Fantasy Football Daily - How to Identify League-Winning Players in Fantasy Football 2025

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

Use code SCOREMORE10 at checkout for 10% OFF any subscription. Dominate your league. Win more bets. Level up your game Ryan Heath joins Fantasy Football Daily breaks down the ultimate 2025 fantasy football draft strategy—from identifying “power-law” players and positional value to ceiling-chasing QB/RB/WR/TE tactics. Learn why upside beats floor, how to construct a winning roster, and the late-round archetypes that win leagues. A must-listen for serious drafters. Where to find us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://twitter.com/TheOGFantasy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://twitter.com/RyanJ_Heath ⁠ Join the Discord here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.fantasypoints.com/media/discord#/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to Fantasy Points for FREE: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.fantasypoints.com/plans#/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Podcast Transcription Here: Fantasy Points Website - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.fantasypoints.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ NEW! Data Suite - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://data.fantasypoints.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/FantasyPts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/FantasyPts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/FantasyPts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@fantasypts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ #FantasyFootball #2025Rankings #DaveKluge #RB1 #WR1 #QB1 #TE1 #FantasyFootballAdvice #NFL Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does a league winning player look like in 2025 fantasy football? Theo Graminger, Fantasy Football Daily on the Fantasy Points Podcast Network, joined today by Ryan Heath. And Ryan just dropped. It's not a short article, Ryan, but it's a very impactful article. The 2025 anatomy of a league winner. And this is sort of a culmination of Scott Barrett's original article, upside wins championships. And then Scott handled this article. for many, many years.

Ryan has taken it over. It's a tremendous, tremendous article. This is the kind of article. This is like articles like this are part of the reason people subscribe to fantasy points. Really well done, Ryan. Getting prepared for the show, it's not a short read, but it's a very impactful one. If you want to subscribe to fantasy points right now, get a discount.

Use the code Theo 2025. You're going to have access to all of my content, Ryan's content. And of course, Scott Barrett's content, John. Hanson, the entire team, and all of the data that Ryan was able to pull for this article was all from Fantasy Points data. Consider a Fantasy Points data subscription as well if you're looking to take your game to another level this season and dominate your fantasy leagues. Ryan, well done on the article. Let's take a big picture step back. Like, what was the goal for you in writing this article? Like, what's the purpose of this thing? Yeah. So,

I think right now in 2025, we're kind of in a place in the fantasy industry, or especially in fantasy football content, where a lot of it is not really meant specifically to help you win. And that's like not to crap on any other content creators out there or whatever. There's a ton of people that I think do amazing work. But I do think to some extent, a lot of what we do is like talking about fantasy because it's fun. And that's fine, but I really wanted to hone in on what is going to make you win your league. What are the optimal strategies?

What are the types of players you should be targeting? And not so much like, I don't know, the clickbaity, like headline stuff that kind of grabs attention. So I think people really enjoyed this approach. It's, as you were saying, it's very in depth, very detailed. Yeah, Scott was like, hey, Ryan, you want to write? anatomy this year and I was like yeah and I'm going to write more words than you have ever written in anatomy probably and and that I think is how it ended up we're at about 20k words so yeah really dense read very in depth but I think it's super worth like putting your attention into this if you

want to succeed in fantasy football this year and it's very well organized as well there's a lot of very helpful charts and a lot of just helpful the structure of the article makes it very easy to consume. If you want to do it piece by piece, you can do position by position. It'll definitely help you get ready to be a better fantasy football manager in identifying talent. And Ryan, you specifically look at some 10 team leagues, some 12 team leagues. Like you talk about the different formats. So you can kind of cater it to your needs as well. But there's a term that you and Scott both use in your articles. What are power law players? and why do they matter more than depth or floor in fantasy football?

And just to give you sort of a, like, define a floor, a floor kind of player in fantasy. But we could talk about that a little bit. I think Scott in his original article, you know, reference the guy sort of like James White. So we'll show our age. I mean, Ryan, you're a New England guy. You are aware of James White.

You were a younger man during his heyday. But sort of these players was sort of the capped upside. Scott was always sort of chasing the upside wins championship model was sort of saying that the guy who's the running back 14 but doesn't really give you those big spike weeks is not really that helpful to you in terms of actually winning fantasy leagues. And I think the power law player is a great way to kind of define this. Kind of talk about that. Yeah. And just for the record, I do remember James White. I am not that young.

I enjoyed lots of James White as a Patriots fan back in the day. But, yeah, James White is a good example of the type of player where that type of production that a James White gives you, like the low end RB2 kind of stuff during his best seasons, that is relatively replaceable. Even on waiver wires, you can go and find like 10 to 12 points per game out of certainly a wide receiver, sometimes running backs, and very easily, quarterbacks and tight ends in these 10 and 12 team leagues where you're only starting one tight end or one quarterback, you can add one of those positions on the waiver wire most weeks and get at least decent floor production. So the waiver wire really is your floor at every position. And once you kind of understand that, it becomes clear, well, the floor players are not the ones that I want in my draft because the draft very often is the only place.

to get access to the players that are going to score 20 fantasy points per game or more, right? And that makes it such that there are usually only a handful of players every season that are posting these really high win rates. So kind of the backbone of this article is looking at ESPN playoff win rate. So it's just the percentage of ESPN leagues that a player was on a playoff team in so that they made they got their fantasy team to make the playoffs. And most years, it's between like 7 to 15 or 6 to 20 players that are really posting more than significantly more than an average win rate.

And our goal really should just be to find those players. And we'll get into what that kind of means at each position, what types of players that most often is, what kind of archetypes. But yeah, that's really like the conceit. of this article is we should be looking for those power law players where it's only a few players out of the hundreds that are responsible for so many of the wins from a week to week basis and the championship wins on a season to season basis. Yeah, and I think a very simple way to look at it for fantasy football.

And a lot of people get so caught up in this where I drafted this guy. He was the wide receiver 34 and ADP, but he finishes the wide receiver 25. Is that a win? It's not really a win. It's a win in a sense. You didn't lose at ADP. But Ryan, I looked at this one up. This is my own stat.

There were 24 wide receivers who averaged between 13 and 10 points per game last year. And then if we look at wide receivers who were able to average 17 or more 11, 11 total that average 17 or more. So it's really a supply and demand thing. There's always going to be a lot of players on your waiver. wire, depending on your league size, especially in some of these shallower leagues, where you can find that 10, 11, 12 point per game guy, whether it's running back or wide receiver. But finding some of these potential league winners, it almost never happens.

You can count on one hand the league winners that have come off of the wide receiver position over the years. Pukunakua is really the best example of a guy we were able to get after week one who had that sort of wide receiver one upside. running back it occasionally happens, but a little more often than wide receiver, but it's, it's very, very rare. So power law, I think is a very interesting way of looking at it. And when you start shifting draft strategy, you're basically telling fantasy managers to hunt for sealing instead of safety. I love this, Ryan.

Yeah. And hunting for sealing, just because of everything we talked about is by far the most important thing to do in fantasy. just because, yeah, floor is easily obtainable. Ceiling is very rare with just fewer players. And I think like a big misconception that people have is that hunting for sealing means you're taking like bigger risks, that any player with like a quote unquote high ceiling necessarily must mean that they're a lot riskier or like their floor outcome is much lower. That's not always true.

I think you can make that argument for some players, like Tyrone. Kill this year might be a very good example of a player that has a very wide range of outcomes, but I mean, spoiler alert, Tyree Kill is not a target in this article. I'm really focusing on guys that just have the capacity to post those 55% playoff rates are higher. That's like the threshold we're going to use throughout here. And that's more than just the really risky old receiver that was insanely efficient two years ago.

It's more than just, oh, this is the young breakout player that's done nothing before and could either go crazy or do nothing. There are just much more specific archetypes and leading indicators that we can look at at each position to identify these guys that have big ceilings. And very often that kind of correlates with strong median outcomes too. It's not just about your sacrificing safety. for sealing, for risk. It's also just these are really good bets to make.

And in order to identify good bets, we should just be thinking about sealing a little bit more than floor. A sobering number towards the beginning of your article. How many players actually matter in fantasy football each season? Yeah. In the intro of the article, I say it's about 7 to 15 on average. I mean, over the last eight years, I think we've seen anywhere from like six to 21 in terms of getting above that 55% playoff win rate threshold with the average in a 10 team league, obviously being 40% if four of 10 teams make the playoffs. So, yeah, just kind of by that metric, it's relatively few.

And as you were saying about like the wide receiver that you draft as the wide receiver 30 that finishes is the wide receiver 25. He is not going to have significantly higher win rates than the wide receiver you drafted at 30 who finishes is the wide receiver 35. Like that that's a difference of maybe one point per game in between them. And the draft cost was fairly similar. Like they are going to be similar players in terms of win rate at the end of the year just because of how much like a week to week variance every player has in their scoring. how much week-to-week variance there is in your opponent in your match-up every week. So, yeah, again, just all to wrap it up, we're looking for the guys that can shoot for the moon, either be drafted very late and give you, like, high-end starter outcomes or guys you draft early

that can, like, have a fantasy football season named after them with how productive they are. Yeah, and I think some people who listen to my content are also playing in leagues like FFPC, NFFC, but Ryan's correct on this one. If you, you know, and I'll give a shout out to Fantasy Mojo, Darren Armani, who posts a ton of FFPC ADP data over in his site Fantasy Mojo. Every year he'll post like the most commonly rostered players for like the teams that made the FFPC main event, final three week sprint. And it's it's crazy just how some of these players that like the key players, Ryan,

the ownership percentage is just through the roof. And it's not always some. I'm in the rough. There was a few years back where, like, Josh Allen was, like, such a value a couple years back where Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, guys like that over the years, like half the teams that made it through had one of those two quarterbacks because they just dominated through the regular season. So a lot of very, very cool stuff.

We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about positional values and structures of drafts and which positions have. produce the most league winners since 2017. And we're going to take a look at things like running back versus wide receiver this year. And talking about the best time to draft positions, we're going to dive into it at all. We're going to dive into what a league winner looks like in 2025 right after this.

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All right, Ryan. Let's dive right into it. We referenced it in the early part of the show, but you've talked about, like, you looked at league winners since 2017. What positions have historically produced the most league winners? Yeah. And again, to clarify, again, just so everyone understands exactly what it is we're talking about. We are looking at ESPN 10-team leagues, which ESPN and Tristan Cockcroft published this data for.

Just the number of players who were on over 55% of playoff rosters. So 39% of those league winning players since 2017 have been running backs. 30% have been wide receivers. And then you've got a big drop down to QBs and tight ends at 11% each. And then you've just got the scraps, which is 6% of league winners have been defenses and 3% have been kickers. Because again, this is ESPN's default format. And they do have defenses and kickers in those lineups. But, I mean, just as you can tell by those proportions, that kind of gives us an idea of, okay, what are the most important positions in fantasy football, right?

Just dividing all of those percentages, it would give you, well, running backs are about 30% more valuable than wide receivers. And wide receivers and running backs are close to three times as valuable as quarterbacks in tight ends. So, and I mean, that's going to be fairly intuitive, I think, for people that have played fantasy football for more than a year or two. But I just really like being able to connect, like, the importance of each of these positions back to the actual results of which positions are actually driving people to win leagues. Yeah, very interesting. And are running back still more important than wide receivers in fantasy football this season, Ryan? Like, what's your feel on this one? Yeah.

So this one's really interesting. So notice everything I just said before was since 2017, so the past eight years. Anyone that's been around fantasy or the NFL kind of over that time would rightfully say, hey, well, there are a lot fewer of these bell cow running backs now that are just getting all of their backfield snaps and touches. The league is actually throwing a little bit less than they were eight years ago, but it's much more of like a passing league than it was 15 or 20 years ago, certainly. We have seen kind of like the rise in popularity of zero RB strategies,

especially over the last three or four years. So is this data outdated? What if we just look at the more recent seasons? And it is true that there have been more league winning wide receivers than league winning running backs in two of the past three years. in 2022, wide receivers beat out running backs 37% to 32%. In 2023, it was 39% to 28%. But then, kind of unsurprisingly, in 2024,

it swung back to the running back position, right? 39% of league winners last year were running backs to just 28% of them being wide receivers. There's a lot of really plausible reasons for that. And I think, honestly, the biggest one, Theo, is just that running backs were extremely healthy last year as a group and wide receivers were the least healthy as a group that we have seen them since over the past decade plus, right? Just breaking it down by players that we drafted at a top 30 positional ADP, only half of

top 30 wide receivers actually played 15 or more games last year. That's, again, the lowest since at least 2015. while running backs had their healthiest season since 2015, 63% of top 30 running backs made it to at least 15 games. It's just very unlikely that that repeats. So kind of for that reason, for a lot of other kind of peripheral reasons, just around the talent of wide receivers that we've had coming into the league

over these past few draft classes, a lot of the running back talent being very old and kind of at the edge of the age cliff this year, as well as this deep rookie running back class coming in and probably in the short term, creating fewer belkow situations with some of these workload splits with the second and third round guys. I would bet that in 2025,

there will be more league winning wide receivers than league winning running backs for the third time in the last decade. So that's where I'm at. that's where I'm kind of focusing early in drafts is thinking that the wide receiver position will be more important this year. And we can go through kind of what that means for draft strategy too. Yeah, I'm sort of with you. And I talked about this in my top 50 overall rankings. It's like the revenge of the wide receiver type season.

There's a feeling of safety that you don't usually see with drafters with older running backs because they all held up last year, as you said. We've also had this long run where just from a. historical sense what's happened the last three years with the RB one overall three straight years with a 27 year old being the RB one overall usually we get like a very young player in there we haven't really had that the last three years so I think the pendulum should could swing but you sort of nailed it it was the health of these running backs um I think it's a very very interesting one Ryan and I think that I'm kind of with you I also think just structurally this year there's a few running backs that we like inside of round two that can allow you to start out with a wide receiver in round one,

start out with one of those really dangerous 150 target plus wide outs. There's also a few running backs. I know you and I are both into that it routinely fall into like round four this year. So very interesting stuff. Let's take, you know, and actually let's take one more look at this. Like when you're talking about the best time to draft each position, if you're hunting for league winners, what would that be? Yeah, so in the article I break this down and we'll recommend everyone go check that out if they haven't.

And this even comes before the paywall in the article. So anybody who's listening can just go look at this as a visual. I end up breaking down every player that has been drafted in each round on ESPN by position and just giving you the percentage of those players that became league winners. And what you can do here is just see, okay, what are my chances of drafting a league winner at each position in a given round at least over the past eight years? And from looking at that, it becomes pretty clear that you want to draft a wide receiver in round one and or in round two. The league winning rate for receivers in rounds one and two is 21% each. That's double anywhere else you're going to find in a draft.

It falls off very quickly once you get into rounds three, four, and beyond. There's very little success, especially in the late rounds to find league winning wide receivers. Rounds one and two are kind of your best and only shot to get like a high chance at a league winner at that position. At running back, it's similar. Rounds one and two are kind of the best places to find them. But also the rates don't fall off that much in rounds three and in rounds four. And remember, this is 10 team ESVN. league. So a little bit different if you're playing like a 12 team league or if you have more than

two wide receiver spots in your team, like the ADPs are going to shift around, obviously. But especially over the last few years, it's been pretty easy to find these league winning players into rounds three and four and even rounds five and six at the running back position. I mean, we've had guys like Josh Jacobs, Alvin Camara, the older guys, Joe Mixon do it from that range. We've seen Devon A Chan from kind of in that round two, round three area be a league winner. And I think it's because as fantasy managers become smarter and realize we're a little bit more in like a wide receiver world than wide receivers are valuable. Really good running back profiles do get pushed down further than they used to. And I break some of this down in the article.

But yeah, we're seeing about 20% fewer running back. selected in the early rounds than we were like three or four years ago. It's similar in round one. There's more wide receivers that go in round one. It pushes back better running back profiles. So I think it's very possible to start with one or two wide receivers in rounds one and two and still hit on league winning running backs in rounds three, round four, round five. There are some specific guys this year in that range that I really like as

running back targets that maybe we'll get into. But yeah, that's kind of how I see it at the top of drafts, where I'm a little more incentivized to go wide receiver first. I guess like just one other thing to shout out from here is that the league winner rates on quarterbacks in the early rounds in rounds three and four are excellent. They're among the best league winning rates you're going to find. And that is solely because we've started drafting these hyper-mobile Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson types in the early rounds over the past three or four years in fantasy.

We used to draft like the pocket passers in the early rounds and they were horrible bets there. But now that the market has kind of come to understand the value of these Russian quarterbacks and it's been very predictable and stable from year to year, then yeah, suddenly it becomes, oh, like your quote unquote safest way of hitting a league winner is actually to draft an elite quarterback over the past few years. And we dove into that, Scott Barrett and I dove into that with J.J. Zacharias and who's also a friend of Ryan's on School of Scott podcast where we talked about it. And it's very interesting because it used to be sort of the square thing to take the early quarterback. But even in sort of the high stakes realms, the FFPC and NFFC drafter who used to like scoff and you kind of like nudge the guy next to you if somebody takes the first quarterback off the board like a square move.

A lot of times the elite quarterback is going next to potential land. mind's at the running back and wide receiver position. The hit rates for the mobile quarterbacks are very safe. Like for instance, this year, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hertz, unless they get hurt, they're not going to cost you your draft. The downside for those guys might be maybe three spots below positional ADP, and the upside is that they lead all of fantasy football in scoring on a weekly basis. So very interesting stuff.

We're going to dive a little bit more into the quarterback strategy specifically. right after this. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear-off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. Business.

So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us, and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk. Business. All right, welcome back, Fantasy Football Daily, Theo Greminger, with Ryan Heath. Make sure you're checking out Dynasty Points. Ryan's on Dynasty Points every single week in addition to his awesome articles. Make sure you're checking out School of Scott. School of Scott, I'm recording with Scott Barrett every single week. And Dynasty Life, my Dynasty show, you can find those all wherever you get your podcasts.

Make sure you're checking out all of the articles, the award-winning data, and everything else you need to win your fantasy football season over at fantasy points.com. Use the code Theo 2025, get yourself something off, help you win your league this year. So let's talk about quarterbacks, Ryan. And quarterback, you referenced it. It's fairly simplistic. But one term you used in your article that is interesting is the barbell strategy. And why is the barbell strategy best for drafting quarterbacks in 2025? Yeah. So it kind of leads off of what we were just talking about. where in the early rounds, you have these hyper-mobile quarterbacks that are very likely to post high playoff rates. We've seen this every year over the past three years.

You draft a mobile guy there. He's probably going to help your team get to the playoffs, right? Or you can say, well, I would rather have an additional shot at the running back or wide receiver position, which are more important positions. They give more value over replacement than quarterbacks. There's more league winners overall at the running back in wide receiver positions than quarterbacks. And on average, they're posting higher league winning rates

than the league winning quarterbacks. You're not usually going to see a quarterback get up to like a 65 or 70% playoff rate. That is like solely the realm of like Christian McCaffrey or Cooper Cup insane seasons. uh, like the, in the purest sense, the upside is probably higher at running back and wide receiver. The impact is higher if you hit on one of them in the early rounds. So you can forego the early quarterback, punt quarterback off for probably at least nine or 10 rounds and kind of do the classic late round quarterback strategy. Uh, because the, yeah, this is the position that's had the most late round success over the last eight years.

So why not use that to give yourself another shot at more important positions? And the way you draft late round quarterbacks is either you go after the increasingly few that have legitimate rushing upside. I would argue that's pretty much just Justin Fields and Drake May this year in terms of guys that could actually be well up over like 100 rushing attempts on the season that you can. get after round 10 or so, really just those two guys. Or you can go with kind of a more recent trend, which is just drafting a pocket passer in a McShanahan offense. I see McShanahan that is any coach from the coaching trees of Kyle Shanahan or Sean McVeigh.

Collectively, I refer to them as McShanahan. Every single quarterback after round 10 over the past three years that has been a pocket passer that was over like a 45% league winning rate was a McShenanahan quarterback. It was the Brock Purdy's, the Matthew Staffordes, all of those guys. So it makes it really easy to wait until the literal last round of your draft and just select a guy like a JJ McCarthy or a little bit earlier of Brock Purdy, just something like that where you have like the minimum possible cost at the position. But your upside is honestly pretty good.

And I think it's even better to do in larger leagues, like in 12 team leagues, just because the running back in wide receiver positions are naturally thinner there. It's harder to get away with drafting an elite quarterback and making it up elsewhere. So I really like that kind of later strategy, the other half of the barbell, if you're in a 12 team or larger league. Yeah, and you mentioned Drake May. You mentioned Justin Fields. I think those are sort of the interesting ways to find mobile quarterbacks with rushing upside.

You're seeing fields going more and more often around like the QB10, but the way that the tiers of quarterbacks sort of set up settled in this year, Ryan, it's very league specific. Like, it's a season where we know what the top five quarterbacks and there's really never a quarterback who's drafted inside the top five. Like it's all, but that's a surprise. It's always, uh, Jalen Hertz, Jaden Daniels, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow. Those five guys are the top five quarterbacks drafted in pretty much every single

league now. Then Patrick Mahomes at quarterback six is sort of his own little mini tier. And then after that, there was a little bit of like between like quarterback seven and 12 guys bounce around. But I'm really glad that you mentioned Brock Purdy. And the McShanahan quarterback system, it just feels like we're going to see a season from Brock Purdy where he has close to 40 touchdown passes. At some point in his career, it just feels like it because he's very, very efficient, one of the most efficient quarterbacks in the league. We've got a healthy Christian McCaffrey this year.

George Kittles is a weapon of mass destruction. The offensive line should be better. And I think Brock Purdy, I was really happy to see him as a potential target of yours in your article. and Brock Purdy also has a very, very exciting week 17 matchup against the Chicago Bears. Could that be the game that best ball managers need to win their leagues? And that's the game you want to game stack. Best ball is back and it's only at Draft Kings. There are 15 million reasons for you to be excited about Draft Kings.

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Ryan, are you cramming in some Chicago, San Francisco game stacks? I am, yeah. It's actually one of my favorite stacks to kind of go with right now in best. ball, really especially the 49ers, kind of as I talk about in the article, and as you just alluded to, Purdy feels very due for like a high passing touchdown rate season. Last year, he was down at 4.4%, which is a career low for him, but it is just the league average. Purdy's career average touchdown rate is 6%, which is ahead of Joe Burrow. That's ahead of Pat Mahomes. That's ahead of Josh Allen. It's ahead of basically every quarterback over their careers other than Lamar Jackson.

So, yeah, I just am really excited to see Purdy very likely back to an above average touchdown rate. Now that he's getting some of his weapons back, he's getting Trent Williams back. He missed over half the season last year. And we, I think party just kind of really shut down a lot of the hater narratives last year for lack of a better term. I mean, he played seven full games without at least two of his top four weapons without at least two of Debo, I. Yu, Kettle, or McCaffrey. Even in those games, he was top four in virtually every passing stat, yards per attempt, yards per game, fantasy points per dropback, whatever you want to evaluate him by, he was still freaking awesome. All that was missing was

the elevated touchdown rate that we very often see in this Shanahan scheme. So, yeah, I really love Purdy as a bet this year and most of his past catchers as well. He was also sneaky mobile last year. Yeah. He had more fantasy points per game on scrambles than either Jalen Hertz or Lamar Jackson, which is a really fun stat. He was identical in overall rushing fantasy points per game to Drake May. So, yeah, sneaky mobile, very.

a good chance for a high touchdown rate. He was the QB6 by fantasy points per game. If you just take away the two awful weather games that he played, where like the other quarterbacks in those games average 154 passing yards. It was like the blizzard in Buffalo and like the really weird rain game in Los Angeles, I believe. So yeah, just looking at what he did last year and how easy it is for him to overperform that. Yeah, I just really love Purdy this year as one of my big picks to kind of emerge as a league winner out of the later rounds.

Yeah, and Purdy also, like, you can get him as a high-end QB2 in a lot of drafts. And like, whenever you're listening to this, he might be like QB12 and ADP. He fluctuates a little bit. But back-to-back seasons, he was QB6 in points per game in 2023, QB10 in points per game in 2020. And I also think, Ryan, the lack of like wide receiver clarity in San Francisco is sort of making people a little unenthusiastic. If there was a wide receiver on this team that we knew was going to finish the year as like wide receiver 15, wide receiver 14, something like that, like something we could just say, look, George Kittle was this and this wide receiver was this. And Christian McCaffrey played 17 games. People would be like a little more excited about Perry.

So he's been a really, really good target of mine. let's move on to the running back position. Why is youth so critical at the running back position when we're trying to find league winners? And again, we referenced this early where running back like recently, it's been three straight years of a 27-year-old finishing as the RB1. Every single old guy running back stayed up healthy last year besides Christian McCaffrey. And a lot of them had huge seasons, Sequin Barkley, Derek Henry. And then further down the list, guys like Aaron Jones, James Connor,

you name it. But when it comes down to it, running back is a young man's position in the NFL. Yeah. So the average age of a league winning running back by our methodology is exactly 25 years old. 85% of all running back league winners since 2017 have been aged 27 or younger. And I think most importantly, or the thing that stuck with me the most, the most, especially as we think about last year. Since 2017, there are only seven running backs that have had a league winning season at age 28 or older. Three out of those seven seasons happened last year.

And that is because that 2017 running back rookie class was so insane. We still have Alvin Camara and Joe Mixon sticking around and getting volume from it and being league winners. But that's an aberration historically, right? father time is literally undefeated these running backs are going to fall off eventually um yeah thematically the running back talent is a bit older in the league right now as we were talking about earlier so yeah i think it's there's a real edge to looking at these younger guys specifically um and this kind of follows with the age curves uh that i wrote about

over the past two years right we see most running back breakout happened by year three. Almost all of them happened by year four. And just looking at the first time a guy has been a league winner in his career, we have never seen a running back be a league winner for the first time after year four of their career if they're drafted inside their first four rounds. So that doesn't actually eliminate that many guys this year because I do think the market has somewhat caught up to this.

But it's something that. think about that yeah, either it we should be looking for young breakout guys or guys that have literally done it before. I have the full list of prior running back league winners in the article that you can check out to get each of those specific names if you'd like. But yeah, that's how I really think of it is either give me the breakout that's never done it before that's young or if appropriate, if the market's discounting it enough, I will think about the older guys that have been league winners already. So we talk about historical,

expected fantasy points per game and what it tells us about breakout running backs. You dive into that in the article. One very interesting player that the two of us have sort of been bullish on now for two straight years and longer. Devon A-chan, why is he such a clear outlier again this year, Ryan? I have him at eighth overall in my top 50 rankings,

which is certainly higher than he's going in ADP. Caught a ton of passes last year. We had that insane yards per carry average as a rookie. He basically the touchdown scoring numbers are incredible. And the role in the offense is strong. What is your big take on Devon A. Chan this year? And why are you so optimistic on him? Yeah.

So I go in depth in the article, kind of looking at prior season stats that can help us predict who, will be a league winner in the following season. You have a really good shot of being a league winner if you had at least 17 expected fantasy points per game in your previous season. The hit rates go way up for those players. H.N. was easily above that last season. We see similar for strong target volume because receiving is still relatively undervalued

at running back by the fantasy football market. there were only four running backs last year that averaged over four and a half targets per game. Devon H.N. was one of them. So, yeah, he really hits on receiving volume, which is a great league winning indicator. He hits on overall volume, which is really big. And when it comes to the micro bet of the Miami Dolphins this year, I just think HN kind of wins either way. Either they have a similar offense to last year where they are not really a threat in the running game. game because of poor run blocking, but HN makes up for it with all of these short area targets, all of these screens even more now that Johnny Smith is gone.

If the dolphins have like a non-functional Mickey Mouse offense, H&N can do the same exact thing as he did last year and be a league winner again. But if as Mike McDaniel seems to desire from his quotes, if they figure out all of their interior blocking up front, if they can start posing a threat in the run game again, and kind of earn the single high coverage from opposing defenses and open up their passing game a little bit more, all of that would also lead to the dolphins having one of the most valuable fantasy backfields, right?

Just remember in 2023, the dolphins backfield as a whole average nearly 30 expected fantasy points per game. That was split between Rahim Moster and Devon Achan, who were both incredible for fantasy that year at their costs. But we could see that potentially, happen if Mike McDaniel can pull off this magic trick. If that happens again, that's also amazing for H.N. I would love Devon H.N.

to be in the most valuable backfield and go back to averaging 6.8 yards per carry or whatever it was when he broke records in his rookie season. That is also kind of on the other end of, well, what if this Dolphins offense isn't broken next year? If it's not broken, it's also amazing for H.N. So kind of either way, no matter what it looks like, and wins. And that's why I just really, really love him at ADP right now. I have him ranked as my seventh overall player straight up. I would take, I would take him as high as seventh overall.

If I had to, if I were only in one league, he's just an obvious smash like in the early second where he's going in most formats right now. So yeah, second year in a row of being super obnoxious about Devon A-chan, but I think it is for a very good reason once again. Yeah, and you list a number of other clear running back league winning targets. Make sure you check out the article for those players. But just from a general perspective, like, okay, so drafters know that they can find some potential running back upside later in drafts. What sort of late round running back archetype are most likely to pay off?

Like if you're taking a big step back and you're chasing running back production, not necessarily in the first four or five rounds of drafts. Yeah. So the biggest thing to. keep in mind when you're like backfilling your roster with the later round running backs is that in an active league if you're doing what you should you should be keeping up with the waiver wire and churning running backs to some extent as contingent value opens up for them as injuries occur or what have you right and the best way to position yourself to do that is not to fill your

roster with all of these clear handcuffs at the start of the season. I love Isaac Arendo for example and really love the player, think he's really fun in best ball, have a lot of him. But I think he's kind of one of the worst draft picks that you can make heading into week one because it's very unlikely that Garando's fantasy value increases between now and the end of week one.

You would exactly need Christian McCaffrey to get hurt exactly in week one for that to pay off as a draft pick for you, right? But that is completely different when we look at, the more ambiguous backfields. When we look at the players that could have a week one role, they could even surprise us, maybe being 50-50 in a committee in week one or close to it, right?

Last year, having this kind of philosophy, you were targeting backfields like the Bengals. And you see, oh, Chase Brown had a 30% snapshot in week one. It's starting, maybe I should hold on to him. It starts rising throughout the season. And suddenly down the stretch, he is scoring as a top six running back very easily. Even like a smaller hit last year with this idea would have been J.K. Dobbins, right?

Very kind of ambiguous Chargers backfield last year, didn't really know who was going to get the bulk of the work. Just taking a shot on those can kind of immediately tell you if after week one, should I hold this guy or can I drop him and open myself up to go chase upside on the waiver wire? So I guess if I give you a name this year that really fits this for me, it's actually Roshan Johnson in terms of guys that are very late. We have seen Ben Johnson use two running backs, at least two running backs for pretty much his entire time as a play caller in the NFL.

Presumed starter DeAndre Swift right now, average just 7.1 rush attempts per game. The last time he played for Ben Johnson, there's even more detail you can go in to in terms of Johnson maybe wanting to run more of an outside zone focus scheme. It's kind of what he did as soon as he shipped Swift out of Detroit and the running back on the roster that is most suited to that is going to be Rocheon Johnson. Swift has been very rough on outside zone over his career. So that's a good one that I think we could look up after week one and be like, oh, wow, this is very close to a 50-50 backfield between DeAndre Swift and Rochon or Kyle Monong guy.

I prefer Rochon, but I just the principle is more, yeah, take shots on these ambiguous backfields where we don't exactly know what the workload split will be in week one because that can, again, make you want to keep them on your roster in the situations where someone else is going to take over from the late rounds. Yeah, I think that the, that the big takeaway, way for me. And it's something where I've talked about it before. A lot of these handcuff running backs, you end up cutting them. It depends on your league size. But even in like a 20 man roster, certainly in a 15 man roster league, you take Isaac Arendo, you're in like the 10th round, 11th round, because he's a steamed up, he's a steamed up handcuff. Those kind of guys are

tricky because once by week start, it's really difficult to hold them. Even in a 20 man format, some of those guys are difficult to hold on onto. Whereas when you take these guys, sometimes in ambiguous backfields or the lesser handcuffed backs that are, you know, 17th, 18th, 19th round guys, if you end up cutting them, it's a 17th to 18th, 19th rounder. A 10th round running back, I got the Charbonnays, the Bensens, the garendos, those kind of guys, you might be passing up on a huge value at quarterback or tight end in order to take them. Sometimes there's a wide receiver that breaks through in that range. So it's really an opportunity cost for some of those players.

Like last year, if you drafted Zach Charbonnet as a highly drafted handcuffed, you're feeling great because he had three top eight finishes weekly. But there's a bunch of other guys surround him, the Blake Corum's, the Jalen Wrights that were just straight up cut by fantasy managers chasing that high-end handcuff archetype. We're going to take a quick break. We come back. We're diving into the wide receivers. All right.

Welcome back. Ryan Heath talking about his awesome. article that you can read over at fantasy points.com. The anatomy of a league winner in 2025. Really, really good stuff. Use the code Theo 2025. Get something off of your fantasy points subscription. You can read this article right now.

Let's talk about wide receiver. We both agree this is sort of the year of the wide receiver. One interesting thing that you dive into, and you've talked to me about this on previous podcast that we've done together over the years. What is the single best metric to identify wide receivers with league winner potential? Yeah. Surprise, surprise. It's first downs per outrun.

Anybody that follows my work knows I can't keep getting away with this. Yeah, it's crazy to me. Like, I swear I don't, I would love to talk about other stats. But yeah, this one just kind of keeps surprising me at how useful it is. You need to get like a T-shirt, Ryan, that says ask me about first downs per route run and just walk around with it like a big quote like you're like you're like you're at a college recruiting fair or something yeah next in the fantasy points march store we'll we'll have to get that first downs for out run t-shirt printed and ready to go out um but yeah so

the way i kind of initially approached this was just like it running back i'm looking at what stats in the previous season before the league winning year can kind of tell us a story uh and and i compare first downs per outrun along with a lot of other stats fantasy points expected fantasy points first read targets what have you everything in the fantasy points data suite pretty much and what i consistently found it perhaps not surprisingly is that most wide receivers will see a jump in all of these stats from the previous season to the league winning season makes sense right they're probably doing better in the league winning season but that was not the case specifically for first downs per outrun league winning wide receivers averaged the exact same first downs per outrun when they were league winners compared to the season before they were a league winner we know that this is a very predictive stat just in general for wide receivers so that kind of tells us we're already going to see them at this elite elite place in first downs for outrun before the league winning breakout potentially so that that's like was a really kind of

of exciting realization for me. And it gives us like some really interesting names. So for example, Puka Nakua ranks second in the NFL in first downs per outrun since he entered the league. And he is my absolute favorite receiver to draft in round one this year at cost. Like I have him ranked fourth overall right now. He goes like seventh or eighth in most leagues. He's probably going to be my highest exposure across all of my leagues in round one.

to be Pooka Nakuwa. I love it. And Pooka Nakua had at sixth overall in my top 50, so I'm ahead of ADP on him as well. It just feels like at some point in his career, you're going to get a 200 target season out of Nakua, just kind of sort of a gut feel. He's been running at about 160. As a rookie 160 plus targets, last year he was, if it would have played out a full season, it would have been about 160 targets. But Nakua is just such a target magnet, is game keeps getting more and more nuanced. Cooper Cup is gone. And I think what's interesting, Ryan, is some people would say, you know, if you guys are this high on Kuka Nakua, I definitely shouldn't be drafting Devante Adams. I also have Devante Adams very high up in my rankings.

And Chris Wecht, our projections guru does as well. So we're very bullish on a very highly consolidated target share between the two of them and them thriving next to one another. I love the Nakuwa talk. What about the people watching this? And there's certainly a lot of data of people who consume our content, our podcasts, everything at Fantasy Points Data, and they're going to say, well, whoa, Ryan, hold on a second. Yards per route run is something that I like to look at. Why is first downs per route run just a better indicator? You dove into it a little bit, but are there any other metrics besides like the first down per route

run, those sort of things that sort of come into play or the other ones, do you really look at yards per route run? Like, where are you out on that specific metric? Yeah, I mean, I certainly think yards per outrun is important, too. I highlighted first downs per outrun here because of what we just talked about. Because there will be a jump in yards per out run from the previous to the league winning season generally. Can you predict that? Maybe with if you're like, well, this is a really good receiver that's been amazing in yards per outrun.

Should I draft him? Yeah, probably. It's a good stat, not saying it isn't. But first downs per out run is nice for two reasons, really. one, because of what I just explained, and two, because it's less popular or it is influencing the market less. And that means that we are seeing a lot of these wide receivers that are kind of later, I don't want to exactly call them sleepers, but there are like some more surprising names that are very high in first downs for outrun last year. To give you one, it's Joanne Jennings. I believe seventh best among receivers running 300 or more routes was Jowan Jennings in first downs for outrun.

He was a pretty good yards per outrun receiver too. But yeah, I just love, we talked about the 49ers earlier, really just love this idea of Jowan Jennings in what should remain a pretty concentrated offense with Nodibo Samuel, with Iyuk likely out for at least the first month. I yeah, Jennings is just going way too late in basically every format right now. And yeah, he kind of just really sticks out. We could get into like, does the late breakout stuff matter? I don't think it matters at all now that we've already seen the late breakout actually happen. I think people kind of penalize him like posthumously because he did a rare thing. But we've already seen him do the rare thing.

We're not trying to predict the late career breakout now. it's already happened. So we should just accept it. Yeah, I like Joanne Jennings a lot. I've talked about him on this show. Another player that falls in your article that checks off a ton of boxes. I think I'm like, I owe it to myself to mention Drake London because it confirms a lot of my priors.

I've been kind of singing the praises of Drake London. Briefly, your enthusiasm levels for Drake London this year. Yeah, so London is another guy that is incredible by first downs per outrun, like well above kind of like our highest league winning likelihood threshold. Drake London resides there. But also I just really like how this offense is kind of shaping up for him with Michael Pennix, at least from what we saw in the limited NFL sample we have from him, loves throwing deep.

He was throwing 20 or more yards down field at the league's sixth highest rate, second lowest checkdown rate of 47 qualifying passers. So Pennix just loves dropping. back, avoiding sacks, and throwing bombs to his receivers. And we saw that come through in London's usage within games with Pennix. He had 117 receiving yards per game and 13 targets per game across that sample. Darnell Mooney missed one of those games, but London's volume was incredible, even in the ones Mooney played, was pacing as basically the fantasy wide receiver two over

this stretch. And across the full season, London led the NFL in end zone target share. And that could be even higher this year with Kyle Pitts kind of continuing to fall off and prove that it does not really work in today's NFL as like a fake tight end. There's nobody else in this receiving core that is over like 5 foot 11 or something like that. So yeah, London should continue to vacuum up. all these red zone targets, all these scoring opportunities. And he's kind of going behind or well behind, like this first couple tiers of wide receivers

that are clustered around like the one two turn. You can get Drake London in the late second in the early third, depending on your league size. He's like a really, really enticing value to me this year. Yeah. And even in like FFPC, NFFC underdog, you're still able to get Drake London occasionally around like pick 18. So he has the potential, he's a dark horse candidate to lead the NFL and targets this year. I think that's what it all comes down to.

And a lot of the discourse around Ladd McConkey, A.J. Brown versus Drake London inside of round two. And I know you've spoken a lot about Ladd McConkey on all of your shows. I have as well like talents there. Certainly he could have a massive year. A.J. Brown, super, super talent, superstar player. but it's just a target volume. I don't have any of those concerns with London. London could have 25, 30 more targets than Ladd McConkey or A.J. Brown this year.

Like London could go crazy this year, have 16,5, 170 target season. So all in on that one. You mentioned Kyle Pitts. Let's segue over to tight end. Tight end, which archetype consistently emerge as league winning tight ends? Yeah, I mean, there's a few things to. look for at tight end. So you really want guys, shocker, that have been heavily targeted in the past. Either they've been heavily targeted

or they're entering year one and two. So we can excuse away low previous volume if they're young. If they aren't, we cannot. We want to see that they hit at least like five and a half targets for game last year. That's only a handful of tight ends in 2024. But I think maybe the biggest thing to look at is you want tight ends that are not on these offenses that have multiple other good target earners kind of ahead of them in the pecking order. Because usually tight ends are going to be worse at earning targets against wide receivers on their own team, you want the ones where there are not like these clear wide receiver target earners ahead of them. The way I kind of broke this down was just looking at

teammate pass catchers that are being drafted inside the top 60 picks by ADP. Looking at our 13 tight-end league winners since 2017, 12 of them did not have multiple other teammates inside the top 60 who were pass catchers. The only one that did was George Kittle last year, actually, and go figure, both of his teammates

combined to miss 14 games. Iyuk and Debo Samuel. So, yeah, really important that you don't have like multiple wide receivers ahead of these tight ends. I'll give you like two names here. One is Evan Engram. Really only Cortland Sutton is like an established target earner in this offense right now. Engram could very easily end up second in total targets at the end of the year. So he's an interesting name here.

But another one for me is actually Coulston Lovelland, which, might be a little surprising to people because I think there's a there's a perception that this bear's offense is very, very crowded. Only DJ Moore is being drafted inside the top 60 of all of these past catchers. O'Donzee goes quite a bit later, at least in like redraft. His best ball ADP is close to that, I think, but that's a whole different beast. But yeah, just the fact that there's a lot of bears past catchers, but none that fantasy drafters are clearly like that confident in, that that really makes me love Colson Loveland where all he needs is to end up as like the second target on this team and from the late rounds that turns them into an incredible value. It just gives him so

much more potential to be a target earner than guys that are in these more crowded offenses. Yeah, and history repeats itself. We have an offensive coordinator in Ben Johnson who oversaw Sam Leporta's 10-1 overall season. Leporta was being drafted around like tight end 14. tight end 15, tight end 13. Occasionally, towards the end of the summer, you saw a couple of high stakes drafts where Leporta was like the tight end 10, tight end 11.

But the overall ADP for the summer was high end tight end too, right around where Loveland's going as well. And I think, Ryan, it's very, like, you make great points. But tight end is super, I've tried to say this to a lot of the fantasy football daily shows.

Tight end, we want players who can be the number one or number two target in their offense and athletic ability it matters a lot at the tight end position. It's just like a very, it seems like a nuanced position. And of course, we had Max Descano on, and he talked about, like, you know, way more, way more intricate details about tight end strategy. But it's really what it comes down to.

And I think you've identified a bunch of players where if it shifts their way, there are scenarios where these players could be the number one or number two target. There's maybe one player on your list that I think would have difficulty there, that a couple of things would have to happen, but the other ones, fairly simple bet there. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, it's way more important at tight end than I think people realize to find guys without target competition and probably less important than people think at wide receiver. I go on a little bit of a rant in the article on this, but specifically at wide receiver, a quote unquote crowded offense

where we have multiple pass catchers being drafted really highly. that's usually good because it tells us, oh, this is probably going to be a very good offense. And these alpha receivers will earn targets first and then whatever is left over is what everyone else has to fight over. Like a lesser target earner is not affecting a better target earner. I guess like to put names to this. Let's see, like a Trey Harris this year, for example, does not change how I feel about Ladd-McConkey at all. If I'm entering the Chargers projections with the assumption, well, Lad is the top target earner here, and we've seen him earn a lot of targets in the past, then he is the alpha.

He is the one whose target share gets filled in first, and then everyone else has to fight over it. George Pickens is not going to affect C.D. Lam's target share very much, for maybe a better example. We shouldn't think about targets, like bottom up from the tree. It's top down. It's very much. like the alphas eat first. Multiple alphas can eat, but it's just going to prevent targets for everybody below them. And usually the tight ends are the guys below them. So that's why it's important to think about for them,

not as important to think about for wider series. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I think over the years, just think back to the years where it was Chris Godwin and Mike Evans scoring next to one another, multiple seasons where Cooper Cup co-existed against a alongside another wide receiver, even going back to last year, T. Higgins averaging 18 points per game, despite Jamar Chase having

like one of the best wide receiver seasons we've seen in the last 10 years. Devontas Smith and A.J. Brown both finishing as near wide receiver ones level players just a few years back. A few years back, we had a Tyree kill, Jalen Wattle, where they both finished as wide receiver ones. That sort of level of consolidation happens. And you can find two wide receivers thriving. rarely ever does a tight end thrive in a situation where there's multiple good wide receivers. So just down the line, you could just think about last year, Trey McBride, there was Marvin Harrison Jr., and then kind of a weak wide receiver two archetype. Brock Bowers had Jacoby Myers and then Trey Tucker running cardio routes.

Travis Kelsey for years has sort of benefited from this. Even in those seasons where Tyree Kill was dominant alongside Kelsey, you didn't really have another pass catcher that was that fantasy viable. So really, really interesting stuff there, Ryan, on the tight ends. Let's talk about roster construction. You're recommending two running backs and three wide receivers through the first six rounds this year. That's right.

Yeah. And that's kind of obviously not like a one-size-fits-all, but that's like my best attempt at giving a general guideline in terms of how to approach like the first six rounds is I would prefer to draft at least. three wide receivers because again, the early rounds are really the only place to get these league winning wide receivers. It's very rare that we see the later round hits. And at running back, you can take one or two shots, at least one shot within the first three rounds, at least two within the first six rounds. And you can come out ahead there, just based on a combination of

the historical data and also how we're kind of forecasting how each of these positions, are changing this year, as we kind of talked about up top. The optionality there is if you want to add an elite quarterback in round three or four, you can go one QB, two running backs, three receivers in the first six rounds. I have ranted plenty elsewhere about how I don't believe in elite tight ends other than George Kittle this year. So that is like not so much an option on my mind, including tight ends in that kind of guide. You can go read my early tight end debate article from a few weeks ago for more on that or read an enemy. We'll bump heads on that one only.

I'm going to have a little more Brock Bowers and Trey McBride than Ryan this year. But yeah, I know I can understand it. I love Kittl as well. I think it's all three of those guys are great picks. And of course you get the discount with Kittle for sure. Ryan, really, really awesome stuff with this. Let me ask you, you know, you talked about quarterback, you talked about tight end. We talked extensively about wide receivers, running backs, and you just talked about how you want to walk out with the dangerous build with three wide receivers.

I completely agree with you on that one. Whenever you wait on wide receiver, it just makes your build so much more difficult. And you end up having to sort of thread the needle. You end up having to sort of chase the upside that might not be there. it's just a difficult way to play fantasy this year. Completely agree with you on the three wide receivers through six rounds. I think that's a great way of putting it. Let's talk about late round strategy.

Like your final, final rounds, what are the types of players that fantasy managers should stash in the final rounds of their fantasy drafts? Yeah, so we already talked a little bit with running backs, but it applies to- Yeah, but it applies to all positions, really, is I want players that can gain value in week one. So that could be like a rookie wide receiver that has a surprising snap share in week one.

I think to stick with the bears, I think Luther Burden is an interesting idea there. Like I wouldn't be shocked if Luther Burden had like an 11% route participation in week one, but I also wouldn't be shocked if he had four or five screens thrown to him in week one. So just those types of kind of like yes, no, on off bets for week one are what I'm really looking at. And also, I'll just say in terms of kickers and defenses, if you are allowed to not draft them, I just wouldn't draft them, unless you're drafting like a day before the NFL kicks off this season. There's no point in holding a kicker or a defense on your roster from now until week one or from like August 30th until week one. even just because those are not players that can gain value, you would rather give yourself the chance at,

even if it's like a running back handcuff, even if it's like holding James Connor in the year that Leveon Bell surprised everybody with his holdout, you would rather give yourself the chance to hit on that than hold a defense or a kicker that you're probably going to drop in week three anyway to stream somebody else. It's just a poor use of your roster space to have them, until you actively have to start them in your lineup in week one.

Yeah, stash those lottery tickets in leagues like ESPN and Yahoo, where you don't have to fill that kicker in defense. Ryan, you're a real one for mentioning that one out there. The old Yahoo loophole that people like to exploit there. Ryan, this was a lot of fun today. Let me know once again where they can find your work. Yeah, you can find all of my written work, including 2025 Anatomy of a League winner that we've been discussing

at FantasyPoint.com. and you can keep up with me over on Twitter on X at Ryan J underscore Heath. Yeah, and check out my most recent show with Mike Schope. Mike Schope of ADP chasing came on and we broke down rounds three and four specific strategy, how we're handling rounds three and four. Stick with us here at Fantasy Football Daily. We're going to help you crush your leagues this season. Great shows like this all throughout August into September.

We're almost here, Ryan, fewer than 50 days until the start of the NFL season. We're going to help you crush your leagues over here at Fantasy Points. The code Theo 2025 gets you a little something off. Have a great day.