Fantasy Football Draft Strategy (+PPR Mock Draft)

here's an in-depth overview of your draft strategy for the early middle and late rounds in 2024 now this will be for a redraft league where you're starting one quarterback two running backs two to three wide receivers one to two Flex spots a tight end a kicker and a defense we're going to cover everything here and give you a mock draft at the very end of the video to show you how to put it all together now I know we just want to start off with the early rounds and trust me uh it would be exciting and it is exciting to talk about those options but our early round draft strategy should actually be dictated based off the values that you're going to find in the middle rounds because while I want to sit here and I want to go oh my gosh I love Jamar Chase oh I love Justin Jefferson to try to figure out if you should be drafting one of those wide receivers versus Bree or beon really it's going to come down to the positions that you want to be drafting in rounds 5 six7 now personally I've been drafting a lot of baseball teams this offseason and there the running back values are beautiful in the middle rounds however as I built out our consensus 2024 ADP cheat sheet what I actually found was if you're drafting on Yahoo if you're drafting on ESPN if you're drafting on sleeper that's not necessarily the case now I put out this updated draft cheat sheet as of August 8th everything here is updated both with my own fantasy football rankings as well as ADP for Underdog sleeper Yahoo ESPN everything combined into one once you got to rounds 4 five 6 7 and I was cross referencing the ADP that you had from your redraft platforms versus my ranking specifically what I personally found were wide receivers were beautiful values in the middle rounds you're able to get guys like Malik Neighbors in round six in your redraft league you're able to get tank Dell in round five you're able to get Z flowers in round six where I personally have them all ranked pretty much around before their ADP so I want to put myself in a position where we are able to just slam wide receivers in the middle rounds however the issue that you are going to find is specifically when you're playing in your redraft league where you can only start say three wide receivers four wide receivers the very most you're unable to take those wide receivers in the middle rounds if you decided to go with the wide receivers early so specifically for your formats where you're only starting two wide receivers One Flex or you're only starting two wide receivers two Flex what I recommend specifically in the early rounds would actually to be go out of your way and grab a couple Elite level running backs or grab an elite quarterback and an elite tight end now this is specifically going to be rounds about 1 through three now of course I want to put a big time asterisk on this where we already discussed this in a video a few days ago where if you're looking at a league that starts One Flex spot versus two Flex spots the One Flex spot league is actually going to have a very high percentage of the starting lineup output from a week- toe perspective coming from quarterback as well as tight end where the more Flex spots that you add on the more you're actually going to see that quarterback and tight end are going to be devalued from an overall percentage of your lineup perspective so if you're playing in that League where you only start two wide receivers and one Flex in the early rounds what I would love to do is grab an anchor running back in round one and then follow it up with an elite quarterback at the two3 turn now in terms of your round one running back options the names you should be looking at will be Christian mcaffrey obviously rb1 for the time being this is going to be someone that you would look to take inside the first three picks there's just no way mcaffrey makes it further than there and then the other running backs in round one if you are in the middle picks I personally am going to be targeting one of Bree or bejon Robinson now I personally have Bree and beon in my own rankings ranked at four and five this next season however if you look at their adps at the moment if you're drafting on sleeper you can get Breeze Hall as late as pick nine where his ADP is you can get bejan Robinson on ESPN Yahoo sleeper anywhere from picks five or six so if you're in the midrange of round one I'm going to prefer prer to go with beon or Bree and if you're at the very end of round one the guy that I will personally be targeting for a full PPR format will be jir Gibs now I do want to put some Asis on this right just because we're saying in general we're going to be targeting our running back in round one that has that crazy ceiling it doesn't mean that you need to go running back no matter what if you're going to be at pick two for instance and Christian mcaffry goes off the board at one I do personally have CD lamb ranked ahead of Bree Hall I do personally have lamb ranked ahead of bejan Robinson so we're still trying to optimize for best player available but this is why I give you all our rankings in the form of tiers that way you can understand okay if I'm within this tier this is the draft strategy that I want to be going with but I'm not going to be moving players Upp or down tiers just to try to fit a particular strategy now moving on to round two at running back if you didn't go with the running back in round one and instead say you ended up getting Justin Jefferson at pick eight then at the beginning of round two the running backs that I personally would be looking at would be saquan Barkley or Jonathan Taylor now there are a couple different options once you get later on I think Kirin hn those are two guys that are going to be wildly dependent on the for bat that you're drafting in where right now if you actually look at Kiren Williams he is one of my most drafted running backs when I've been doing a lot of drafts on Underdog because he goes in the middle of round three but in your regular redraft League you're just simply not going to be able to get that price point on him and if you're drafting on ESPN you're going to have to take him at pick 15 if you're on Yahoo sleeper you're going to have to take him at 16 but what's very interesting is if you actually compare this to Devon aan instead anan's a runningback that goes cheaper in your regular redraft leagues than what you going to see specifically in basball hent on Underdog goes at about pick 22 but you can get him in the middle around three if you are drafting on ESPN so obviously use this ADP draft cheat sheet try to understand the platform that you're drafting on and where those pockets are going to be for valuable players for you but last but not least let's look at quarterback let's look at tight end I do think starting at the very end of the second round to the very beginning of the third round that's when you can consider the true Elite level quarterbacks such as Josh Allen uh Jaylen Herz once you get to the middle to the end of round three I think that's when you can begin to look at like Lamar Jackson Patrick Mahomes especially if you could go with the elite quarterback and then follow it up with the tight end immediately after whether that's taking Lamar and then Mark Andrews or Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce now transitioning over to the middle rounds hopefully by the time we get to rounds four five 6 7 8 you've already put yourself in a position where we have an elite running back we have an elite quarterback we have possibly an elite tight end of course only if one fell to us we're not going to be reaching dramatically just to try to fit a particular draft strategy we still kind of want to be going best player available but when we're in these middle rounds what is so different than the drafts that you've been seeing me do on the live streams is say if I'm doing a stream and we're drafting on underdog if I want to take Devonte Smith I have to take him at the very end of the second round or the very beginning of the third round however depending on the platform that you're on you can actually get a wide receiver like Devon Smith Instead at the end of the fourth round at the beginning of the fifth round right now if you're looking at his ADP on ESPN on sleeper he has an ADP of 45 putting him at the end of the fourth and being able to just slam wide receivers with that profile go like Devonte Smith in round four Z flowers in round five you can go three four round straight taking these wide receivers that have a nice floor ceiling combo and putting yourself vastly ahead of your other league mates who instead are kind of stuck taking these running backs that have uncertain floors but just project us the opportunity in bad offenses like an example is if we're going to look at Devonte Smith on ESPN he has an ADP of 45 and if we try to look at some other running backs say if you wanted to go Joe Mixon you have to take Joe Mixon at 34 Joe mixon's going in round three whereas you're getting Smith at the very end of round four whereas if you're looking at Underdog Smith Goes to the beginning of round three Joe Mixon goes to freaking round six so please don't apply this to Underdog drafts those will be a little bit different and of course you can see my Underdog draft strategy where we're drafting every single day on this live stream I mean it is my favorite place to draft their best ball drafts and no time commitment at all during the season so I draft hundreds of teams every year it's how won 150,000 on Underdog two years ago and of course if you want to join that draft with us you can find the link in the description in the comment section in the live chat they're actually hosting flock tournament every Monday and Thursday night till the season starts which I'm really excited about but if you use code flock when you sign up you'll get a 50% opposit bonus up to $250 you'll get my updated 2024 Fantasy Football Draft guide every Sunday till the season kicks off my updated rankings every Sunday till the season kicks off and you will get that 2024 ADP consensus cheat sheet that we're just going through everything with this video trying to come up with your draft strategy but as we transition through through the middle rounds what we're hoping for at this point is you have an elite running back or two you have your topend quarterback you have your top end tight end and then we filled out those really nice wide receiver values in the middle rounds of your draft and as we approach the later rounds this is when we begin to transition our mindset rather than thinking about oh okay we need to just hunt values what we need to be hunting for in the later rounds is upside upside upside because a big thing that you are going to have here is the understanding that these players may get cut and may get sent to the waiver wire I am pretty confident outside of injury whoever you take in the top five rounds of your draft this year you're not cutting them you're not sending them to waivers they are going to be on your roster through the entire season or you are going to trade them but once we begin to get to rounds like 10 11 12 13 14 this is about the range where what we need to be looking for are profiles that are going to give us Clarity at the beginning of the season I know we just hear upside and right away you think oh that's like a rookie right I should go ahead and I should take Adan I Mitchell here in the 11th round of My redraft League and I'm not saying that Mitchell doesn't have upside but the issue that you're going to find when you go through and you take a bunch of rookie wide receivers at the end of your draft I'm not talking about romad dun I'm not talking about Xavier Worley I'm not talking about these round one NFL draft picks that should have roles right away I'm talking about like the Adonai Mitchells of the world I'm talking about the Roman Wilson's of the world is you may take him at the end of your draft expecting oh they could have a lot of upside in the long term they're not really going to do anything in the short term but then we get to week three there's an interesting waiver wire pickup and you go oh I I'm kind of interested in that guy and you look down at your bench and go okay um I can't cut ad n Mitchell I like his long-term upside I I can't cut Roman Wilson I like his long-term upside even though they showed you nothing at the beginning of the season but you kind of understood that they won it so what I personally prefer to do in the later rounds of our drafts is I'm personally going to prefer to opt to go with players that are going to be very clear with what their roles are at the beginning of the season a perfect example of this is instead of going and taking ad andai Mitchell instead if you pivot over and you take someone like JK Dobbins JK Dobbins is a great example of a running back that you will know right when the season starts if he is worth rostering or not hypothetically we get to the start of the year after you took JK Dobbins on August 15th and Dobbins is playing well behind Gus Edwards where JK Dobbins doesn't look like the same player he once was at that point it's like oh okay oh oh yeah um I I think this guy can be the next Karen Williams coming off the waiver wire in week two let me throw JK dobins back on the waiver wire and I'll pick up this new hot hand but you're able to do that because you get the clarity with that player situation early in the season and you kind of understand there's a binary range of outcomes they're going to hit early on or you can send in the waiver wire because they're really only two pass that can go whereas with someone like ad I Mitchell it's like oh I picked him up but I don't know what's going to happen I don't know anything at the beginning of the season I mean just a couple other examples of that I I know this is someone that's not really getting drafted very often anymore but conre Miller's another great example of that where a running back that some people thought was going to have a role in New Orleans this next year he goes out in training camp the coaching staff comes and says oh yeah another hamstring injury um we may have to cut this dude if he can't stay healthy and then all of a sudden um nobody is interested in it all but I think that's a perfect example of a player that you can take at the very end of your draft and go oh okay well I already have my topend running backs that I grab I already have an elite quarterback I have a topend end I slam wide receiver values in the middle rounds I'm just hunting upside at the end and I'm going to work the waiver wire at the beginning of the season now talking about kicker defense strategy just real quick if you're in a league where people are taking defenses in the middle of rounds where you see someone take the Niners defense in round eight you are better off streaming wait till the last round you'll get your defense then pick up one that you like the week one match up for and stream the position however if you're in a league where nobody cares about defense and you actually find yourself where you only have three rounds left in your draft and nobody's taken a defense yet that's a position where those final three four rounds in your draft those are going to be guys you probably cut anyway so it actually can make sense for you at the end of your draft to reach a little bit compared to the rest of your league mates to get that Elite level defense just very hard for me to say that of course because I know y'all some of y'all will be in Yahoo leagues where a taco goes through and they tank the Dallas defense in round nine and there you just want to stream and personally I just stream kickers I I think it's so difficult to project kickers out other than Justin Tucker hook morren so I think you just wait the last round no matter what to take your kicker and then quarterback tight end backup strategies obviously this going to depend on how many teams are in your league as well as how many bench spots you have but the benefit that you get from taking that Elite level quarterback like Josh Allen is you are not going to have to roster another backup QB and instead you can use that extra roster spot to go through hide away as many upside running backs as you can down there hide away as many upside wide receivers as you can down there and same thing with an elite level tight end if you get Sam leaport you don't need to roster a backup tight end unless of course you have very deep benches or it's a very deep League overall then you understandably can go out there and grab someone like Luke Musgrave as you're tied into to but I want to go through I want to give you a mock draft just kind of illustrating exactly what you should be doing and how you can put every one of these practices into play we're going to go ahead and get this started we are in at pick four we're going to use our 80P consensus cheat sheet to try to identify the best values that are on the board every single time now I am also going to be using my rankings for this but nonetheless let me give you our thought process behind every one of these individual picks and with where we are going at the moment now you notice that if you're looking at the ADP for the platform that we're using right now Breeze Halls actually all the way down at 9 however if you look at our 2024 ADP consensus cheat sheet you'll see that for a regular redraft League Bree Hall in my mind especially with my rankings as well should actually be picked for because we are going to identify phenomenal wide receiver values that we are going to get in the middle rounds now using our ADP consensus cheat sheet it is telling us that Drake London currently is the best value on the board however because this is only a league where we start two wide receivers in a singular Flex as we discussed previously here I'm going to be incentivized to instead actually go ahead get an elite quarterback and an elite tight end so I personally going to go ahead and actually reach on Josh Allen here at the 209 just because I expect like we talked about previously we should see phenomenal wide receiver values in the middle rounds now there are a few interesting things we can talk about here one you do have some running back values that are falling and this comes down to what you personally believe with your own rankings versus where ADP value lies because if you look it across all platforms right here Derrik Henry is the selection you should be taking at the 304 but personally I actually have Josh Jacobs ranked ahead of Derek so I'm going to make a pick that I know most people aren't going to agree with now I completely understand you know actually I'll do what y'all want we'll go ahead we'll take Derrick Henry here I'm going to draft a thousand teams I do want to let you know I have a little bit of a hot take that I think Jacobs outscores Henry but that's for another video now looking what we discussed previously we actually have a ton of different options here at wide receiver for these depth guys in the middle rounds I still actually like the idea of getting an elite tied end because this is a league where we're going to start two wide receivers and one flex but the teams on the other side of us already took Sam leaport to Travis Kelce so they can't take tight end so we're going to be guaranteed to get back either Mark Andrews or Dalton concade concade would stack with Josh Allen for us so we're going to take our first wide receiver in my mind at a massive value and at a value if you look at the ADP consensus we're going to get Devon Smith at the 409 so just as we were expecting we do get the elite tight end doll Cade making it back to us in the fifth round this makes a lot of sense cuz the league BR start two wide receivers and one Flex I still believe there should be great wide receivers available to us in round 678 that's what we're planning on doing in the middle rounds but let's get our Elite tight end he also correlates with Josh Allen so we can kind of double down on this Buffalo Bills offense and it's great value here at the 504 now here come the middle round wide receiver values that we are expecting so if you look at the guys that are best available at the moment you have Keenan Allen Jordan Addison Chris Godwin Calvin Hood Brown Rashid rice you have a lot of changes in the rankings right now right now the best player according to the consensus 0p is going to be Keenan Allen here I think you have some higher upside options that we may get on the way back around but those aren't going to be guys we consider ourselves with at the 609 because they can make it to us at the 704 now if you look at sleeper at the moment it is telling us that Jordan Addison's the best wide receiver available however if you actually cross reference this with what you have with the consensus 80P cheat sheet you will see that Calvin Ridley is actually the best wide receiver available right now due to the DeAndre Hopkins injury vaulting him ahead of these other guys so by the time we're back up on the clock we've kind of caught up on wide receiver but as we discuss previously typically receiver is going to be the range that you're wanting to look at here Hollywood Brown according to the ADP consensus cheat cheet is currently the highest ranked wide receiver out of this grouping I'm actually not the biggest Hol fan but I will say you're just getting him at such a decent price here at the end of the eighth round and if we're comparing him to some of the running backs that we could get I think the running backs will make it back around to us in the ninth if you look at the 80P consensus cheat so we'll continue to catch back up at wide receiver I do stand by Hollywood is my least favorite wide receiver out of this Chief's room which is why when I'm drafting on Underdog I never take him because he's the first guy off the board but here we're actually getting um I mean almost two rounds after ri rice and we're getting him almost three rounds after Xavier worthy so if you weren't looking at any rankings or any cheat sheats you will see that the best running backs available are chub Eckler reality the running back that you should more likely than not be taking in this range is actually going to be Brian Robinson we're going to go ahead and pull the trigger on him as our running back three and if you look at how well rounded our roster is at this point we have the elite quarterback with Josh Allen we have the elite tight end with dton decade we have that stack we also have more than enough running back production with Bree Hall Derrik Henry and Brian Robinson and we have wide receiver depth filled out through the middle rounds where they are at the strongest value with Devonte Smith Keenan Allen Calvin Ridley as well as Hollywood Brown so if you didn't get the elite quarterback or the elite tight end this would be about the point where you'd maybe begin thinking about your second quarterback or second tight end however because we paid the premium at the beginning of this draft we do just get to roster as many running backs and wide receivers that we want here so looking at the best running backs available Ezekiel Elliot at 110 with the ADP consensus ch- she but bad news came out about Zeke as of late so it's difficult to know if you still want to be taking Ezekiel Elliott here going over to wide receiver however there just simply aren't too many high upside plays so I think you could take Ezekiel Elliott in this range and then honestly look for dle on the way back around I know had the positive news but if you look at the way that ADP is set up on this platform right here in particular he actually doesn't have an ADP until 148 so you could put yourself in a position where you take both Dallas backs at the end of the 10th and the beginning of the 11th lock up all the Cowboys running back Touches at an extremely cheap cost so just as we are expecting we are going to get D making it to us now I know it seems like we've rostered a ton of running backs in comparison to what we have at wide receiver and this is something that's very specific to the league settings that we're drafting for right going back to this this is a league where you only start two wide receivers and one Flex so you can only get three wide receivers in there at the very most the receivers that we've taken I'm very comfortable projecting out Target shares this next year so in these later rounds what I'm primarily looking for is I'm looking to chase ceiling ceiling ceiling so what we're going to be looking here for wide receivers at the bottom end of the draft is we're trying to take guys that have wide ranges of outcomes that if they hit ear they could hit in a big time way but if they turn out to be bombs then honestly we don't need to worry about it if we're going to look at the current cost of these guys Shahed is 120 ADP consensus Judy is 132 Downs just got injured Downs will not be a reliable source here so I think honestly what we may end up doing is taking Shahed where it's nice to know if shahid's not the wide receiver 2 in New Orleans week one you just immediately go out there cut him have absolutely no head hesitation with it because really we should get the clarity at the beginning of the season and it's not like we're going to be sitting around because this is a year one guy that we're going oh okay he just needs some time it's like no okay if he's playing 80% of the snaps cool we can keep him however if he is more so being used at a rotation then we're going to get rid of him now we are approaching the last three rounds and this is about where you should begin to think about do I want to get an elite defense or do I want to just stream the defensive position every single week now some of the drafts that you're in if you're in a draft on Yahoo on ESPN with your high school buddies you're you're going to see that okay and maybe they take a defense there round seven may maybe they take a defense in round eight and if that's the league that you were in 100% you should be streaming the position however when you're looking at the very bottom end where your last three rounds in your draft the reality of the situation is these guys are going to continuously be ched off your Rost where you're going to be cutting them you're going to be picking up different players off the waiver wire where I would recommend if you can get one of the true Elite level defenses within the last few rounds of your draft that it honestly is kind of worth it if we're considering cutting the majority of these players anyway to go out there and take that top defense so we're going to do just that we are going to take the San Francisco 49ers here in the 13th round because then we really only have one other player that we're going to take other than the kicker and the kicker should be in the very last last round of every single draft okay we are back on the clock here and kicker is really going to be our play in the 15th I I think it's so difficult to predict these guys so what we're going to do is we're going to take one of these wide receivers that I think may actually start on the IR and if you take Josh DS at the end of your draft and he starts on the pup and we can move him to our IR slot that's going to allow us to pick up another player immediately off the waiver wire as soon as this draft ends and we move him over to the IR now we're on the clock last round we're just going to go ahead we can take a kicker in Jake Elliot would you're also able to do if there's somebody that you really like here say hypothetically you love Gabe Davis or hypothetically you love Demario Douglas you can go ahead you can take him and then just cut him week one when you actually need to start your kicker but we're just going to go ahead I think Jake Elliot's a fine option so we will take him here in the 15th but let me kind of recap what we did here just for one second and that if you go through if you look at this squad Ian we have the elite running backs at the very top we have running backs with upside and depth pieces below we got our middle round wide receiver values we got an elite quarterback and an elite tight end so we only have to roster one of each and we could focus in on high upside wide receivers and running backs later in the draft but I think that's all I have for you again thank you so much ladies and gentlemen I really do appreciate you I to remind you coming up on the flock Meetup August 22nd if you're close to Austin Texas you better be there grab a ticket at flock fantasy. store should be a ton of fun and also if you wanted to get in a draft with us we're still streaming every single night till the season starts we're going to be doing Underdog fantasy drafts best ball no time commitment all during the year so it's extra added fund on top your main League not replacing the main Fantasy Draft that you care most about but yeah if you use code flock you're going to get my 2024 Fantasy Football Draft guide 2024 fantasy football rankings and 2024 ADP draft sheat sheet updated every single week till the season starts and also with code flock you get a Christian mcaffry special pick them more than less than half a total yard 50% deposit bonus us up to $250 and yeah you can hop in some flock drafts with us but I think that's a lot God for you really do appreciate you really hope you have a great day and really hope I get a draft with you in the live stream later tonight