It’s that time of year, the closest we get to Christmas in September. It’s fantasy football draft season, with a large number of leagues taking advantage of a long weekend the final week before the season kicks off to hold their annual draft.
Whether it’s in person, online, or a mix of both if you have folks from out of town in the league, it’s always a fun experience. Roughly half of the team managers will boast they already won just on draft night, the other half will panic that they ruined their whole season already, and one very quiet manager will look at their lineup and wonder if this is finally their season – despite receiving a poor draft grade and their league mates questioning their strategy. Then there is inevitably that one person who puts the rest of the league in a chokehold over the draft schedule, only to miss it entirely and auto-pick their roster. This person exists in every league and you know who they are. Sadly, they have probably even won it a few times, and when they don’t, they blame the machines for screwing them over. And they rarely pay their dues on time. They’re a real treat.
But even if your league has a couple people you could stand to play without, the majority of the people in it make it fun and no matter how frustrating subbing players you had high hopes for in exchange for players you wished you would never have on your roster let alone starting for your team, it’s a game we all look forward to playing and if you make it to the playoffs, it’s all worth it anyway. And then you get knocked out of the first round by a team that spent half the season on auto-pilot and had their best week the same time you had your worst. Maybe it was even that auto-pick dude/dudette!
It’s called fantasy football, not dreamland football; remember that. It’s not meant to be all your hopes and dreams coming true every year; without defeat, you can’t appreciate victory anyway. The losses make the wins that much more enjoyable.
As you draft, you’re likely to target your favorite players, and why not? We all do that. Even if the trends suggest we should avoid certain guys (like Justin Jefferson last season), we take them anyway because we don’t want to lose if that guy is on someone else’s lineup and has a great week. Unfortunately for those of us who still took Jefferson last year, there were not many weeks you had to worry about losing if you didn’t draft him, but you had to worry every week he wouldn’t put up big numbers if you did happen to take a gamble and select him. I had the 7th pick in a 12-person league last year, and it felt like winning the lottery that he tumbled that far. But it turns out the other six people that passed on him weren’t just taking someone they liked more. Sure, the first couple of people wanted a higher-ranked player, but the people selected fourth, fifth, and sixth outright passed on him due to the risk.
The unfortunate truth is that for every story like that, someone did win the lottery by getting a guy other people didn’t want to take a chance on. Saquon Barkley and Christian McCaffrey have each given us seasons on both sides of that coin. CMC is an interesting note here; I didn’t draft him last year because he burned me the year before when I took a chance on him. Then I could have taken him last year and assumed he would have another down year, which he did not. Barkley won a lot of people their league two seasons ago and probably lost a lot of people their league last year. This year, neither is being taken as high as they probably should be, and that stands to reason. If you are not a fan of the 49ers or Eagles and have a shot at a guy like Bijan Robinson or Jahmyr Gibbs, who have been healthy the last couple of years and are the workhorse in a high-scoring offense, why wouldn’t you take them instead? But if you can’t get one of those guys, would you pass on CMC or Saquon to take someone like Kyren Williams or Derek Henry? Or James Cook?
You can win with any of those guys as your RB1, but you pass on the top receivers to take them. It’s a double-edged sword no matter who you pick because selecting one means giving up on the others, most likely. Now you could draft a guy like Puka Nacua in the first round and get someone like Henry or Kyren later on, and how well you draft your next two players may be just as important since you need two really good backs and two really good receivers most weeks to make your team work.
If you’re a Seahawks fan, be careful to draft them when the time is right, not just when they are available, and you find your team on the clock. Some of their best players will be in high demand and will need to be snagged in the early rounds, but they also have a few guys who will be gold to the right team this season and can be found after the first few rounds, when the sleepers start disappearing.
Jaxon Smith Njigba
JSN is without question the number one receiver in the league going into the season. He nearly pulled off the rare triple crown last year – finishing 4th in receptions, 1st in yards, and tied for third in touchdowns. He was targeted 163 times and caught 119; I think we can all assume he could have pulled off 10 more receptions, with five for scores, if he wasn’t being double or triple covered so often. He’s so good he’s currently going in the first seven picks, which is rare territory for receivers even in such a pass-heavy league. That doesn’t mean he’s not worth it; there are just so many more good receivers than good running backs, so the first position most managers target is their primary running back. An elite receiver is tough to say no to if you think you can get a high-rated running back in the second round. While history suggests he may come back down to earth this season, he really doesn’t have anyone trying to take targets or yards away from him, and defenses spent all of last year trying to cover him and failed most of the time. I don’t imagine any film exists that shows coaches how to do this yet, if it ever will. If you didn’t trade away your first-round pick, there’s no reason you can’t or shouldn’t take JSN that high; he’s not going to be there for your second pick, so if you want him on your team and he falls to you in the first round, go for it.
Jadarion Price
Price is currently going in the 5th or 6th round as the 25th-ranked RB, despite having the chance to immediately step in as the guy replacing Kenneth Walker III for at least the first month of the season. In the first few weeks, George Holani and Emmanuel Wilson are the only guys who can stop him from taking over as the primary option at RB, and Zach Charbonnet is on the PUP list for the first four games. Getting a potential workhorse RB in the 6th round is unheard of, so if you have him on your radar and he’s still there in the 5th or 6th and there aren’t any better players available, don’t make him wait to get drafted. As long as he doesn’t struggle with pass protection, he shouldn’t lose work on third down or obvious passing downs to Wilson. Still, some play callers are crazy when it comes to forcing certain guys onto the field in certain situations, so who knows what first-year play caller Brian Fleury might try here. Price could be out there the majority of the time, other than being spelled occasionally by George Holani, who was used sparingly last season and is more of a power runner, so he may vulture some goal-line opportunities. Charbonett is not expected to return from injury until sometime in mid-October, and once he’s back, even if Price doesn’t retain the lion’s share of the workload, Price could still produce plenty of points as your RB2 or a flex player. You could always take Charbonnet in the later rounds (10 or later) if you want him as your handcuff in case he takes over as the primary back when he’s back to 100%. Where you draft your best fantasy players really doesn’t matter; what matters is having them on your team. If you like Price and Charbonnet, draft them both. They may have weeks where one is the only one worth starting, and other weeks where both have value in your lineup. In the event one of them gets hurt, you definitely want the other one before they go in front of the whole league for waivers. Also, Charbonnet will be on IR until he is activated, so drafting him won’t waste a roster spot; you can stash him on IR and pick up another player you want to test drive while you wait. Then once Charbonnet is healthy, you can decide who to keep and who to cut.
Sam Darnold
For a guy who started last season, making a lot of folks wonder why Seattle bothered paying him after such a horrendous end to his 2024 campaign in Minnesota, Darnold did little in the first couple of games to quiet his critics. But as the season wore on, Darnold continually proved he was capable of making big plays in big moments of crucial games, and skills he had yet to master in his seven previous seasons. It turns out his 8th time around the sun as an NFL player was the magic number, as Darnold finally put it all together while leading his team to the Super Bowl and returned home as champions. Darnold finished 5th in yards, 10th in touchdowns, threw the 12th fewest interceptions, and only had 5 fumbles. He finished 14th in QB fantasy points for the year, and recent trends would suggest he will throw the ball more this season, not less, so it stands to reason he could be in the top 10 of QBs or higher. And yet he is the 21st-ranked QB and is being drafted late or not at all. Plenty of QBs get more rushing yards and TDs than Darnold will, so they should be off the board first, but you could do a lot worse than drafting your starting lineup other than QB and taking him in a late round. If he improves on last year’s numbers, you will look like a genius, and if he is flat this year over last year, you will look like you got exactly what you thought you were getting. He would have to go back to his years with the Jets and Panthers to get you fewer points than he did last year, and even with a new play caller, I don’t see that happening. If you have your heart set on a guy like Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson, I can’t say anything negative about those guys. Still, if you are averse to drafting a QB high like I am, then Darnold could be a great pick when everyone else is looking for their fourth receiver or running back in the 12th round.
Seattle D/ST
You are probably thinking you can’t go wrong with the Seattle defense on your team, and I can’t argue against that logic. By the end of the season, “Dark Side” was ruining the lives of opposing offenses, and the punt and kick return units were scoring points on their own. Seattle is currently the 4th-ranked defense/special teams unit, behind only the Rams, Texans, and Broncos. You can’t go wrong with any of those options, but Seattle likely offers the most upside since they have Rashid Shaheed as their primary returner, and he has world-class speed along with four return scores in his career. Seattle gets sacks, fumbles, interceptions, and returns kicks for touchdowns; why try any other team? You may see a run on defenses start in the middle rounds when one knucklehead can’t decide which tight end they want, so they go defense way too early, and if that happens, you should take the best one still on the board. Seattle being the demon everyone has to defeat will likely mean they are among the first off the board, but lucky for you, Myles Garrett and Aaron Donald have everyone forgetting about Seattle for the moment, so maybe they will be there for you when it’s your turn to draft.
Jason Myers
If your league still uses kickers (and they should), it would be tough to do better than Myers. He is the 3rd-ranked kicker in the NFL, behind only Brandon Aubrey and Ka’imi Fairbairn. 32 teams have a starting kicker, and Yahoo thinks Myers is in the top 3, which holds up to the eye test and the stat sheet. Myers is money from anywhere on the field and in any weather conditions. He seemed to wake up fantasy managers when he took smelling salts during a game last season, and he hasn’t had a bad week since. He’s always been good, but people are finally starting to realize that compared to the rest of the riffraff at his position, he’s great.
Myers made 85% of his field goal kicks last season, including 9/12 from 50+ yards. He was 13/15 from 40+, 14/15 from 30+, and five out of six from inside thirty yards. He was a perfect 48/48 on extra points. You don’t want your week coming down to kickers, but if it does, Myers is the type of player you want helping you win in that situation. Kickers tend to go late, if not last, round of the draft, but like defenses, if you see a run start, don’t hesitate to take Myers when you can.
Tory Horton
If you want a sleeper, well, here is a guy most people flat-out forgot existed. There is a sleeper, and the guy is waiting to be woken from the dead, and Horton falls into the latter category. After a good start to his rookie campaign, Horton was injured 8 games into the season and was not able to get cleared to return the rest of the way. He scored a whopping five touchdowns on 13 receptions before getting hurt; who knows what kind of stats he could have put together if he had come back healthy once the offense really got cooking. With Shaheed taking defenses deep and at least two defenders usually allocated to JSN, that should leave Horton man-to-man or in broken coverage against the defense’s third- or worse-corner. That’s money in their pocket for the Seattle offense. At 6’2” and 190lbs, he’s not small or weak and can handle the possession receiver role, but he also has speed to make plays deep down the field and is a capable route runner, so he gets open even against good coverage. For a guy often not being drafted, this would be your ideal pick to take as your fill-in player while you wait for Charbonnet to come back, and if both appear to be good choices to retain, cut someone else. If Horton doesn’t pan out early or gets hurt again, you can cut him without really wasting a pick. If he comes back healthy and produces, you’ll be glad you got him before the rest of the league remembered his name.
Be the first to comment