Fantasy Football Draft Strategy: Round-by-Round Advice (2025)

The preparation for your perfect 2025 fantasy football draft begins now.

Have a battle plan when you show up for your in-person draft or fire up the laptop for your online draft. But don’t make it a rigid plan.

Fantasy drafts are unpredictable. Average draft position goes out the window. Your competitors will make unexpected picks. You’ll occasionally get snaked on a player you wanted.

Be flexible. Be nimble. Be prepared.

And get those reps in before draft season arrives! Test your draft strategies by mock-drafting with the FantasyPros Draft Simulator.

Here’s an overview of the battle plan I’ll be using for my 2025 fantasy football drafts.

The preparation for your perfect 2025 fantasy football draft begins now.

Have a battle plan when you show up for your in-person draft or fire up the laptop for your online draft. But don’t make it a rigid plan.

Fantasy drafts are unpredictable. Average draft position goes out the window. Your competitors will make unexpected picks. You’ll occasionally get snaked on a player you wanted.

Be flexible. Be nimble. Be prepared.

And get those reps in before draft season arrives! Test your draft strategies by mock-drafting with the FantasyPros Draft Simulator.

Here’s an overview of the battle plan I’ll be using for my 2025 fantasy football drafts.

Perfect Fantasy Football Draft: Strategy & Advice

Approach to Rounds 1-2

There’s no point speaking in generalities about first-round strategy since it’s so dependent on your draft spot. This is my draft board for the first two rounds of 12-team 0.5 PPR leagues (assuming that I’m required to start three WRs):

If I get a running back in the first round, I’m taking a wide receiver in the second round unless something extraordinary happens. I do not want to be short on WR firepower in a league that requires me to start three of them each week. My order of preference on second-round receivers: Drake London, A.J. Brown, Ladd McConkey, Garrett Wilson.

If I get a wide receiver in the first round, I’ll take the best player available in the second round. I won’t feel obligated to come out of the first two rounds with a running back.

Approach to Rounds 3-6

In principle, I think the Zero RB approach is viable and often savvy. In practice, I’m not always comfortable with it and prefer a Hero RB approach. I’d like to come out of the first six rounds with at least one running back, quite possibly two.

Mostly, I want to hit the WR position hard in this part of the draft. Rounds 3-6 are a power alley for receivers. The quality of available WRs is likely to drop off significantly in Round 7 or Round 8. I’d like to have at least three WRs by the end of Round 6, possibly four.

I’ll consider a QB in this part of the draft, but I won’t automatically take one. Don’t draft both a QB and TE within the first six rounds. Doing so simply requires too great a sacrifice at the all-important WR and RB positions, and you’ll be left with a fragile roster that isn’t built to withstand WR or RB injuries.

I’ll consider drafting either George Kittle or Trey McBride in Round 3 if I don’t already have Brock Bowers on my roster. If I miss out on the Big Three at tight end, I won’t address the position until the seventh round or beyond.

Approach to Rounds 7-10

If you’ve decided to play the waiting game at QB and/or TE, address those positions in this part of the draft.

The talent at RB and WR starts to drop off in this portion of the draft, although some worthwhile targets still fall into this range at both positions. Scoop them up.

Approach to Rounds 11+

Continue to build depth at WR and RB.

When drafting RBs late in the draft, try to get pieces of unsettled backfields where the pecking order could abruptly change.

Consider grabbing a second quarterback if you’re in a league with 14 or more teams or a league with a lot of roster spots.

Some leagues require you to draft a team defense and a kicker. If your league has those positions but doesn’t require you to actually draft one of each … don’t. Instead, throw an extra couple of darts at late-round RBs. At worst, you’ll drop those late-round RBs right before the start of the season to get your defense and kicker. But maybe a preseason injury to a starter turns one of those late-round RBs into a winning lottery ticket.