Common Fantasy Football Draft Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Even if you know nothing about the NFL, there’s an easy way to get ahead in your fantasy football drafts: Don’t make any mistakes. While this may sound obvious, most fantasy managers, especially in casual home leagues, don’t follow this rule. The majority of managers make at least one simple draft strategy mistake that puts their team behind the eight ball before the season even kicks off. In this article, I will go over the most common of these mistakes and, more importantly, how to avoid them. Let’s get started.

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Coming to the Draft Unprepared

If you’re worried that this breaks the promise in the introduction that you could follow these tips without knowing about the NFL, never fear. When I say “prepared,” I don’t mean having done hundreds of mock drafts or watched every preseason game. I’m talking about the bare minimum of preparation: Having a cheat sheet. Even more specifically, you have to know your league’s settings and have rankings that reflect those settings.

Whether you use FantasySP’s Player Ratings, FantasyPros’ Expert Consensus Rankings, or rankings from your personal favorite fantasy expert, it’s important to have some source you use during the draft. Even if your league is drafting on a platform that comes with built-in rankings, those rankings are usually, for lack of a better word, terrible.

Just having a simple printout that allows you to cross out players as they are drafted is a game changer. This one move can also prevent plenty of classic fantasy drafting errors, like over-drafting past-their-prime former stars because of name recognition or accidentally drafting recently injured players … just be sure your rankings are up to date.  

Predetermining a Draft Strategy

This is almost the opposite of the previous mistake, over-preparing instead of under-preparing. While draft strategies like “Hero Running Back” or “Late-Round Quarterback” are often helpful tools, it is a mistake to commit yourself to using one before your draft has begun. 

It’s very important to be flexible and adapt to your particular league’s environment. If you’re hyperfixating on forcing one strategy, you might miss opportunities when they present themselves — don’t pass on Josh Allen in the fifth round just because you planned to wait on quarterbacks. 

Drafting a Kicker or Defense too Early

Fantasy managers often draft a kicker and/or a defense in the middle rounds, reasoning that it’s important to fill every spot in their lineup or that having the top option at one of these positions will give their team an edge. But that is a mistake.

You should always wait to draft your defense and especially your kicker in the last two rounds of your fantasy football draft. This is for two simple reasons. First of all, the top kickers and defenses do not separate themselves from the pack in terms of scoring to the same degree as players at other positions. And, more importantly, it’s near-impossible to predict who those top players will be.

Let’s just look at last year for an example. Last year’s K1, Brandon Aubrey, did actually separate himself from the rest of the field, scoring 21 more points than the next kicker. But his ADP coming into the season was K25 — aka undrafted in every single league.

On the defensive side, the Dallas Cowboys finished as the DST1, although just four points ahead of the DST2. They were drafted as the DST4 on average, so that’s not bad in terms of predictability. But by far the consensus DST1 before the season, the 49ers, only finished as the DST10. The Eagles were drafted as the DST2, ahead of the Cowboys, and finished as the fifth-worst unit in the league. 

Meanwhile, even in the late rounds, there are huge potential rewards to selecting a positional player. Players like C.J. Stroud, Raheem Mostert, De'Von Achane and Sam LaPorta were all drafted on average after multiple kickers and defenses last year — there is a real opportunity cost to every pick in a fantasy football draft. 

Especially once you consider the viability of streaming these two positions, you shouldn’t draft them until you absolutely have to. If your league format allows you to, it’s even worth waiting to add one or both the day before the season, stashing a handcuff running back with that extra bench slot in the meantime.

Drafting a Quarterback too Early

This is nowhere near as grievous a sin as the previous blurb, and it has also become less common in recent years. But casual fantasy managers still often make the mistake of assuming that because quarterbacks are both the most important players in real football and the highest-scoring position in fantasy, they should be drafted in the first few rounds. 

Although quarterbacks do score the most total points, fantasy football is a relative game. All quarterbacks score more points, and the top quarterbacks (aside from a few historical exceptions) do not outscore their peers by as much as the top wide receivers and running backs, making them less valuable. In a traditional one-quarterback league, the first quarterback should not come off the board until the late second or third round, at the earliest. 

Drafting to Trade

Sometimes, it can be tempting to draft a player with the sole intention of trading them. This is most often relevant in one particular scenario: After a manager drafts one elite quarterback, another falls past their ADP to them at a later pick. Often, managers will reason that even though they can’t use both quarterbacks, they will be able to trade one later for a premium. 

Don’t fall into this trap. Trading, especially at the very beginning of the season, is very hard. Every other manager will be happy with their team, having just drafted it, and not want to pay up for that player you drafted just to trade.

And by drafting a player with the sole goal of trading them, you’ve hurt your own leverage — every week that player sits on your bench is a week you lose value, so you’ll probably end up taking a mediocre deal instead of holding out for the premium you were imagining. 

The draft is the most liquid the fantasy football market will ever be, don’t waste that opportunity by planning to make a move on a much tougher marker (trading) down the line. 

Falling in Love and Reaching

Don’t get me wrong: It’s okay to reach to draft players you want on your team. That’s practically the point of fantasy football. Whether it’s a sleeper you’ve fallen in love with, a player from your favorite team, or just someone with a cool name, get your guy … but only to an extent. 

If you’re reading this article, you probably have done at least a little bit of fantasy football research, and that includes reading about some sleepers. It’s very easy to read a convincing argument, see a few impressive stats, or watch a few highlights and become convinced that one particular player is a must-have.

But the fantasy football draft market is, while nowhere near perfect, generally fairly predictive. If you find yourself scrolling down multiple rounds in both your site’s ADP and your ranking cheat sheet to find a player, you’ve probably gone too far. 

Worrying About Bye Weeks

This may be slightly controversial, but I don’t recommend considering bye weeks at all during a fantasy football draft. By the time bye week season comes around, your roster will likely look hugely different than it does on draft night.

Even if you do end up in a jam at a particular position for one week, it’s just one week, and byes don’t continue into the fantasy football playoffs. It’s never the right call to draft one player over another with a better profile based on bye weeks.  

Overthinking

At the end of the day, this game is about fun. Especially in a casual league, feel free to disregard everything I’ve just said and draft the way that makes you happiest. Fantasy football is high-variance enough that you can certainly still win anyway … and if not, who cares?