5 Tips To Help You Crush Your Fantasy Drafts

With the NFL season now under 100 days away, it’s never too late to start prepping for your fantasy drafts. Here are five of my best tips to dominate your league mates in the draft and strive one step closer to winning that highly coveted fantasy championship.

TIP ONE: Going double running back the first two rounds works.

Unless Cooper Kupp or Justin Jefferson falls to you at a value, it’s basically never worth going with a WR in the first round. No WR that finished as fantasy’s #1 or #2 WR has ever repeated in the history of fantasy football. Instead, it’s much more worth taking a running back, which has much higher positional value. There’s a much higher chance of picking an elite tier running back that outperforms their ADP than an elite tier receiver that outperforms their ADP. Besides, WR is easily the deepest position in fantasy football, as you’ll probably end up picking up key contributors off of waiver wires or stream different players per week as your season progresses. It is much harder to find those gems at the running back position though, so securing two elite running backs early on will make the foundation of your lineup rock solid. Also, if you go double running back, there will most likely still plenty of quality WR1 options in the third round waiting for you, such as Keenan Allen, Mike Evans, and Ceedee Lamb.

TIP TWO: Look to see if Travis Kelce is falling

Right now, most fantasy football platforms have Travis Kelce as a third/fourth round ADP, which is absolutely insane. We are talking about one of the safest players who has been atop the rarest position in fantasy at tight end for five plus years now. Even though he didn’t finish as the TE1 last season, behind Mark Andrews, the fact that Kelce, a player who was drafted as high as the third overall pick in drafts last year, is now sitting in the draft this late, just screams value. He’s going to most likely average double digit targets every game, making him an extremely safe option, so if you can snag him in the mid to late third or early fourth, that’s an absolute steal and he’s a player who you need to keep your eyes on.

TIP THREE: Target at least two third year breakout wide receivers.

Every year, there’s always wide receivers that take a massive third year jump. Examples of this last year were players like Diontae Johnson, Deebo Samuel, and Hunter Renfrow. Right now, the third year wide receivers that scream off the charts to me are Ceedee Lamb, who‘s going to soak up targets now that Amari Cooper is with the Browns and Michael Gallup is injured for at least the first half of the season, Michael Pittman Jr, who has little competition behind him and has Matt Ryan, a QB that’s fostered top 10 WRs in the past throwing balls to him now, and Gabriel Davis, who’s now the WR2 of an MVP frontrunner in Josh Allen and was coming off of a record breaking performance in the AFC divisional against the Chiefs.

TIP FOUR: Draft at least one second year breakout running back.

There’s a similar chronological pattern to wide receivers with running backs, who tend to breakout in their sophomore campaign. Last year, those breakouts were Jonathan Taylor, D’Andre Swift, and AJ Dillon. This year, the second year running backs that I’m keeping an eye on are Javonte Williams, who is for sure going to see more work on a much improved offense even with Melvin Gordon still there, Travis Etienne, a dual threat back who is going to be atop the depth chart for most of the season with James Robinson out with an Achilles injury, and Elijah Mitchell, who has insane upside and is locked into 15+ opportunities per game.

TIP FIVE: Don’t be afraid to wait for a QB.

Every year, there are always QBs that have an ADP of rounds 8–10 that end up finishing as a top 10 QB. Last year, they were Tom Brady, Jalen Hurts, Matthew Stafford, and Joe Burrow. This year, the quarterbacks that are worth waiting on are Trey Lance, who is a dual threat QB that is playing under one of the best offensive schemes in San Francisco, Russell Wilson, who is now under a new change in scenery in Denver with a much improved offense overall, and Aaron Rodgers, who has finished as a top 8 QB in every single year but one throughout his entire career. Out of all three of them, you might be most hesitant with taking Aaron Rodgers because he doesn’t have Davante Adams anymore, but just know that great quarterbacks make anything work, and he’s one of those great quarterbacks.