How to avoid bad fantasy football draft picks and dooming your roster from the start - The Athletic

The article uses a metaphor from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to illustrate key fantasy football drafting strategy. Just as Indiana Jones had to choose wisely to avoid doom, fantasy managers shouldn't blindly follow player rankings on draft platforms or pundits, as this can lead to poor picks ("The Draft Chasms of Doom™").

Rankings obscure a crucial factor: projected points. Players close in rank (e.g., QB No. 4 and No. 5) can have significant differences in projected points. Focusing solely on rank means managers might bypass players offering a bigger scoring advantage over their positional peers, essentially stepping off a "projected points cliff".

The core goal is scoring more points weekly than opponents, achieved by winning positional "mini-battles". Success comes from maximizing the point differential at positions you win and minimizing it at positions you lose. Since drafting the top player at every position is unrealistic, the strategy involves identifying big drops in projected points to secure the largest possible scoring advantage at each starting position.

The gap in production between players at a position, especially relative to their average draft position (ADP), defines league-winning potential. Using Lamar Jackson's 2024 season as an example, his 434.4 points provided a massive edge: over 50 points more than the next QB (Josh Allen), and a minimum 146-point advantage (8.6 points per week) over the QB12 in a 12-team league. Creating multiple such weekly positional advantages increases win probability.

Therefore, maximizing advantages requires identifying value by weighing projected points against ADP and positional scarcity, avoiding being forced into drafting sub-optimal starters.