Fantasy football is growing more and more every year. With so many different league types and sizes, it can get overwhelming when sitting down for your draft, whether it is your first draft or 20th of the year.
When preparing for your fantasy football draft, it's important to know your league size, scoring settings and roster construction. This can help you determine how you should proceed in the draft based on where you pick. Everything can change depending on how your league-mates draft, but it can be helpful to go into your draft with a specific strategy in mind. While you may have to adjust on the fly during the draft, it helps to have a general philosophy so that you don't veer too far off track.
Here are Sporting News' best fantasy football draft strategies.
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Best fantasy football draft strategies
Value-based drafting
Some may think this is just drafting the best available player, but that's not the case. This is a highly intricate strategy that can get very confusing, very quickly. Essentially, you narrow the draft pool to players who are going to be regulars in starting lineups. You determine who is the lowest-ranked player that meets that qualification, and you see how many points they are projected to score for the season.
You then use this information to determine the value of the players that are still on the board. Your goal is to find the players who have the greatest differential in projected points scored from the lowest player. You would think this is just the best player available, but you have to look at each position and determine which one has the greatest value from the lowest projected starter.
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Here is an example:
Let's say Player A is a running back who is projected to score 200 fantasy points, with the lowest starting RB projected at 100 points. Let's say that Player B is a wide receiver who is projected to score 180 fantasy points, with a replacement-level WR projected at 80 points. Both players have a 100-point difference.
This is where the draft board and draft progress come into play. If the draft is favoring wide receivers, and the next best available WR is projected at 150 points, and the next best available RB is at 120 points, Player A would be the better pick from a value-based drafting perspective because they are offering more value over the next available player at their position (120 vs 150 points).
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Zero RB
While value-based drafting can become technical and confusing, the remaining draft strategies are aptly named and relatively straightforward.
The Zero RB strategy doesn't mean that you don't draft running backs at all; it just means that the way that the draft board falls, you would be missing out on value by forcing yourself to take a running back. Instead, you may load up with three dominant wide receivers, a serviceable tight end and quarterback, and then finally look at taking lower-tier running backs. You spend your first five picks not drafting a running back, then you look at running backs who are likely in a crowded backfield, should still have some value, but aren't the outright starter for their team.
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Hero RB
The Hero RB strategy is also known as Anchor RB. This strategy involves drafting an elite running back with your first draft pick; one of the top-ranked players at the position. Then, you address the other team needs. You will use your second, third and fourth picks to draft at least two wide receivers, and then you may even go after a tight end or quarterback, before selecting another running back.
The goal of this strategy is to have a high-producing RB1 as your foundation at the position, and then focus on building out some other starters for your team before returning and adding another running back. This is a very common draft strategy, where fantasy managers go RB, WR, WR, WR, TE, RB in their drafts.
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Robust RB
The Robust RB draft strategy would be almost the opposite of Zero RB. With this strategy, you prioritize drafting running backs, and they are the foundation of your team. You not only select a running back with your first pick, as in Hero RB, but you also use your next two draft picks to add a second running back and a third to serve as your weekly FLEX.
This strategy involves locking down reliable running backs early and then capitalizing on the depth of the wide receiver position.
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Zero WR
The Zero WR draft strategy is the same as the Zero RB strategy, but just for the wide receiver position. Essentially, you address other lineup needs early in your draft and then come back around to wide receiver. Fantasy managers could end up drafting two running backs, a tight end and a quarterback before selecting their first wide receiver in this strategy. If you opt for this method, you would be targeting a team's WR2 in their offense and hoping for a mix of good upside and a high floor.
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Hero WR
The Hero WR draft strategy is exactly like the Hero RB strategy, just for the wide receiver position. In this strategy, a fantasy manager would draft a top wide receiver and then focus on adding running backs, possibly a tight end, and a quarterback before drafting another wide receiver. This is a common draft strategy because the wide receiver position tends to be deeper than the others, meaning fantasy managers can still get value later in the draft after focusing on the other positions early.
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Robust WR
The Robust WR strategy is like its running back counterpart. Even though there tends to be plenty of depth with wide receivers, a fantasy manager using this strategy would draft a wide receiver with each of their first three picks, giving them two starters and their FLEX spot. This would cause them to miss out on top-tier running backs, but they would target lower-end starters or backup running backs who could have a decent workload or be in a great position if their starter gets hurt.
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Zero QB
When to draft a quarterback is a point of contention among fantasy football analysts. They score the most points, but you only start one of them, so people tend to wait before selecting a quarterback. This strategy alleviates the pressure of when to draft your quarterback. With Zero QB, fantasy managers put a quarterback on the back burner and fill out the rest of their lineup from starters to some bench spots before looking at quarterbacks.
This would put you in the market not for one of the top quarterbacks in fantasy football, but someone who should give you a solid output every week.