Pat Fitzmaurice has gone position-by-position to provide you with fantasy football draft strategy and advice. Here’s how Fitz is preparing for his fantasy football drafts. His primers include fantasy football draft strategy, targets, rankings, tiers, and more.
Here are each of Fitz’s complete Fantasy Football Draft Primers: QB | RB | WR | TE
Below we dive into some of his fantasy football draft strategy and advice.
- Fantasy Football Draft Kit
- Fantasy Football ADP
- 2025 Best Ball Fantasy Football Draft Kit
- Free Fantasy Football Mock Draft Simulator
Fantasy Football Draft Strategy & Advice: Quarterbacks
Let’s explore some fantasy football draft strategy and advice from Pat Fitzmaruice.
Quarterbacks
The big question is how much to invest in the quarterback position. Is it best to draft one of the top quarterbacks in an early round, or to focus on other positions in early rounds and draft a quarterback later?
There is obvious appeal to investing in a top quarterback. The quarterbacks who provide needle-moving rushing stats on top of their passing stats are highly valuable.
Josh Allen has averaged 24.2 fantasy points per game over the last three years, never averaging fewer than 22.6 fantasy points per game in any of those seasons.
Allen’s average draft position (ADP) is 28 overall, so he’s typically drafted early in the third round in 12-team leagues. Players with similar ADPs include receivers Garrett Wilson, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Terry McLaurin, and backs Chase Brown and Kyren Williams.
If you wait to draft your top quarterback, Kyler Murray and Jared Goff are among the other options. Murray has averaged 18.5 fantasy points per game over the last three years (but has missed 15 games over that stretch). Goff has averaged 18.2 fantasy points per game over the last three years.
While Allen is either the first or second quarterback selected in most fantasy drafts, Murray has an ADP of QB0 (78 overall) and Goff is at QB10 (85 overall).
Murray is typically drafted in the mid-seventh round of a 12-team draft; Goff in the early eighth round. Wide receivers with ADPs between Murray and Goff are Deebo Samuel, Calvin Ridley and Rome Odunze. The one running back with an ADP in that range is Tyrone Tracy.
You could draft Allen in the early-to-mid third round and one of Samuel, Ridley, Odunze or Tracy in the early-to-mid seventh round.
You could also draft one of Wilson, Smith-Njigba, McLaurin, Brown or Williams in the early-to-mid third round, and either Murray or Goff in the early-to-mid seventh round.
Is the 2025 fantasy scoring gap between Allen and Murray/Goff going to be bigger than the gap between the third- and seventh-round wide receivers/running backs?
The key factor to this is opportunity cost. At what point do we get an affordable opportunity cost for drafting a quarterback rather than a player at another position?
In a 1-QB league, you only have to start one quarterback, but you have to start somewhere around 5-6 running backs and wide receivers, depending on lineup configurations. And it’s good to have depth at those positions to guard against injuries and underachievement.
You can probably guess which way I lean in the early versus late quarterback debate. I tend to load my shopping cart with receivers and backs early on and find my quarterback somewhere from the sixth to eighth round range.
I don’t want to be underpowered at wide receiver in any PPR league or in any league that requires you to start at least three wideouts. While I’m willing to be a bit more patient at running back, I generally like to get one in the first three rounds and another by the end of the seventh round.
Superflex Leagues
Quarterback draft strategy changes in Superflex leagues, which allow you to start a second quarterback in one of your Flex spots. Quarterbacks score more points than players at other positions, so in a league where you’re able to start two of them, and where everyone is rostering more quarterbacks than in a 1-QB league, the position becomes hugely important.
The supply-and-demand outlook is much different in Superflex leagues, too. There are 32 starting NFL quarterbacks in a week without byes. Ideally, you’ll have at least three quarterbacks who are NFL starters on your Superflex roster. But in a 12-team Superflex league, at least four teams won’t have a third quarterback who’s an NFL starter.
In a 1-QB league, demand is light and supply is ample. In a Superflex league, demand is high, but the supply is limited.
You’ll typically see 8-9 quarterbacks selected in the first round of a Superflex startup draft. Once the draft is over, good quarterbacks will be expensive in the trade market.
The consequences of punting the quarterback position in a Superflex league are daunting. It’s hard to win games when you’re starting Matthew Stafford and Sam Darnold, and your opponents are throwing Jayden Daniels/Baker Mayfield and Jalen Hurts/Brock Purdy combos at you.
Ideally, you’ll draft an anchor quarterback in round one or round two. Beyond the first two rounds, things get more complicated. The goal is to draft opportunistically at the quarterback position to maximize value, but also to not get left out in the cold. It’s a difficult balancing act because quarterbacks are almost always overdrafted from round two on in Superflex leagues. You may be forced to abandon value-seeking principles when addressing the quarterback position.
Check out Fitz’s full Quarterback Fantasy Football Draft Primer
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