You have decided to play fantasy football this NFL season and are hyped for the 2025 campaign. Your friends convinced you to join their fantasy football league and are getting ready for the draft. Here’s some information on how to draft in fantasy football, from the types of drafts to fantasy football draft strategy.
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Types of Fantasy Football Drafts
If you are playing fantasy football, your draft will likely be an auction or snake draft. These are the two most common ways for fantasy managers to fill out their fantasy teams.
In a snake draft, there is a pre-determined draft order. You will be given a draft position for the first round. The draft order then reverses each round. For example, if you pick last in the first round, you will be making the first draft pick in the second round.
For an auction draft, you are given a budget and owners draft players by bidding. A player is nominated, and you can use your budget to secure them onto your team.
Read More: Auction Drafts and Snake Drafts
Understand Your Scoring Rules
At the end of the day, fantasy points are how you win games. This means you need to understand the league scoring system before you start building your own NFL team in your fantasy draft.
Check if you are in a standard scoring league or if your league is using PPR. A PPR league gives players one point per reception. This type of league values pass-catching running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends.
So in a PPR league, a player like Justin Jefferson can have massive value. Jefferson averages 109 receptions per 17 games for his career.
Read More: PPR Scoring Explained
Research Rankings and Make Player Tiers
Before you get to your 2025 fantasy football draft or more in the future, you should research players and make tiers for players. This strategy involves listing players you want to draft into tiers like superstars, above average, average, and so on.
The purpose of this is so you don’t have one player in mind to draft in the first round and then panic if that player is off the board the pick before. Placing the players in tiers allows you to move on to the next player you value highly to select.
If you don’t know which players are the best, research stats from last year as well as rankings. ADP, or average draft position, is one of many metrics that can help you understand the best players in fantasy football. Check mock drafts on fantasy sites and use other tools before the fantasy season to help gauge where you should be ranking players.
Read More: Fantasy Football Tiers Explained
Don’t Worry About Your Draft Position
It’s easy to see the order on draft day and be upset with where you fell. Don’t worry, there are plenty of valuable players to draft, and it’s okay if you don’t find yourself at the top of the draft board. The most important thing is to stick to your draft guide and take the best players you value in your research to build a great roster.
If someone takes the QB you want early, you will still be able to draft a quarterback that has value at any point in the next few rounds. Also, you never know how other fantasy owners in your league will value players. You might see players you value highly fall in the draft right into your hands.
Don’t Overvalue Rookies
Rookies sound exciting, but they haven’t proven anything. This can lead to a bust on your fantasy football team. When doing your research, you should value proven fantasy players over rookies for your fantasy draft. This doesn’t mean avoiding all rookies, just don’t select a rookie early when they will likely fall to the later rounds anyway.
Avoid Hometown Team Bias
Yes, you love your team. That should have nothing to do with how you draft in fantasy sports. For every draft, you are looking to get the best players and put together the best team possible. You want players who put up solid fantasy points per game. Don’t draft players you like or guys that are on your hometown team.
No one will question your fanhood if you avoid players from your team. A successful fantasy football team will be free of biases. You will have the most fantasy success if you do the research and develop a draft strategy to help you win. Don’t burn a pick early in the draft because you love your team’s quarterback and he’s not even a top-10 QB in the league.
Stay Away From Kicker and Defense Early
It’s simple: don’t draft a kicker or defense early. This is not a surefire way to win your league. Yes, these positions can score fantasy points, but they are not as important as the offensive positions in fantasy football. You will want to draft the best offensive players before you consider kickers or defense.
Another reason to wait on kickers or defense is that there will be plenty of options available on the waiver wire throughout the season. You can even drop or add these positions throughout the year. This is a fantasy football strategy called streaming.
Consider Handcuffs in Your League
You might want to consider one of your draft slots on what’s called a handcuff. This is a player who will take over as a starter if the starter goes down. It’s common at the running back position. You select Christian McCaffrey’s backup in case he gets injured.
Handcuff fantasy football players are true backups and will only rack up points if the player in front of them gets injured. A handcuff is not a running back who gets plenty of touches each game in a backfield-by-committee system. There is also some risk to getting a handcuff because they might just take up space on your bench and a roster spot.
Read More: Fantasy Football Handcuffs
*This article was originally written in July 2024, it was revised and updated on August 5, 2025.
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