The Best Draft Strategy for Fantasy Football (Picks 1-7)

hey guys what's going on so I just wanted to talk about some positional strategies looking at the positions in terms of a points perspective and for me when I'm looking at a position by position basis what really stands out is the quarterback because while there may be some games where your quarterback does have a bad game and you have other players who can really uplift them usually most of the time your quarterback is going to make the biggest contribution to your total score every week and specifically when we're looking at last year or just in the past in general there does appear to be a significant drop off between the top quarterbacks and then more of the mid-level quarterback so I'd say especially if you aren't getting someone who definitely has the potential to be a top tier quarterback you're really missing out by really going for a late round quarterback pick but if you are counting on a specific quarterback to have a really good year and you think they're just really low in terms of their value on the draft all power to you in that case and then the other obvious thing that stands out to me is that you have a little bit more of a similarity in terms of just points between receivers and running backs depending on who you're looking at but I think there is still a contrast there I'd say just a little bit more on average that running backs generally do have a higher average than wide receivers and we do often see wide receivers going pretty high in the draft in comparison to running backs if you're just looking at the first 12 or 24 picks the majority of them are likely going to be receivers so that's why I really like to Target running backs early and just on top of that you're much more likely to find a decent wide receiver later in the draft in comparison to running backs because most teams usually only have one main running back you do have a few more teams doing more of a 50/50 split but not nearly as many running backs as there are starting receivers because you usually have two or even three solid guys per team so I think there's just a lot more depth there and really getting a lot of wide receivers early in my opinion regardless of who they are isn't what's the best positional strategy in terms of getting the most possible points and then the other thing I think if we're talking about just positional scarcity in terms of running backs being more valuable than wide receivers you would think this also would apply to tight ends but in my opinion I don't think tight ends are as really crucial I think there's maybe the thought process that the drop off between the high-end tight ends to mid- Round And even lower tier tight ends is pretty drastic and I would agree that that definitely is the case but if we're looking at tight ends I'd say the point differential between a maybe good tight end and just an average isn't as drastic in comparison to the contrast between a good or midlevel quarterback so I really don't think you're losing out on as many points by just skipping on those top level tight ends and I'm going to give a few examples of this so I think just a pretty good rule of thumb although this might seem a little bit extreme would be to get three of your running backs in the first five rounds I would say filling in your Flex with a wide receiver in comparison into a solid third running back really is going to be doing a disservice because you're just not putting yourself in the right place in terms of just the positional value that you're going to get if there is someone that you really like and obviously there are wide receivers that do have higher averages than some running backs that's totally fine but I just think on average just in terms of positions you're losing out if you're not getting a good starting running back to fill in that Flex spot so that's why I think three running back backs in the first five picks is something to pay attention to or even you could push it to six but I think if we're really getting into the six and seventh round that's really where a lot of those starting guys are falling off or a lot of those strong number two running backs are no longer available when you do have a lot of wide receivers that are still starting players available in these rounds and in terms of really prioritizing that quarterback because I think that's extremely important here you really don't have a lot of quarterbacks if any available at this point it also has to be said that quarterbacks that can Rush a little bit to are usually doing a lot better in terms of total fantasy points so in this case in those top five picks I would look for your quarterback in the middle somewhere and then really just getting whatever running backs you can and you could throw a wide receiver in there regardless it could be maybe the first pick it could be the fourth pick the point is that four out of five of these are really going to those crucial positions to really build a foundation so just going to give a few examples of this I'm just using a basic mock draft format you do have a few different rankings in terms of what you're looking at but I think this is really just to give an idea so first off I'm going to use just kind of a basic strategy which would be just kind of looking at players and names and then just kind of going for more of those top ranking guys that are available so starting off this would be having the fifth pick in just a 12 team format let's say here I first picked Jamar Chase and then Deo Samuel and then I really saw that Sam La Porto was available and I wanted to grab him and then fourth and fifth I got Montgomery and Stevenson's to fill in for my running backs and then at this point not a whole lot of running backs are as widely available so I got George Pickins to fill in my Flex and then I wanted to get a quarterback I didn't want to wait any longer and I got CJ a strout so not taking into consideration your defense or Kicker here this would be my first seven picks and I think while on paper this definitely is a good team and this could make for a really great season if we're looking at last year's averages and we're putting them in to assign a point value for what this team would be that would come out to an average of 104.3 points per week again this is just using the basic PP our format and now we're going to compare this into doing the strategy I laid out which is getting three running backs in the first five picks in addition to a quarterback so now I also still have the fifth pick but I'm not going to really look at the available rankings too too much I'm just going to really make sure I'm following this so let's say in this case then I picked up Jonathan Taylor first I then got Josh Allen in the second round and then I went ahead and got Joe Mixon I really liked Amari Cooper so I just wanted to make sure I still have a wide receiver to hang out there but then I got mostard and now I've checked off what I wanted to do I have my three running backs I have my really good potential quarterback I also threw a wide receiver in there I still want to grab a tight end because there's really not that many tight ends that are that promising so in this case I noticed that George KD is still available and in this case I'm going to grab him in the sixth round just to make sure I get him and then I have my flex but I still need one more wide receivers and in this case I do like George Pickins and when we are assigning the statistics from last year to come up with a point value for this team that would give a total of 1123 so you have an eight points difference here and this is really being aggressive with this strategy this is really drafting a lot lower than even where your pick would allow you to get just in terms of the new numerical rankings for these players I think a crucial difference here is that while you are sacrificing those topnotch wide receivers just looking at those averages and you're maybe losing about just three points there you are gaining almost five points in that quarterback with Josh Allen in comparison to CJ strad but this is just based on last year's statistics of course it's possible CJ strad has a really great year and Josh Allen doesn't but this is really just to give a demonstration of drafting in terms of specific positions so I'm going to do another example here just to test out this Theory and this is going to be a little bit later so starting off just kind of going in without that much of a clear strategy and just looking at the rankings and the names I would get Wilson first followed by NOA really two good strong receivers and I really do like them both personally in the draft and then I would again grab leaport in the third followed by DJ more for my Flex and then I would get Devin single ter for my first running back in addition to Warren and then I would also wait until the seventh pick here to get my quarterback in this instance I would get Jordan love and this time because I'm just going to give the benefit of the doubt to this first team just based on last year's averages I'm going to bump those up in a few different circumstances so here I'm assuming that Wilson is going to have a much better year with Aaron Rogers healthy I'm going to bump him up from a 12.5 average to a 15 for this upcoming season and then I'm also going to do the same for single ter I'm assuming since he's on the Giants he's just going to get a lot more of a workload and he's going to have an average of 12 points per game instead of the 9.8 which he came in last year and same thing for Warren I'm going to assume that he's going to turn it up a little bit more at Pittsburgh and I'm bumping him up from an 11.6 to a 13 average and then everyone else is going to stay the same there but I'm keeping those same averages for this second team I'm drafting and then when we are taking into consideration these numbers that I rounded up you're getting a total of 107.4 and then going back to that strategy I laid out also following the same pick I would grab barkle first followed by Gibbs getting really two strong running backs right off the top instead of wide receivers then instead of Josh Allen this time I would win and I would get Jaylen Herz in the third followed by James Conor and then I would fill in my wide receivers I would get DJ Moore and Mari Cooper here I was able to wait until the 7th to still grab George KD so in this case my total value based on last year's statistics would give me a total of up I still have a almost fivepoint difference here in terms of my weekly average between these two teams and while you are again losing just about a point or two due to not getting those receivers as high you are gaining up for that by having three running backs in your starting lineup in addition to having a much better quarterback with the Jaylen Herz and a much better ceiling in terms of his weekly points again you do have a lot of other factors to consider in terms of just specific players and their specific situations whether it's a new team or new supporting players on their team that obviously is really relevant and then you might just be expecting certain guys to have better Seasons or worse than where they were last year so this definitely isn't everything but I'd say just going back to thinking about it from a broad perspective you really cannot deny that there are far more wide receivers in the draft total than there are running backs so if you are waiting to fill out your running backs and you don't want to include one in a flex even you're not really going to find those after the middle of the draft there's really tons of wide receivers that you could still get that might even still be the wide receiver one for a given team really late in the draft or even just certain guys that you think will likely have a good season you could even get several wide receivers like that on your bench after doing your first seven picks and then they'll likely could become even one of your St starting wide receivers later in the year I think that's far more likely than predicting a certain rookie running back from having a really good season and also just taking another angle to look at this it's far harder to pick up a really good running back throughout the season or a really good quarterback I'd say that's really crucial regardless of any injuries that come up but you can find a really good wide receiver you can find really good tight ends from your free agencies as well so that's my positional strategy for the draft feel free to let me know your strategies or thoughts really appreciate you guys watching and I'll see you later