Win Your Draft - 2026 Draft Strategies

@arlenjlove: Yes, this is a fantasy football lab, and I am Arlen, but there is no Nate. Nowhere to be found. I'm doing solo today. This is one of the top weekends of fantasy football for drafting. I'm doing all my drafts next weekend, but we figured we should talk a little bit about draft strategy and specifically what's going on this year. though, first I had to run many, many different mock drafts outside the ones I've already been doing, and I found that. In those mock drafts, over half of the players in the first two rounds were running backs. This is a big increase. It's nothing new that we want to pick those running backs early on, but there seems to be quite a bit of increase where a lot of people are being pushed up. So running backs took thirteen of the first twenty-four picks on average in the ones that I ran through. And another five came off the board before round three ended. It's just a ton of running backs going up there, and that's okay in general if there were the running backs to support it. Now, nobody had to tell your league mates to do this. You're probably seeing it in all of your drafts right now. They watched last season, they saw what running backs paid off, and they adjusted, but the market's not stupid. Here's what did not adjust. The supply of really good running backs that deserve to be in those rounds. That are should be in those middle rounds. That didn't change at all. Same guys, same commitment, same coaching staffs who won't commit to certain guys. And what changed is what you have to pay for them. Since they're bumped up, it's more of a premium for all those running backs. That's the whole episode. The middle of your draft got more expensive without getting better. And let's talk about what to do about it. And because I'm solo, you get to hear my thoughts without Nate talking me out of my idiotic ideas. But there are three parts today. The first is draft strategies. Quick, plain definitions of all the main five draft strategies. You got Hero, you got Zero, robust and balanced, super flex. So nobody's going to get lost if you already know them. Awesome. If it'll take 60 seconds and just hang with me. and then I'll hand you the one question that sits underneath every single one of them. Because once you've got that, you can start to reason on their way through your builds, through your drafts themselves, and make sure that you can pivot between them depending on what your league is actually doing in the specific draft that you're in. Second, the running back situation in twenty twenty six. What the board actually looks like right now, what caused it, and the part I think people are getting wrong. Why the dangerous middle round is going to hurt you a lot more throughout the season than it did last year or two years ago. Third, I'll commit. I'll tell you which build I think is gives you the best shot and I'll go slot by slot one through twelve. Okay, here are the five draft strategies you've probably heard of people talking about you might need a little bit of a definition for. So hero running back. You take one elite running back early, then ignore the position for a long stretch. And then you come back for your second running back late. Hero wide receiver is the same idea with the position swapped, of course. Zero running back. You take no running backs at all for the first five or six rounds. The name is Pretty literal for that period, and then you load up everywhere else and then buy a stack of cheap lottery tickets at the positions, high value handcuff cuffs, people you believe in are being drafted late, going for some sleepers there. Robust running back. It's the opposite. Two sometimes three running backs inside of the first four rounds. Think of it as a double hero strategy. Obviously, swap it for a wide receiver if that's what you're looking for. For robust, balanced or best player available. You Don't commit to a shape at all. You rank in tiers. Take the best player left every time that you're on the clock, regardless of the roster needs, and fix the balance within the early waivers and trades, and then the later rounds themselves. Super flex. This one's a format rather than preference. Your flex spot can hold a quarterback, so every time two start thirty two starters exist in the entire league. So you can get a couple of quarterbacks there, but I think the call out here for Superflex and why I threw it in is that you don't have to grab two early quarterbacks. You shouldn't overpay for the quarterbacks in the beginning if you see people are grabbing them early. And reminder during the year, if you zag while others are zigging, you can play one quarterback still if you have a pretty deep elite roster. All right, so that's the vocabulary. Now the part that actually helps, the one question underneath all of this. Where do you want your certainty? And what are you willing to pay for it? That's it. It's a game of chance. It's a game of prediction. And whenever you can get a higher percentage of it correct, and get a little bit of that certainty, it's a currency. You've got 16 weeks where you have to pick your lineups, and you can spend them buying weeks you never have to think about, or you can spend them. Buying upside and hope that that can emerge and people can manage through the season. Every name strategy is just a different allocation of that spend itself. So instead of definitions, I'm going to run through each build with three things: what certainty it buys you, what it costs, and how much work it makes you do in September and October. That's a big piece of this. Some people are a little bit more into fantasy than others, some thrive on fantasy. Wheeling and dealing and looking at the waiver wire and scouring and some people want to build that if everything works out, they won't have to look at it much. They won't have to try as much and pay attention. But either way, the general rule here is you don't win your league at the draft. You do have to make moves, but it does dictate how you're probably going to or have a higher chance of have interacting with fantasy football throughout the year. Hero. Alright, the build. One elite back inside of your first two picks, nothing at a position for a long time. We covered that. What it buys? One lineup slot that you never have to look at again. That's the entire product. You wake up Sunday and one starter is already handled. You don't have to think about it. The cost though, you have no insurance. So the first portion of my statement is the hope. Your build assumes that the guy plays all the 16 games. And running backs are the position that are least likely to cooperate with being there every single week. So that assumption that you're making it's dangerous if you don't have a backup. But if it pays off, this is probably one of the ones that pays off the most. The work required is low to moderate. I like this build. I'll say up front so that you know where I'm coming from for the rest of the episode. And the reason isn't really it's not a math reason, it's quality of life reason. I like having that certainty within my lineup. I like it during the draft, and another part of this and choosing the right strategy is what's gonna make you tilt less. So when I have that solid hero running back, hero wide receiver. I feel like I tilt a lot less in the draft and I can stick to my plan and also I can adjust and stay water throughout the draft when I feel that confidence there. Hero has a structural advantage that nobody talks about. It's at its best near the turn because you can double up. I really like that. But if you're right in the beginning, you're also looking for some of those top. running backs that nobody else gets to grab. So it can work there as well. Zero. The build. Hero was with the volume all the way up. Zero backs for five or six rounds, an absolute loaded roster everywhere else, then a pile of cheap swings at the position late. What it buys, this is the best receiving core that you're gonna have in your league. You're going to be stacked at that. You might be stacked and be able to afford the chance to get a high end tight end and high end Quarterback having a true positional advantage in those onesie positions, but the cost is an entire position and a really important one that's hard to recoup throughout the season. I also see that trading a top quarterback tight end sometimes, just that tier below the top wide receiver, isn't as sexy to people as running backs. So you don't get that same advantage in trades. So you're really looking at some trades, but mostly hoping that that your guys pay off, somebody gets injured and you're the one to take advantage of it and that you spend your fab accordingly in the first week. The work required, this is the highest of any build. You really need to fix that issue. You've got an extreme advantage in everything else, but a really big glaring weak spot and you're gonna need to work pretty hard to make sure that's fixed. But if you can fix it, you're in a really good spot. Robust. The build. Two, sometimes three backs inside of your first four picks. You're buying the position in bulk before the tier breaks. What it buys? A control of scarce resources. If there's a real cliff at a position and you own the two guys above it, you've got an edge in the spot where half of your league is starting a guess every single week. what it costs. Your receiver room usually. If you went so heavy and running back in the beginning, you might be able to have an easier time finding wide receivers than running backs throughout the year or making trades to get a couple really good middle round wide receivers to balance out, but your wide receiver room is going to start very weak. So you're going to start somebody in your flex that you don't like possibly. your top two wide receivers, you'll probably end up with one that you like and one that's a real big question mark. So you're looking for some risks there. And I've noticed that over the last couple years, the amount of wide receiver two and threes on a team have been shrinking. Used to be a lot more robust for wide receivers out there. So it was easy to just go so running back heavy. But with the running backs going up higher, you're paying a premium and losing these really top wide receivers. And there's still more wide receivers available throughout the season on the waiver wire, but not as much as it has been in the years before. So take that into consideration. The work required though is low. The underrated part of robust is what happens in October. When two or three teams in your league lose a starting back, you're the only one in town. That gives you an opportunity to be able to balance things out through trade, or just keep the advantage for yourself. It's easier to find somebody that will produce at least some points off of the waiver wire in the wide receiver position. So you can stream, catch up, and use the waiver and some some trades to balance that out, but your running back situation is set and that is often what people struggle with most of the year. So it's a pretty calm build. balanced or best player available. I really like this and will pretty much exclusively use this in dynasty rookie drafts. Nate is a big believer in, you know, filling the gaps of his team. I trade enough where I am a believer in just grabbing who I really think is going to be the best player for the longest amount of time. In redraft though, it's a little different and I don't use it as much. but I'll throw it into a couple rounds or two. So we think of these builds as something that you have to do from start to beginning, or from start to end. but really you can kind of sprinkle some of these other ones in, and this is the one that I sprinkle in oftentimes as a tiebreaker or in the later rounds. So what the build is, it's tiers on the board. I always use tier system no matter what I use to kind of break ties and help guide me throughout the draft. But this one is really fully dependent on that. If you see a break in tier, you grab that player that is the last one left or one of the last two left, and no matter the position, what you need, you get a pretty balanced team by the end of it. The draft will naturally balance your team out if you're just going for best available. And it allows you when you're going into that draft with that strategy, allows you to pivot. When I was talking about zigging one other people zag. that's where you can find some really good value because everybody's going over here and pushing a certain position up and you allow yourself the freedom to pivot and grab what the best value is. So it naturally moves with the draft itself. So I think it gives you a pretty good balance with the team overall. What I usually do myself is I usually start hero, running back, or wide receiver. And then a lot of times I'll flip it. the opposite position for round two and then I'll just finish the draft on best available. The work that is required. It's low during the draft and it's it can be high afterwards if you didn't get a balance correct and you really just did go for best available, it might leave you with gaps. But at the end of the draft, I find that usually it's not that crazy amount of work to balance it out and do a couple switches in the beginning and then you're set. So I don't think it's actually too much work after the draft. I think it Is less stressful during the draft. and this is probably the draft strategy that causes the least amount of pivots. least amount of tilts. That's what I mean. Alright, let's talk super flux. how to get a genuine top tier quarterback early, then you let your second one slide until the later rounds or at least pick a tier that you want as your second and then keep an eye on it. And if you feel like it's time to pull the trigger on that second one, because to you that's your end point and everything after that you're not gonna be happy with. Just watch that tier and make sure that you're tracking how many players are left in it. And when there are only a couple left, then pull the trigger on that second one. I am usually picking if I'm pick three to five, I'm usually picking a quarterback before that and after, I'm usually picking a top running back or a top wide receiver there because the value is just too good to pass up and there's still some really good quarterbacks that you're gonna get in the second Browns. That's usually how I approach it. People often blow this strategy or their super flex drafts when they panic and they tilt on their second quarterback specifically. Most likely you've got a pretty decent first quarterback unless you really pushed it. but that second quarterback, usually maybe like late in round three or four, and you see four or five quarterbacks going in a row, and your brain is screaming at you that you have to take one. Don't Unless there's a value that dropped to you, that's a big cost in the first and third or second and third. Two of your top three picks being quarterbacks in a super flex, you're leaving a lot on the table. It can work, but usually you're pretty weak at the other positions. And even in a super flex, I feel like I haven't had the same value in trades from Quarterback. So even if you get another quarterback later, you feel good with them and you want to trade one of your top ones to balance your team out. That's a Harder sell sometimes than than I really anticipate. And the other piece is if you don't panic, you keep with your strategy. It's not gonna go on forever that run. You're gonna get a few of them off the board. You're gonna feel like all of them are going to go. But if you're truly picking out that tier of your last resort and watching it, then you can stay pretty focused and see: okay, a lot of the tier above it has gone. There's only a one or two here. And because there is such a large run for second quarterbacks, half the league is actually good for many rounds and they probably won't be picking a quarterback again for a while. So it gives you a little bit of time. So don't panic. Just watch what's happening and adjust accordingly. In superflex, everything that people say when it comes to running backs and how the scarcity gets quieter, you need to pause and realize that it gets quieter, but it's not gone. So if you over panic or you ignore that thinking that it is going to come to you because everyone's focused on quarterbacks, do some mock drafts and realize that you're still going to have a running back dead zone. And that dead zone isn't new. So the running back dead zone is a period in your draft where you're not excited about the running backs. And if you have waited to pick your first or second running back, this is the place where you are in trouble if you don't handle it correctly. You're either overpaying for players that should be going a few rounds later or are of similar value to people a few rounds later, and you feel like you need to take that running back to balance out your roster, but then you see the other positions that are available that time. And if you really just focus on those, you can often get a better team overall. But you have to know that it exists before going into drafts because this year, kind of the return of that running back dead zone. Historically that stretch has been around three, four about there but through seven or eight. That part's the same, but here's what's different. And it's two different things. The top of the board has earned it. There has been a transition from the old guard to the new guard. We know now who the top dogs are. And the top of the board really do deserve to be drafted high. So if you're thinking about getting value a few later because a few rounds later, it's not gonna be there. Those top ones, if you don't know if you wanna spend that on some of those people that are up there, it we've gotten pretty good at predicting who the top running backs are barring injury. So when you're looking at the top twelve running backs in half point PPR that come out of the first thirteen taken at the position, it's a hit rate that you can't ignore. last couple years it's been almost dead on. You have some people pop in and out throughout, but for the most part the percentage is pretty high on if they're going to produce and be worth that pick. So don't be afraid to pick those top twelve running backs. When it comes to a few years ago, like three or so years ago, when it was about five of twelve, though it was basically a coin flip. You don't know who's going to be good or not. So the top is solidified, people are learning, the ADP is more accurate. So drafters, they realize this and they did a rational thing. They moved backs up. Thirteen of the first twenty four picks, sixteen of the top thirty six are running backs. That's not a bubble. That's a market correctly pricing in new information. Which means you have to get in on that because right after it is also pretty accurate. It's going to be harder to hit on those ones after those first two, three rounds. This is the part that costs you the money. The back, who was your round six flyer, is now your round four pick. Because we adjusted correctly and moved those running backs up, so did all of the running backs below it. They got moved up too. But they didn't actually deserve to be moved up. So you're paying a premium for each one. They didn't get better, the offense didn't get better, the backfield didn't clear up. You're just paying two rounds higher. For the identical player this year. So I think that's a trap and it doesn't feel like a trap while you're in it because the name is familiar, you know what's going on, and you're used to those that tear paying off. But that's only because that tear was a few rounds later. I'll make a fair counter argument though, because I don't want to sell you a story that's well, I want an out, if I'm all wrong here. But there are somewhere around twenty backs projected to see seventeen or more touches a game this year. It's a decent number. There's plenty of mid around backs that are going to finish just fine. So if you believe in your guy, you want That's still Nate's number one rule. Go get your guy. This is not the middle rounds are radioactive or anything. So here's how I separate the ones from the traps. Three questions. Any backs in the rounds four through eight has to pass at least two. Does he keep the ball inside the five? That's really big. Does he play on third down? Passing down work is a difference between a flex player and a starter. If you can get the third down work, you've got a pretty good shot of that middle round running back being valuable. Would your league recognize the name of his backup? If yes, a committee is waiting to happen. And also Is your offensive coordinator McNabby Mike Nabby? McNabby? I don't even he doesn't even deserve for me to pronounce it right. So I'm scared about Scatterboo. But I'm still drafting him. Two out of the three of those criteria, and it's a real target. One or zero, and you're picking it because that's your guy. And you go get your guy. That's okay too. but you should have some criteria set before you go in there, target the ones you want, mark them, keep an eye on them. So, what am I doing this year? I am trying to get a running back. In the first two run rounds that I really believe in. There are plenty in the beginning and the end of the first round that I really like. trying to solidify at least in the first three rounds, one wide receiver I really believe in. There's a ton of wide receivers in the third and fourth round that I really, really like. And then coming back around to running back in the fifth round, there are one or two that I do really like. I like Tutin, I like Price, I like though a couple of those guys around that area, but I don't like most of them. So I think the the pieces I want to set myself up before I hit round five that I am okay with skipping that position. If I set up my team correctly and it doesn't lay out how I expect it to, or at least that guy doesn't fall to me when I'm pushing it a little bit, I'd like to be okay and not panic. Or tilt when I have to make the decision to abandon that plan. So I think part of this strategy is getting a great team together. Part of it is knowing yourself and realizing when you tilt and setting up your team so you don't tilt. Well, that's been it. Good luck drafting. May you get your guy and may that guy be good. Cheers.