2024 Anatomy of a League Winner

Every summer, I write an article called “Anatomy of a League-Winner.” And every winter it gets nominated for a Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA) award.

Basically, it’s a deep macro dive into positional value. For instance, last year, I concluded that “high-end RBs are worth roughly 1.4X as much as high-end WRs, which are worth roughly 2.7X as much as high-end TEs and QBs, which are worth roughly 1.5X as much as high-end defenses.” There’s a lot that goes into this, but primarily, positional value is determined by factors such as scarcity, replaceability, and value relative to in-position peers.

I decided not to write that article this year because I didn’t really see the point. Why? Because the micro is the macro. The optimal draft strategy is not one based on positions, but one based on players: Should you go Late-Round QB? Should you punt the TE position? Should you take a Zero-RB approach? These questions are almost entirely dependent upon where the value is in the current year you’re drafting. If 2024 ADP is doing a terrible job of pricing RBs – e.g. if there’s an RB in Round 12 I have ranked as a top-10 option, and then there are multiple other RBs going later who are mispriced by multiple rounds – then yes, Zero-RB would be the optimal approach in 2024.

So, if you want to know the optimal draft strategy for 2024, you’re going to have to read my 2024 Draft Guide.

But here’s the abridged version of Anatomy of a League Winner for those of you who were looking for it.

Quarterback (Historical / Macro Thoughts)

QB has historically been one of the most overrated positions in fantasy football.

It’s the deepest and the least scarce of the big four positions, while also offering the most parity. Even when you do hit on a top scorer (even in the later rounds), it doesn’t ever move the needle to the same degree as with an RB, WR, or TE.

I’ve long recommended a “Late-Round QB” approach. And this has served us exceedingly well over the years: In 2019, Lamar Jackson was my “must-draft QB” (ADP: QB14). In 2021, Jalen Hurts was my “must-draft QB” (ADP: QB12). In 2022, Justin Fields was my “must-draft QB” (ADP: QB17). And it seemed like last year Anthony Richardson (ADP: QB15) would have been a league winner had he stayed healthy.

But it’s not just my ability to spot late-round league-winners at the positions. It’s not just the opportunity cost of foregoing an early-round quarterback (passing up more valuable RBs and WRs). It’s that even if we full-on punt, we’re going to be absolutely fine.

What happens if I full-on punt the position? Even if you drafted zero QBs, you’re going to fine. If you just streamed the position – i.e. if you started the best available (by weekly projections) QB on waivers every week – you’d be able to cobble together mid to low-end QB1 production from your waiver wire. Or at least, those are the results returned by J.J. Zachariason on his “Living the Stream” podcast. Keep in mind, Zachariason puts himself at an inherent disadvantage, not being able to hold QBs with a >50% rostership rate. In reality, he could have added any of the following QBs and never dropped them: C.J. Stroud in Week 5 (overall QB6 from that point on), Brock Purdy in Week 7 (overall QB5 from that point on), Jordan Love in Week 10 (overall QB3 from that point on), or Joe Flacco in Week 13 (fantasy’s QB2 over the last four weeks of the fantasy season)… And 2023 wasn’t exactly an outlier in this regard. This has always been true of the QB position – the waiver wire represents an atypically high floor and ceiling(!) relative to the other positions.

Graphic courtesy of the Late Round QB Draft Guide.

For all of these reasons, it’s no surprise a Late-Round QB strategy has long reigned as king — in something like 11 of the past 12 seasons, you were better off being one of the last teams in your draft to take a QB rather than one of the first.

Running Back (Historical / Macro Thoughts)

Highest-end RBs are the most valuable commodity in fantasy football.

The RB position is the most important position in fantasy, and there isn’t a close second. If you win or lose your league, it’s probably because you rostered the right or wrong running backs more than anything else.

I can write a lot of words expanding on all this, but let me save you some time… The historical data is largely irrelevant in 2024 because today’s RB landscape is almost unrecognizable from what it was pre-2022.

In the current landscape, the RB position is a mess. There are fewer great RBs – the historic 2017 class is now past the age cliff, and the early-round RBs from the more recent draft classes have largely underwhelmed. Further, bell cows appear to be a dying breed in today’s NFL.

Following the move to an 18-week schedule, the likelihood of RB injuries increases (RBs suffer injuries at a slightly higher rate than WRs), and wear and tear takes a greater toll on the players who touch the ball the most. Because of this, more and more teams are adopting a committee backfield (and moving away from a singular bell-cow back), to help lighten the load and keep their RBs healthy for the full season and come playoff time. Over the last two years, when doing my Annual Post-Draft Presser Review series, this was something explicitly stated by nearly every team who drafted an RB on Day 1 or Day 2.

This inflates the value of the guaranteed bell cows and highest-end RBs, pushes down the value of the RBs in the next few tiers, and increases the upside of later-round RBs. There are a lot more “ambiguous backfields” in today’s NFL, which means a wider range of outcomes. That’s something we’re going to want to be leaning into (chasing upside), especially with RBs being cheaper today than they’ve ever been before.

What happens if I full-on punt the position? If you had zero good RBs? Yeah, you’re probably screwed.

What happens if I partially punted the position, if I had a good RB1 but no RB2? You might be OK! The waiver wire typically offers you very little floor at the position, but it does offer you a significant amount of upside (unlike the WR position). It’s probably not something we want to banking on, but Kyren Williams and Zamir White were league-winning waiver adds a season ago.

So, what is the optimal approach? RB-RB because RBs are so valuable? Zero RB or Hero-RB because of the shifting landscape? Ultimately, it all depends on where the value is. It depends on how closely current ADP aligns to my rankings. It depends on how much value there is at the RB position in the middle-to-late rounds relative to WRs. And that’s an answer I can only give to our subscribers who have access to my paywalled Draft Guide.

But I can tell you this.

In 2024 drafts, the Big-3 RBs – Christian McCaffrey, Breece Hall, and Bijan Robinson – are the top 3 players in my overall rankings. Why? Because a highest-end RB is the most valuable commodity in fantasy football. Everything I said in the first two paragraphs of this section still holds true. Last year 58.9% of all Christian McCaffreyteams made it to the the finals on ESPN. That was by far the most of any player, and nearly twice as much as that of any other Round 1 pick (Tyreek Hill came next-closest at 30.5%). Yes, the landscape has shifted in favor of WRs in the aggregate. But the rise of committee backfields, the decline in RB talent, and the scarcity of bell cow RBs or RBs with “legendary upside” only further enhance the value of these top-3 RBs.

This is my recommendation and this is the route I’m going in my own drafts. That’s partly because of what I described above, but also because I’m seeing so much more value in the middle-to-late-round WRs. But I won’t fault you at all if you’d rather draft a WR with your Round 1 pick, gravitating instead toward the safety they provide. Ideally, my Draft Guide will give you enough league-winners in the later rounds for you to win with either approach.

To the credit for Zero-RB proponents and highlighting the points made earlier, I really don’t mind punting my RB2 or RB3 in drafts. At the very least, I’m far less inclined to go with a RB-RB or even RB-WR-RB start in 2024. But if you do go this route, just make sure you’re not leaving your draft without my Exodia RB (currently going in Rounds 8-10).

Wide Receiver (Historical / Macro Thoughts)

In most seasons, you were better off prioritizing RBs over WRs in the earliest rounds of your draft. But not the last two years – over the last two years WRs have trumped RBs by a sizable margin. And even the year before that, it was at least a tie, if not a slight edge to WRs.

To be clear, this is now firmly priced into the market. From Mike Clay: “Five years ago, 10 of the first 12 picks (and 14 of the top 20) were RBs. In 2024, only four of the first 12 picks (and 10 of the first 36) are RBs.”

But as I alluded to in the RB section, I’m nearly certain this is evidence of a shifting fantasy landscape rather than this being two back-to-back outlier years.

I don’t think the NFL has ever had six WRs playing at the level Tyreek Hill, Justin Jefferson, Ja’Marr Chase, CeeDee Lamb, Amon-Ra St. Brown, and A.J. Brown are currently. (Throw Davante Adams and Cooper Kupp onto that list if they can look anything like they did two seasons ago.) Further, we’re coming off of some historically great WR classes (2021, 2022, 2024), which look historically great in comparison to some lackluster RB classes. WRs are breaking out earlier than ever, and the majority of these WRs are now entering what would be their typical peak seasons.

One of the added benefits of taking an RB-RB start to your draft was that it was always easier to find league-winning WRs in the middle to late rounds of your draft. Remember, in 2021, Cooper Kupp (Round 5), Ja’Marr Chase (Round 8), and Deebo Samuel (Round 10) were all going in the middle to late rounds of your draft. But in the last few years, ADP has done a terrific job of pricing WRs based on their league-winning upside, while doing a terrible job at the RB position.

But again, every year is its own unique special snowflake. And in 2024, I am seeing a number of egregiously mispriced must-draft WRs in the later rounds of your draft. In my Draft Guide, you’ll find multiple WRs with a Round 2 grade who are currently being selected in Rounds 4-6 of your draft. For this reason, I do think you can win your league with a RB-RB-WR or RB-WR-RB approach if you decide to go that route, even if I’m not often going that route myself.

Tight End (Historical / Macro Thoughts)

RB is easily the most important position in fantasy football. WR is a close second. And then there’s a steep dropoff where QBs and TEs are more or less tied if we count Travis Kelce, who has long been one of the most valuable players in fantasy – more valuable than any QB, and comparably valuable to the 2nd- or 3rd-highest scoring WR in any given season. Or at least this has been the case up until last year when he declined in all key efficiency metrics (in his age 34 season) and fell from 3rd in route share to 8th. He still finished 1st in FPG, but scored 4.0 fewer FPG than he did in 2022.

Historically, if peak Kelce is excluded, the TE position is fairly worthless. And you’re better off full-on punting the position. That’s partly due to positional value, but also because in every season, there’s seemingly always 1-2 TEs with latest-round ADPs who ultimately finish as a mid-range TE1 or better, or 2-5 latest-round TEs who would rank top-5 in win-rate.

What happens if I full-on punt the position? The above point is a massive one. This is the more extreme example, but even if you draft zero TEs your team isn’t going to be at a massive disadvantage, so long as you get a little lucky or work the waiver wire better than most of your leaguemates. The floor the waiver wire offers you at the TE position isn’t as high as it is with QBs, but the upside is (historically) extremely high. Things could be pretty rough if this isn’t the case, but there’s a very good chance you’ll be able to find a dependable every-week starter and fantasy TE1 off waivers at some point within the first few weeks of the season.

The TE position has historically been one marked by immense inequality. In any given season, there are 1-2 Oligarchs (last year there wasn’t one, the year before that, it was only Kelce, the year before that, it was Mark Andrews and Kelce, and the year before that, it was Kelce and Darren Waller) ruling over the rest of the peasants. This has meant that historically you wanted to take a barbell approach at the position: draft Travis Kelce or wait until double-digit rounds to grab multiple high-upside TEs. If you ended up weak at the position, that’s fine. Because just about every team (minus your league’s Kelce owner) was weak at the position, and this is the position you do want to be weakest at.

All of this being said, things look dramatically different at the TE position this year. Especially if we assume Travis Kelce will be closer to who he was in 2023 (barely the fantasy TE1) than in 2017-2022 (far-and-away the TE1, basically putting up mid-range fantasy WR1 numbers). And then, given the breakouts of players like Sam LaPorta, Trey McBride, Dalton Kincaid, Jake Ferguson, and David Njoku, deepening the top-end of the position. You can argue there is no Oligarch TE this year, but the upper class of the position is now deeper by about 4-7 names.

With things changing so much, our strategy should change as well – the micro is the macro and every fantasy season is its own unique special snowflake.

I discuss this all in more detail here:

Defense & Kicker (Historical / Macro Thoughts)

Yeah…

In most leagues, I’m typically not even drafting a kicker or a defense. Instead, I’ll be drafting high-upside flex-eligible players. And then, right before Week 1, I’ll drop the two worst players on my team, and pick up whichever K and DEF I like best on waivers.

If that isn’t an option, or if I’m drafting particularly late in the offseason, I’ll always draft a kicker and then a defense (in that order) with my last two picks.

Who am I taking? It really doesn’t matter. Usually, whichever K ranks highest in our projections (or ADP) and whichever DEF has the best Week 1 matchup. (Cincinnati has a cushy Week 1 matchup against the Patriots. The Seahawks open up against the Broncos and then the Patriots.)

ADP is generally really bad at predicting who the top kickers and defenses are going to be in a given season. K and DEF are also extremely deep, very replaceable, and not worth much at all in terms of winning your league.

In real terms, you have a much better chance at returning top-three production by streaming DEFs than you do of drafting the first DEF off the board. All of this is explained in more detail here. (TLDR: The last time I wrote a “Streaming Defenses” column I — very easily — returned top-three production.)