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 & Targets
Three Core Draft Principles
Let’s start with three important tenets of draft strategy:
1. Tailor your draft strategy to the number of WRs your league requires you to start each week.
The number of wide receivers you’re required to start is far and away the most important setting in your league.
If your league requires you to start only two receivers each week, you can choose between RBs and WRs in the early rounds based on where the value is. You have tactical flexibility.
If your league requires you to start three receivers each week, WR becomes a critical position, and you should attack it aggressively in the early rounds. Your goal should be to outgun nearly every team in your league at the WR position since you’re starting so many receivers each week.
2. Take advantage of discounts on high-upside rookies.
This should be a staple of your draft plan every year, but it’s an especially good approach this year, with an outstanding group of rookie running backs entering the NFL.
The top rookies are often underdrafted because they haven’t played in the NFL yet, and it’s human nature to fear the unknown. But rookies with early-round NFL Draft capital have historically been good fantasy bets.
3. Chase upside.
Upside is important. You need to draft a lot of players with plausible ways of delivering high-ceiling outcomes. Even if such players have rock-bottom floors in their range of possible outcomes, invest anyway.
You’ll miss on a few of these types. That’s what waivers are for. The potential rewards outweigh the risk of a low-end outcome.
Other Considerations
Here are some other things I’ll be thinking about during my drafts.
Anticipate injuries.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking “mission accomplished” after you’ve drafted your starters for Week 1. The injury gods are cruel. Few fantasy teams escape a season unscathed by injuries.
Try this thought exercise: Imagine that your top RB and top WR both get hurt in Week 1. What will your starting lineup look like in Week 2?
Build a deep, robust roster that can weather RB and WR injuries. Depth at QB and TE is less important in 1QB leagues since there are usually playable options available on waivers. You need to have viable backup options at RB and WR.
Don’t handcuff your RBs.
Dedicating two roster spots to the RB position on a single NFL team is a suboptimal strategy. You’re better off spreading your bets around and trying to strike gold in a different backfield.
Drafting the backup to one of your starting RBs robs you of a chance to find the next Bucky Irving – the sort of late-round gem who can tilt the balance of power in a fantasy league. Don’t pick a handcuff RB to solidify your team’s floor; use that pick to try to raise your team’s ceiling.
Draft defenses and kickers in the final rounds.
Don’t be among the first people to draft a team defense or kicker. Scoring is too volatile and unpredictable at these positions to justify addressing them with middle-round picks.
Target defenses and kickers with favorable matchups in the first week or two of the season, then play waivers at these positions the rest of the season, seeking the best possible matchups each week.
Add these wrinkles to your Kentucky Derby strategy.
Some leagues determine draft order Kentucky Derby style, with people getting to pick their draft spots after a random draw. For most, the first consideration in picking a draft spot is trying to get a desirable player combination in Rounds 1-2. Two other things worth considering:
- It’s generally easier to land your favorite draft targets if you pick in the middle rather than on one of the ends, where you’ll have longer stretches in between picks.
- This sounds mean, but it can be advantageous to choose a spot adjacent to one of the less savvy members of your league. It will reduce the odds of seeing your favorite targets drafted directly in front of you.
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.
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. 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 Trey McBride in Round 3 or George Kittle in Round 4 if I don’t already have Brock Bowers on my roster. (McBride is usually gone by the end of Round 2.) 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.
Fitz’s Seven Favorite Draft Targets
Here are some of my favorite 2025 draft targets.
London turned a corner in 2024, finishing third in the NFL in targets (158), ninth in receptions (100) and fourth in receiving yards (1,271) while scoring a career-high nine touchdowns.
London really popped when rookie QB Michael Penix Jr. made three starts for Atlanta at the end of the regular season. London caught 22-of-39 targets in those three contests for 352 yards and two touchdowns. Penix has a terrific arm and could be a rainmaker for London this year.
Bowers is a freak. He finished third among all pass catchers in receptions, behind only Ja’Marr Chase and Amon-Ra St. Brown, and he did it as a 21-year-old tight end playing with bad quarterbacks. Bowers had 112-1,194-5 receiving. He finished 18th in PPR scoring among non-QBs, but had Bowers scored just two more touchdowns, he would have finished 12th.
The Raiders have added QB Geno Smith, who threw for 4,320 yards in Seattle last year, and the fast pace favored by new Raiders offensive coordinator Chip Kelly could give Bowers an incremental value bump due to increased play volume.
Irving had 1514 yards from scrimmage and eight touchdowns last season, and he played only about one-third of the Buccaneers’ offensive snaps over the first month of the season, when Rachaad White was still Tampa’s lead RB. Irving also had a toe injury at midseason that cost him snaps.
In fact, there were only seven games last season in which Irving played more than half of the Buccaneers’ offensive snaps, including their one playoff game. But in games where he did play more than half of the offensive snaps, Irving averaged 127.3 yards from scrimmage per game.
Irving averaged 3.93 yards after contact per attempt, according to PFF – tops among all RBs who had 60 or more carries. He ranked seventh in PFF rushing grade, ninth in breakaway percentage, and fourth in yards per route run (1.62) among RBs with at least 20 catches.
It’s a good bet that the Seahawks’ ground game will thrive under new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak and run game coordinator Rick Dennison. The Kubiak-Dennison partnership has been running-game gold dating back to Dennison’s pairing with Klint’s dad, Gary Kubiak, in Denver in the 1990s and 2000s.
The Kubiak scheme will include a lot of outside zone, which should suit Walker, who has averaged 4.54 yards per carry on outside-zone runs over his first three NFL seasons, according to Ryan Heath of Fantasy Points.
Walker has also been a reliable touchdown scorer, with 26 TDs in 41 career games.
Ridley has topped 1,000 yards in each of the last two seasons. He was highly efficient in 2024, averaging 15.9 yards per catch and 1.86 yards per route run, even though the Titans had one of the worst QB situations in the league.
No. 1 draft pick Cam Ward takes over at quarterback for the Titans this season, and while he’s sure to hit some bumps as a rookie, Ward is an aggressive downfield thrower who should help boost Ridley’s fantasy value
Rushing ability is a cheat code for quarterbacks, but most of the QBs who provide substantial rushing value are expensive in fantasy drafts — Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, and Jayden Daniels. You can turn a big profit by finding a quarterback who provides prolific rushing value but isn’t very expensive. I think Maye can be that guy.
Maye started 12 games as a rookie. But if we exclude Week 18, when he only played three snaps before being pulled, Maye averaged 4.7 carries and 37.2 rushing yards. Over a full season, that would project to 632 rushing yards. I think Maye could do better than that. As a redshirt freshman at North Carolina, Maye had 698 rushing yards in 14 games — and remember that college quarterbacks have sack yardage deducted from their rushing yardage. In his two seasons as a college starter, he had 16 touchdown runs in 26 games.
Maye was also competent as a passer last year, even though his offensive line and pass catchers were trash. The Patriots have at least incrementally improved their WR corps and O-line.
We’ve seen what Mason can do if he gets substantial carry volume. In the 49ers’ first five games of 2024, with Christian McCaffrey out, Mason averaged 107 rushing yards per game, 120 scrimmage yards per game, and 5.1 yards per carry.
Mason is a terrific fit for a Minnesota running game that’s heavy on outside-zone runs. The Vikings improved their offensive line in free agency, and head coach Kevin O’Connell is one of the best playcallers in the league.
Mason could have stand-alone value even if 30-year-old Aaron Jones stays healthy. If Jones were to miss time, Mason could deliver RB1 value.
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