Fantasy Football Draft Strategies: Insights from RotoWire's 14-Team Superflex

RotoWire put together the Fantasy Draft Symposium last week as a means to kick off draft season in house, flying in a handful of our top experts to compete in a number of fantasy formats over  two days.

This article will expand upon the results of the RotoWire 14-team superflex draft, with double points to tight end receptions, 16-player rosters and the removal of the archaic kicker and defense. 

Below is the full draft board (click here to view full-screen on Sleeper).

I'm a complete dork when it comes to fantasy football strategy conversation, so I was thrilled to start this process in June despite a handful of grumblings from other colleagues about the drafts being potentially premature. Aaron Rodgers was widely presumed to sign with the Steelers and running backs like Nick Chubb and J.K. Dobbins have been oft-rumored to sign somewhere in the coming weeks, so I'm of the belief that there's not much that can truly change ADP wise from now until mid-August as the training camp hype starts to pick up.

Yes, random injuries will happen. Yes, they will almost surely affect my team because I'm unlucky. But I think these drafts can really set the barometer for what your average friends/family league can, and will, look like when all of the information is eventually present. 

This article gives you a chance to get a leg up on the rest of your competition in terms of preparation. Let's tackle some of the more interesting themes I saw present in this draft.

Check out RotoWire's projections and rankings.

Strategizing the Zero QB Approach in Fantasy Football

Perhaps the headline is deliberately misleading, but conventionally in superflex formats you'll see all but maybe one or two teams take at minimum one, if not two quarterbacks with the first two picks. The advantages are obvious; why put yourself in a position to start some WR3 or RB2 when you have the opportunity to grab multiple higher-floor scoring players at a position that typically doesn't suffer much attrition. 

That's why it was interesting to see seven teams, exactly half the field, all opt to punt on drafting a quarterback in each of the first two rounds. Almost every team ultimately had the requisite two by round five, but the dichotomy was fascinating to see unfold in real time. That sort of strategy would make me incredibly anxious, but I thought that rosters at both pick 13 and 14 were the best-case scenario for the nail-biting situation.

Look, it's a 14-team league. There's not a single person ever who has walked away from a 14-team draft and thought they had a complete roster. But getting the opportunity to stack multiple players at an elite position, like Jahmyr Gibbs and Ashton Jeanty, or Amon-Ra St. Brown and Garrett Wilson, and still getting quality signal callers a bit later in the draft is never a bad deal. 

The Ja'Marr Chase team with the second pick is possibly the perfect example of a flawless execution in this strategy if the rookie duo of Tetairoa McMillan and Travis Hunter, who I have significant questions about, was replaced with consistent veterans like Davante Adams and Mike Evans.

Overall this strategy will almost always necessitate chasing the other neglected position heavy in the coming rounds, something that I think ironically is easier to achieve this year at running back than at wide receiver, but it's all about reading the room. If the rest of the league attempts to punish the patient managers by selecting a third quarterback, or correctly reading that person's punted position and vacuuming up any of the later-round values, the zero-QB-lite strategy will leave you light in prize winnings.

Tight End Too Premium

I'm not an innovator nor am I creative. My fantasy football team names are almost always "Just Joe," not just because I like alliteration, but because I'm horrendous at naming anything uniquely fun or memorable. I don't have the imagination to project the bigger picture and I legitimately struggle to see through the weeds on a lot of things. All this to say, I'm not a particular fan of two points per reception for tight end.

I get the purpose of superflex formats. We as the consumer of football know how important the quarterback position is. There should be a format that values the position to the degree that we see on Sundays. I don't think that logic holds up for tight ends, however. To me, it seems like disrupting the status quo just for the sake of doing so. 

In a format where tight ends get two points per reception, it makes complete sense that Brock Bowers and Trey McBride went ahead of some typical superflex stalwarts like Patrick Mahomes and Baker Mayfield, not to mention overall fantasy pillars like Justin Jefferson, CeeDee Lamb and Saquon Barkley. I don't think it's a coincidence that Alan Seslowsky, creator of the league, and Mario Puig, perhaps the only person aware of the scoring system diversities, each doubled down on that position early.

And in the case of Mario's team, I appreciated that he completely committed to the idea of having three significant points of defined value -- QB, WR and Flex -- and just tried to catch whatever falling knife at running back was present. That's exactly the scenario Nick Whalen and I discussed on the Wednesday podcast and I think this sort of build was executed perfectly if you commit to having a strength as opposed to spreading the butter completely across the toast.

Maybe I'm just an old head, as the kids would say, but these kinds of unique scoring systems can be tedious and exhausting, in my opinion. Fantasy football should be forever evolving, but perhaps we're pushing the envelope too far when we attempt to make valuable a position that 50 percent of the time is blocking a defensive lineman.

RotoWire's tight end season outlooks will get you ready for the fantasy season.

Leveraging Corner Depth for a Winning Fantasy Roster

The traditional redraft ADP on Sleeper and other formats is dramatically different than the best-ball formats that I've accumulated some volume on the last two months. While the round ADP might be a bit different, however, I think we're going to see effectively the same trend regardless across both fantasy systems. People picking anywhere between 1-5 will have more opportunities to compile roster depth at running back, while the later range of 9-12 get the windfall of deep wide receiver builds.

I personally feel incredibly comfortable with any one of Kaleb Johnson, Quinshon Judkins, David Montgomery, James Conner and Aaron Jones as my RB2. Almost all would require me either getting their obvious handcuffs, or quickly drafting a Travis Etienne/Jacksonville back of your choosing or a Rhamondre Stevenson/Tyrone Tracy later.

This type of build is easiest to pull off if you're picking early in redraft drafts, mainly because the value inflection point comes with the wide receivers available in the pick range of 20-28. That more or less played out verbatim, just a full round later in this superflex format. You'll see it in the image at the top of the article, but the early rosters that went QB and WR heavy I thought did a great job of successfully finding running back depth later in the draft.

Conversely, the teams that drafted running backs early were able to pick among the secondary wide receiver options like Zay Flowers, George Pickens, Rome Odunze, Jaylen Waddle and Xavier Worthy to build out their positions. I recognize that for the casual drafter you'd assume the initial first two picks of those teams basically requires going after that wide receiver tier, but that's how the ADP is shaping now. There's not some massive pick difference from what played out to what would be available on Sleeper or other conventional league platform ADPs.

Maybe you'll think that I'm attempting to ride the fence with this statement, but I really don't think there's a "wrong" or "bad" spot to draft of those groups. I have a lot of reps on both sides of the draft aisle to the point that I know when to deviate if I want for the different positions, and I can partially predict what will be available for me in the event I make certain choices. That's hopefully one of the takeaways you can get from reading this too. The more preparation, the better you can tackle whatever new obstacles present themselves in the draft itself.

Check out how Average Draft Position is shaping up this summer.