoming fantasy football draft, you’ve come to the right place. Here are 11 rules to follow that will set you up for success this season.
Whether you’re striving to win your fantasy football league this year or you just don’t want to finish in last place, you need a strategy. And if you’re looking for a quick, down-and-dirty approach to a draft that is just days (or perhaps hours) away, you’ve come to the right place. Here are 11 rules to follow—some specific to 2024, and some timeless—that will set you up for success this season.
1. Know Your League Rules
Winners know the rules. So hit the little settings icon on your league home page and scroll through them. I’m serious. Are there points per receptions? Do you lose points for interceptions? Did your commissioner sneak in any rule changes without asking people?
Then there are the starting lineup formats, which are even more impactful than scoring differences. Understanding how supply and demand will affect your specific league will massively influence your rankings. In an eight- or 10-team league, for instance, it is more important to have a higher-end quarterback and tight end than in a 12-team league. In a 10-team league that features two starting receiver spots and one flex, there will be a minimum of 20 receivers and a maximum of 30 receivers playing each week. But in a 12-team league with three receiver spots and two flexes, there is a weekly minimum of 36 receivers and a maximum of 60. In the latter league, you might want CeeDee Lamb with the first pick. In the former, you probably want to take a running back.
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The same concept applies to a superflex roster spot. If you can start a maximum of one quarterback each week, Josh Allen is roughly worth the 30th or 40th pick. If you can start two quarterbacks, the demand doubles, meaning Josh might be the first overall pick.
Is there an injured reserve slot? That makes someone like Carolina rookie running back Jonathon Brooks—who may start the year on the physically unable to perform list—much more enticing. You can draft Brooks now, throw him on IR, and add another player before Week 1.
2. Know Your Platform
The easiest way to differentiate your team from everyone else’s is to avoid using the same draft list or ranking. In the draft room, everyone in your league will be shown one identical set of rankings. Research has shown that even if you don’t want to be influenced by that list, merely staring at it could impact you. So have a different set of rankings side by side with your draft to stand out. That’s especially helpful if you’ve taken time ahead of your draft to identify the players that your league’s platform is higher or lower on than other platforms. We have our rankings and draft tracker you can use here. But any place works.
For example, here are a few receivers who could be high-upside picks in the middle rounds and are ranked lower on ESPN than on Yahoo:
- Cooper Kupp, Rams: 24th on Yahoo, 45th on ESPN
- Rashee Rice, Chiefs: 48th on Yahoo, 69th on ESPN
- Joshua Palmer, Chargers: 125th on Yahoo, 148th on ESPN
And here are a couple of receivers who could be high-upside picks in the middle rounds and are ranked lower on Yahoo than on ESPN:
- Malik Nabers, Giants: 27th on ESPN, 45th on Yahoo
- Michael Pittman Jr., Colts: 20th on ESPN, 34th on Yahoo
There are examples like this all over the place. Yahoo is 40 spots higher on Raheem Mostert and Kyler Murray than ESPN. Evan Engram is 40 spots higher on ESPN than Yahoo. Target the guys who are really low on the platform you are using and “reach” a round early for them. It’s the easiest way to gain an edge.
3. Take a Running Back (or Two) Early
Generally speaking, taking running backs early has fallen out of style. But the way platforms like ESPN and Yahoo rank receivers in the middle rounds means you can snag a running back (or two) in the first couple of rounds and still get outstanding receiver values later.
Take Christian McCaffrey, Breece Hall, or Bijan Robinson in the first round if you have the opportunity. Jonathan Taylor, Derrick Henry, and Saquon Barkley are great options in the second. And De’Von Achane and Isiah Pacheco are solid picks in Round 3.
Grabbing one of the top 11 running backs in the first three rounds will make your life a lot easier, and you can fill in your second running back later.
4. Target Receivers in the Middle Rounds
On both ESPN and Yahoo platforms, you want to find high-value receivers in the middle rounds. Don’t feel pressured to take a second running back there unless an awesome value pick is staring you in the face. As Ben Gretch at the great substack Stealing Signals says, default in the early-to-middle rounds to stacking receiver depth and consider players at other positions—like quarterback, running back, and tight end—to be “detours” to that goal. Whether those detours are worth it depends on the player’s value—how far they’re falling and the scarcity of who is left at that position.
This is much more important in leagues that start three receivers than in leagues that start two, but a good rule of thumb is to try to get five receivers through the first 10 rounds.
“You’re able to get through six or seven rounds with a top-five quarterback, a top-five tight end, three or four pretty damn good wide receivers, and a hero running back,” Ian Hartitz of the site Fantasy Life told me in July. “That’s my preferred strategy.”
5. Get a Quarterback Who Runs
Four of the top five quarterbacks this year are rushing quarterbacks: Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, and Anthony Richardson (the one guy in the top five who isn’t an elite rusher is Patrick Mahomes, who is the exception that proves the rule). As long as fantasy leagues’ rules continue to dictate that a rushing yard is worth 2.5 times a passing yard, this trend will stick around. So the key is to try to snag one of the top rushing quarterbacks around the fourth round. If they don’t make it that far, look for someone like Richardson or Murray in the 50s or 60s (Murray, on ESPN, is shockingly ranked in the 90s). Richardson has elite rushing upside. Murray ran for 11 touchdowns in 2020 and is healthy once again. Richardson has shades of Hurts in 2020 and is being propped up by the hype surrounding him.
If those quarterbacks come and go too, I’d recommend skipping pocket passers like Joe Burrow and Dak Prescott. Instead, wait for a quarterback like Jayden Daniels. Daniels has RGIII 2.0 potential as another Heisman-winning no. 2 pick out of Washington. And just as Justin Fields was a perennial top-five weekly fantasy quarterback in Chicago despite being a disappointment in real life, you don’t even have to believe that Daniels will be great IRL. He just has to run, and that will give him a high enough floor to potentially vault him into the top 10 each week—which would be incredible value for someone who’s currently ranked 79th on Yahoo and 99th on ESPN.
Also, make sure to keep an eye on Fields on the waiver wire, as he’ll likely not start for the Steelers in Week 1 but could be an honest-to-God top-five fantasy quarterback if he eventually takes the job from Russell Wilson.
As John Daigle at Establish the Run told me in July, the infatuation with receivers at the top of drafts has made great quarterbacks and tight ends easier to get in later rounds. That means drafters can sidestep the running backs ranked in this range—the mid-30s, 40s, and 50s, broadly speaking—to attack receivers, tight ends, and quarterbacks. These running backs are often collectively referred to as a “dead zone”—meaning they’re projected to score a lot of points but are unlikely to reach those totals. Daigle describes these guys much in the same way some contestants are described on The Bachelor: “They are there for the wrong reasons.” Instead, elite quarterbacks and tight ends are the way to go when not targeting receivers in these rounds.
6. Grab a Top-Sevenish Tight End
The tight end position is as deep as it has ever been this year, but it’s also closer at the top where there are a bunch of players with reasonable cases to end up as the group’s top scorer. The general consensus this year is that these are the top seven tight ends: Sam LaPorta, Travis Kelce, Trey McBride, Mark Andrews, Dalton Kincaid, Kyle Pitts, and George Kittle. And my advice is to target one of those seven, even if you have to draft them a little earlier than you’re comfortable with.
If you end up with a top quarterback like Jackson, Allen, or Mahomes, it can make sense to stack that passer with their tight end—so Andrews, Kincaid, or Kelce, respectively.
Or if you are tantalized by the upside of Pitts, you can get on the roller coaster again now that the Falcons have Kirk Cousins under center and not Desmond Ridder. I understand if you never want to do that ever again. I do want to just note that Pitts is so young that three—three!—players who went in the first round of this year’s NFL draft are older than him. Not to mention Pitts had a 1,000-yard season three years ago.
If you don’t grab one of the top seven tight ends, there is a neat and tidy next tier worth dipping into. David Njoku was the no. 1 tight end in fantasy in the second half of last season. His value is depressed because he didn’t perform that well with Deshaun Watson at the helm. But Watson is already dealing with shoulder issues (again) and I’ve been wondering about what Njoku could do with Browns backup Jameis Winston. Njoku has upside.
The Jaguars’ Engram had the second-most catches in a single season ever at tight end last year (114). Yet there is a wild disparity in his ranking on various platforms: ESPN has him 57th while Yahoo has him 92nd. Take note of Engram on Yahoo.
Then there’s Taysom Hill, who, believe it or not, could be as relevant as ever for the Saints. New Orleans has little depth at running back behind Alvin Kamara, and that just might make Hill the team’s Swiss Army–knife goal-line option in the red zone.
7. Target Running Backs Late
If you get one running back early and hammer wide receivers over the next six rounds—with a detour for an elite tight end and an elite quarterback—you can then turn back toward running backs. And there are a couple of pockets of running backs worth targeting.
On ESPN, Raheem Mostert (last year’s no. 2 fantasy running back) is ranked outside the top 100 (!). Tony Pollard, who was a top-20 pick last year, is ranked 88th—despite being healthier this season than he was entering last season. And Chase Brown might be the Bengals’ starting running back, but he is also going outside the top 100.
Blake Corum has a ton of upside as a player who can carve out an individual role on the Rams, but he could also be a huge player if starter Kyren Williams—who has had multiple foot and ankle injuries each of the past two seasons—misses any time.
Yahoo has some pretty juicy running back values in late rounds. For example, you could use your last two picks on J.K. Dobbins (ranked 146th on Yahoo), who might straight up win the starting running back job for the Chargers, and rookie Kimani Vidal, who is basically unranked on Yahoo and could be worth rostering just in case he finds a role early or someone gets injured.
Bucky Irving on Tampa Bay looks like a more decisive runner than Rachaad White, and he’s currently unranked and could be there for your last pick.
8. Don’t Bother With a Defense or Kicker Until the Final Two Rounds
Just don’t do it. In fact, on Yahoo or Sleeper, you don’t even have to select a kicker. Just take another position player and make sure to add a kicker before the season begins. Don’t feel the pressure to fill out your starting lineup. Get bench depth at running back and receiver.
9. Take Risks
Scott Barrett at Fantasy Points has radicalized me on this. Fantasy football is not the stock market, where you can accrue small gains over time. It’s a Ricky Bobby–style, “If you ain’t first, you’re last” type of system. You have to swing for the fences, and therefore you cannot be afraid to strike out. That means taking risks on guys like Indianapolis’s Richardson, Washington’s Daniels, or Miami’s Achane. These guys aren’t steady picks. But if they hit, they could win you your league.
Similarly, you want to focus on upside with your later picks. Simply put, a guy who could be a total game changer but could also be completely useless is a better late-round pick than someone who will probably be fine. Picking Taysom Hill for the chance that he is a goal-line running back—even though he might literally not touch the ball on offense—is better than, say, taking the Raiders’ Alexander Mattison. Anyone you take outside the top 120 might get cut in September. But it’s better to go that route than to play it safe.
10. Don’t Take Wide Receivers Who Have Terrible Quarterbacks
This is the rare rule that’s backed by math but also contributes to your mental health. There’s a great stat from Josh Norris at Underdog Fantasy that the highest-ranked receiver in a bottom-seven offense last season was DeAndre Hopkins, who finished at WR29. In other words, guys from bad offenses don’t produce. And for the most part, guys on bad offenses have bad quarterbacks. Avoid bad offenses. That means units like New England’s, with rookie quarterback Drake Maye. And it means teams that have curious QB situations, like Minnesota with Sam Darnold, Tennessee with Will Levis, Carolina with Bryce Young, Pittsburgh with Wilson and Fields, and New York with Daniel Jones. If you grab receivers from there, you better believe that their coaching staffs can elevate the offense overall. And if you don’t believe in the quarterback or the coach, then avoid the situation. Don’t be staring at your TV on Sunday feeling like you need a miracle for your receiver to get a catch.
11. Have Fun
This is all extremely silly. To borrow a line from Fantasy Yoda Adam Harstad, fantasy football is an entertainment product on top of an entertainment product. In truth, fantasy is fun because it is one of the best ways for adults to keep in touch with their friends as they get older and live more siloed lives. The point of fantasy is not to have plus-EV drafts. The point is to rile up your friends. Have fun. Talk shit. Don’t stress.
