0:00What's going on, man? Welcome back to the basement. I'm Ron and last season, Christian McAffrey was by far the most valuable player in fantasy football. I'm
0:08not telling you anything you don't know, but when we actually quantify this, he was worth 3.2 wins above replacement.
0:14That is the difference between going six and eight and missing the playoffs and going 9 and five and contending for a
0:20top two seed in your fantasy football league. He was so dominant that the gap between him and Trey McBride, the eighth
0:26ranked player by wins above replacement, was the same gap between Trey McBride, ranked at eighth, to Jameson Williams all the way down at 40th, not even on
0:34this chart. What I'm trying to tell you is that at the end of the day, very few players in fantasy football actually
0:40matter. I would almost guarantee that the guy who won your fantasy football league probably had Macaffrey, Puka, Bejon, JT, JSN, or Jir Gibbs, and that
0:49guy ended up winning. Maybe he had two of them. Our mindset in fantasy should be to avoid the catastrophic landmines early and collect as many of these high
0:59impact players as possible. So today, this is if you could only watch one video before drafting this season, it should be this one. We're going to break
1:07down strategy position by position and then do a few mock drafts from the early, middle, and late parts of a fantasy draft at the end to get you
1:14prepared for your 2026 season and win your league. Now, let's start with the running back draft strategy. Here I have pulled up the best wins above
1:23replacement seasons at running back since 2021. So, over the last five seasons. For this video, we're going to look through the lens of wins above
1:30replacement and look at the landscape of fantasy football over the last 5 years to get our concrete takeaways for this upcoming season. And McAffrey, of
1:40course, headlines this list with 3.2 wins above replacement. Just below him is the Christian McCaffrey year in 2023.
1:47Now, what's the point of showing you wins above replacement here? All of these guys are running backs. We could just sort by points per game. Well, the
1:54first thing being that we can sort by points per game, but there's some years where maybe there's only one 20 point
2:00per game score and the next highest scoring running back is like a 16 point per game guy. That 20 points per game in
2:05that season is going to be more valuable than a 24 point per game season where there are six running backs who score 20
2:12plus points per game. But the real benefit is that we can use wins above replacement to judge players across positions. Because when we look at
2:20running back versus verse wide receiver, sure that is a very easy point A versus point B. But what's the difference between a 20 point per game running back
2:30and a 19 point per game tight end or a 25 point per game quarterback? How can we go position by position and figure
2:36out what is actually helping us win football games or fantasy football games? And that is going to be with wins above replacement. This estimates how
2:44many more head-to-head matchups a team wins with a specific player compared to a freely available player on the waiverwire or on your bench. So what we
2:52have here is a way to compare running backs versus wide receivers versus quarterbacks versus tight ends. But then we can also judge those players against
2:59the replacement level players in your league. If a player gets hurt or there's a by-week, you are running to the waiverwire or the bottom of your bench
3:05to fill in behind those players. Which then brings us to the wins above replacement leaderboard since 2021.
3:12These are your best wins above replacement seasons over the last five years. McAffrey is just barely edged out by Cooper Cup at the top, but to me it
3:19checks out. These are the best 34 seasons since 2021. These are the seasons where they have all hit two or more wins above replacement. Again,
3:28meaning the difference between going six and eight and going eight and six. Now, why does this matter? Again, it's because now everyone's on the same
3:36playing field. And when we are trying to find these Infinity Stones or these monster seasons, we can compare apples to apples, right? We can see on this
3:45chart, Lamar Jackson's 25 point per game season in 2024 is roughly the same value as what Jir Gibbs was in 2024 or what
3:53Devon Achan was last season. Now, you might look at this chart as well and say, well, Jaylen Herd's 26.4 points per
3:59game. Why is that less wins above replacement than Lamar Jackson? Well, it also takes into account the landscape of that individual year because Jaylen Herz
4:07had 26.4 points per game next to Patrick Mahomes there in 2022. You were getting less of a impact over the rest of the
4:15field because there were multiple monster quarterback seasons in that year. So now everyone's on the same playing field and we can now see where
4:23can we find these impact players, right?
4:25What round was Lamar Jackson taking in?
4:27What round was Cooper Cup taking in? and we can start to piece together how we could get these super high impact wins
4:32above replacement players as the draft goes on. So I then took the ADP over the last 5 years from Sleeper and ESPN and
4:40we actually mapped out where all of these guys are coming from. We have in round one nine running backs and eight
4:46wide receivers that hit two or more wins above replacement. We have five running backs, three wide receivers, one tight end in round two. And then in round
4:54three, we have no running backs, two wide receivers, one tight end, two quarterbacks, and then a handful in round four, five, six, seven, eight. And
5:02then from there on, you aren't finding a two plus wins above replacement season just off of waiverss or in round 10
5:09plus. The guys you needed to have are usually guys that are getting drafted early. We actually have gotten a lot better at this where we're getting
5:18pretty good. There's a lot of data out there. There's a lot of analysis out there. where we are drafting the players
5:22that matter in a given season. Now, with running back, as you can see here, as it pertains to running back strategy, all
5:28of these monster impact running backs were drafted in rounds one and round two outside of the round four to five window, which was Josh Jacobs in 2022.
5:37What I'm trying to say is we are really good at drafting running backs. You can see here last season in terms of the
5:43point per game leaderboard at running back, every 20 plus point per game score was drafted inside of the first two rounds. That would be McAffrey, Bejon,
5:51JT, Gibbs, Devon Achan, and then even all the way down through Kairen. We're talking about the top 10 running backs in points per game. We're all drafted
5:59inside of the top three rounds. It's not until you get to ETN and Javvante that we get outside of the top three rounds.
6:05So, when we're drafting running backs, we ideally want to draft one or two of them early. That's nothing crazy or nothing novel, but we are really good at
6:13spotting the high impact running backs early in the draft. So, we want to be targeting running backs in that area.
6:18But I do want to stress the importance of shooting for upside in this range.
6:22When we look at Saquon Barkley's 2025, this is illustrated here. We can take the wins above replacement across every single position over the last five
6:31seasons and chart a line of expectation.
6:33Every single pick on the board has an expected amount of wins above replacement that they should be offering you at that draft price. Last season,
6:41Saquon Barkley was the third overall pick. he needed to have a 1.75ish wins above replacement. Instead, he was at exactly one, which is decent, but you
6:52drafted him third overall. So, he ended up being one of the five worst picks at the running back position last season.
6:58But you can see his exact season, 14.5 points per game, his 1.0 wins above replacement, the 13th best among running backs. You start to actually gain value
7:08as you get cheaper in the draft. So, if he was a third round pick, he actually would have paid off at his ADP. What I'm
7:14trying to say is that when you draft anybody early, they have to pay off at the price that is this black line. And
7:23this is true for every position, but running back is so boom bust that we want to be drafting them with the
7:28intention of maximum upside. I charted out every single round one and round two pick since 2021, and I charted their wins above replacement over expectation.
7:37And so when we adjust for that line that we just saw with Saquon Barkley, how much these running backs and wide
7:43receivers in the first two rounds are overperforming or underperforming their draft price. You can see at the very top here, Christian McAffrey in 2025, the
7:52best early round pick of this era. And then you also have McAffrey in 2024, the worst, the five worst busts price
8:00adjusted were the running backs. You can see this black dotted line where everything's about even wide receivers really crowd that line. And so what I'm
8:07trying to show you is that running backs have the highest upside, but they also have massive bust potential where they can just completely derail your season.
8:15This is something we've harped on for a long time and it still holds true. The idea that you don't want to draft an
8:19early round RB without legendary upside.
8:22This is an article all the way back in 2021 and it still holds true. This is from somebody that won millions of
8:27dollars playing fantasy football. When we draft a running back early, he has to have upside. So now we know we want to
8:34be drafting running backs early. And when we draft them, we want them to have maximum upside. Well, what about the rest of the landscape? Well, we're going
8:40to use the expected wins above replacement line to make some conclusions about the landscape. Here, just as a simple showand tell of how
8:48this works, we have the best five price adjusted running back seasons from 2025.
8:53You have Bejon, you have Christian McCaffrey, Jonathan Taylor, James Cook, and then Travis ETN. And it's very important to look at ETN because his
8:59wins above replacement is not all that different from Seaquin. Saquon was about one wins above replacement. Travis Tien about one and some change. But because
9:08Travis Ten was a ninth round pick and Saquon was the 103, ETN was a huge win.
9:13Saquon was somebody that sunk your ship.
9:16And then you can see the other worst picks at running back across the board.
9:19Camaro cost you minus.8, Hubard minus.8, PCO minus.9, and then Caleb Johnson was the worst pick on the board. And now because of wins above replacement, we
9:28can judge players across positions adjusted for price. And now we can get definitions for league winners and busts because again we are in pursuit of
9:37finding the league winners and sidest stepping the busts. If you exceeded your wins above replacement expectation by one or more, you are a league winner. If
9:46you underperformed your wins above replacement expectation by.7 or more in the first nine rounds, because once you get to round 10 plus, like none of these
9:54guys are going to sink your draft, per se, that is going to be a bust. And I think that that makes sense across every
10:00position. You can see here there's about 63 total busts, about 66 total league winners since 2021. Both of these numbers coming to about even is solid.
10:11Which now brings us to this. I have charted out the league winner rate and the bust rate for running backs and wide
10:15receivers in rounds one and two, in rounds three and four, in rounds five and six, in rounds seven and nine, and
10:20then in rounds 10 plus. And here are my takeaways. We already talked about the early round running back dilemma. We want to be shooting for maximum upside.
10:27Of course, wide receivers have similar bust rates, only 19% down from 22%. But we saw the huge, huge busts, like even
10:35further than just minus.7 are going to the running backs. But then we have round three and four. And to be honest, I was expecting this to be a
10:44little bit different, but it's just kind of a wasteland in this area. You are pretty much matching each other's league winner rates, and then running backs are
10:51busting at a higher rate, but we're talking only 3% more. To me, where things get interesting is round five and six. And this is where we get into the
10:59popular topic of the running back dead zone. And I think the RB dead zone is back in full force in 2026. And here's
11:06why. Yes, running back league winners are found in the dead zone 12% of the time. That is huge. But they also have a
11:12downside of a 12% bust risk. Whereas with wide receivers, you're almost matching them there with an 11% league winner rate, but only a 5% bust risk.
11:21very few of these round five and six wide receivers are hurting your team and they are offering similar level of upside. So I want to be drafting wide
11:30receivers in this range. That is very rare that they have a high floor but also a similar ceiling to the running
11:36backs. And then also why I would call round five and six the dead zone is because once you get to round seven
11:40through nine, you have the same league winner rate at running back and it's completely dwarfing the wide receivers.
11:46The wide receivers dry up by round seven on pretty much or at least the league winners at wide receiver dry up. So you
11:52might as well get your wide receivers in in that round five and six area. And then round seven on you can load up on
11:57your running backs. Even round 10 plus you can find league winners there at almost double the rate of the wide receivers. And this is a growing trend
12:04we have here from Ryan Heath showing the running back ADP since 2017. And we have 25 running backs going inside the top 60
12:11picks right now. That is the most since 2022. almost a five-year high. We are completely reverting back to where we were and creating the RV dead zone
12:21again. And the projections agree with this as well. We're going to change gears here and instead of looking at the past 5 years of data, we're going to
12:28look at the projections for 2026. I took the average of Mike Clay, Rich Rebar, and Dwayne McFarland over at ESPN Fantasy Life and Sharp Football
12:37Analysis. I found their point per game PPR projections across the entire NFL.
12:43And then we took the consensus PPR ADP of Sleeper, ESPN, and Yahoo to find where running backs and wide receivers are getting drafted in your home league
12:52and how much you can expect them to score on a weekly basis. At the top here through the first 50 picks, running back
13:00takes the lead early and then you get kind of a even playing field between running back and wide receiver all the
13:05way until pick 50. And then to me, this yellow square here is where the dead zone happens. And in this yellow square
13:12in rounds five through six is where wide receivers start to actually outscore the running backs in blue. The red line there is clearly widening over the
13:21running backs in this range, giving you better point- per game production on your team. Now you want to make sure you
13:28get your running backs before the dead zone and then after the dead zone you can load back up on them round seven
13:32plus. Sure the gap might be high but at that point you are hunting for the league winner running backs late and
13:38hope they pop later on in the season.
13:40Now, we can even dive deeper into the dead zone and show you exactly what this looks like in this season. I found the
13:47running backs and wide receivers going roughly in that round five to six range.
13:50And then I gave you their projected points per game by those three sources.
13:53And you can see all of these running backs are getting crushed, right? Bucky Irving is projected for 12 points per game. Mcccluren, Luther Bird, and
13:59Jameson Williams are all projected at 13 plus points per game. So, here's what I'll tell you is yes, again, you can
14:05find league winners in this round five to six range for running backs, but do not draft for floor. Those are the dead
14:11zone running backs. If you're going to draft a running back in this range, he needs to have the upside to outscore the
14:16wide receivers in this range, right? If you're drafting a Bucky Irving, if you're drafting a DeAndre Swift, these guys have to have upside. It cannot be a
14:24floor play in this range because then you should just be drafting the wide receivers. So, before we move on to the
14:29wide receivers, let's recap one last time. You want to be targeting running backs early. You want to be swinging for upside in that range. My picks in that
14:36range that I think have huge upside, Jamir Gibbs, Ashton Genty, and Kenneth Walker. We will be doing a video eventually on like my legendary running
14:43back candidates. You're going to avoid the dead zone, but if you must take a running back in the RB dead zone, only
14:48Siths deal in absolutes. Maybe a guy falls to you, maybe you draft your team a certain way. My pick for the guy to
14:54make it out of the dead zone is Basil Tutin. And then you want to be hunting for league winners in round seven. Plus,
15:00for me, I really like Jadarian Price, Jaylen Warren, RJ Harvey, and Jonathan Brooks. A big note and a big disclaimer is that the amount of running backs you
15:08take in that early window, rounds one through three, dictates how many of those league winner swings you can take in those later rounds. If you draft
15:15three running backs through four rounds, you got to use those picks from round five through round 10 to catch up at
15:21wide receiver, to catch up at quarterback, to catch up at tight end, to catch up at the flex spot, and really
15:26round out your team. You don't want to be drafting too many running backs. But if you take one running back through the
15:30first four rounds, then you want to be hammering those guys in round seven plus getting an RB2, building a hero RB team.
15:37Just be aware of how much capital you're sinking into the running back position and neglecting other parts of your team.
15:42Now, speaking of the flex, we get to our wide receiver strategy here. And what I like to lead with for wide receiver
15:48strategies, we want to win the flex.
15:50This is an old Roto Viz concept. This is a old article from I want to say 2014 from Sean Seagull saying you have to
15:56dominate the flex when reading about the flex. You usually hear it referred to in the context of oh he's a low-end RB2 or
16:02flex. We just saw that with the Bucky Irving screenshot, right? I'll actually bring it up here that that's not true.
16:08You don't want these low-end RB2s in your flex spot. You look at Bucky Irving, you look at Trevon Henderson.
16:13Unless if you are betting big on these guys to outperform their expectation, you just want a wide receiver in your flex spot instead. And the last line
16:20really hits home. Whatever strategy fits your particular league format, that strategy should be based on putting an elite player in the flex position. And
16:26that's what taking a wide receiver in rounds five through six does for your team. Which then brings us to this flex
16:32zone to the left of me. You can see here the flex zone runs from the RB dead zone to the wide receiver cliff. You want to
16:38draft enough wide receivers to fill your flex plus one or two before the wide receiver cliff. Now, the reason I say
16:46this is because you can see the red line is outscoring the running backs the entire way. We want to make sure that we
16:49are hammering wide receivers in this range to fill our flex spot and then of course taking detours away from wide receiver to, you know, take a shot on a
16:56running back league winner, take a shot on a quarterback, take a shot on a tight end. But we want to make make sure that
17:02our flex is ready to go in this range.
17:04Now, when I say wide receiver through your flex plus one or two, I mean if you are in a two running back, two wide
17:09receiver, two flex league, that is two wide receivers, two wide receivers in the flex plus one or two. So five to six
17:14wide receivers before the wide receiver cliff. Now you might say, what is the wide receiver cliff? You can see here at
17:19about wide receiver 50 or so, that's Casey Conpsi on that brown dot, the wide receivers go off a cliff. These guys are
17:26no longer even giving you any replacement level production in your flex spot. We saw earlier when we were talking about finding league winners.
17:33They are all gone by this point in your draft at wide receiver. I want to be done drafting wide receiver by this
17:38range. And then after the wide receiver cliff, I'm drafting handcuffs. I'm drafting late round quarterbacks, late round tight ends, all of that. Filling
17:45out the rest of my team. Now, you've heard me say in the past, wide receivers through the flex plus one or two. The
17:49reason for that is that we get wide receivers through the flex and then one for a by-week, one for injuries. But if
17:54you draft like four straight wide receivers, you don't need to have the plus two. You can just do the plus one.
17:59Based on how early you draft your receivers is how many you should have uh between that plus one or the plus two.
18:05Now, I've said this forever, but we have actually now implemented a tool in the draft guide. Make sure you check out the
18:11draft guide, the basementdraftguide.com.
18:13You can get it here. You get my tier top 200 rankings. You get my PPR, half PPR, superflex rankings. And something that I
18:19have implemented here. This is something that I'm going to be using in all of my drafts that I stream every single night.
18:23By the way, we stream drafts on this site or on this channel every single night is this flex check tool. You can
18:29see here I was using it, messing around with it. Let's say you draft Eric Henry, Jamar Chase, Nico Collins, Acha Ibuka.
18:35You are roughly through four or so rounds. And the flex check tool actually tracks two things. One, it knows we have
18:42wide receivers through one flex spot.
18:44So, we have three of our five to six goal here for a two- wide receiver, two flex league. And then it also tracks how
18:49many more wide receivers until the cliff, right? So, wide receiver 50. It is a countdown from there. At this point in the draft, I know that there's 24
18:56more wide receivers before I need to get to a minimum of five wide receivers on my team. It's just a nice checklist to
19:02have as you go. It autopopulates as you cross off players or as you sync your league. This is my passion project. I
19:08think you guys are going to love it.
19:09I'll have a link in the description and the comment section down below. You can get the draft guide half off if you're
19:13on the Patreon or if you're an annual member on the Patreon, you can get it for completely free. The draft guide is
19:19pre-draft and then the Patreon is postdraft. So you can get on the Patreon my Waverwire article, my weekly rankings, my rest of season rankings, my
19:28exclusive start, sit live streams, dynasty content, all of that's on the Patreon. The draft guide is just its own living breathing thing. Now with that
19:35being said, I want to give a note on league settings here. I pulled all of you guys over the last week or so
19:40showing that all of you guys play in wide receiver wide receiver flex flex or three wide receiver one flex leagues more than a two wide receiver in one
19:47flex league. You also play in full PPR.
19:49You also play in 12 team leagues. This whole video so far has been through the lens of a 12 team full PPR two flex two
19:56wide receiver league. And I will say as well my strategy is the exact same in a three wide receiver one flex. Right?
20:01We're still trying to fill through the flex plus one or two. That's five to six wide receivers through the wide receiver
20:06cliff. But I actually have some half PPPR analysis for you guys. When we look here at how this works, when we look at
20:14the projections in half PPR, we look at the ADP for half PPR, there is no longer a dead zone. The blue line and the red
20:22line now condense. And in that round five to six area, the running backs and wide receivers project the exact same.
20:28Now, you still want to draft those running backs early. You can see the blue line clearly outdoes the red line.
20:33Though I will say if you want some like mini analysis here, you can see after those top three running backs are gone,
20:38things close. And there's also like a big kind of like slanted slope from those high-end wide receivers. So, if those high-end running backs are gone,
20:47right, I'm talking Gibbs, Bejon, McCaffrey, it's really not a bad idea to pick up a Puka, to pick up an Amaran
20:52Rosane Brown, a Jamar Chase, a JSN, and kind of lock in an elite receiver and kind of do like a hero wide receiver and
21:00then hammer out uh running backs from rounds like two through three or four.
21:04But what I will say is after the first six rounds, you still do want wide receivers in your flex. You can see the
21:10red line does outperform the blue line here. As we know from earlier, round five and six wide receivers have massive league winner rates. And we want to
21:18draft with a baseline that these wide receivers will go in the flex spot. But we will take our detour or two to get
21:23the running backs with the league winning upside in round seven or later.
21:27And even for you guys at half PPR, I tweaked the flex check tool just for you guys. This is a two running back, two
21:34wide receiver, one flex league that I wanted to show off in a half PPR format.
21:38We took Gibbs, Devon Aan, George Pickkins, and then Kairen Williams in our flex spot. Now, because it's only two wide receivers, one flex, we have a
21:46goal of four to five through the wide receiver Cliff. But there's a note underneath that any running back you take, so running back three or more
21:55through the first six rounds, go towards the flex check in a half PPR league. So, you are still making sure you have wide
22:01receivers through the flex plus one or two. But if you take an RB3 or an RB4 in the first six rounds in that range
22:08because they are closing the gap on the wide receivers, it's fine if you want to put one of those running backs in your
22:12flex and then because of that be a little bit less stacked at wide receiver. We have half PPR, full PPR, superflex, all of that stuff. We got it
22:23all. Again, the basementdraftguide.com is in the description and the comment section down below. And with that being said, let's just recap the wide receiver
22:30strategy real quick. Rounds one to two, wide receivers. These are usually high floor players. Uh they don't bust in such a catastrophic way like the running
22:38backs. My targets in that early round area for the wide receivers is Jamar Chase, Aman Ross Brown, AJ Brown, nothing crazy. Then round five through
22:45six where you have an 11% league winner rate and only a 5% bust rate, which is crazy. To double up on the bust rate at
22:52running back or wide receiver is unheard of on that graph in this range, especially in home leagues where these guys are slipping. Give me Luther
22:59Burden. Give me Jaylen Wadd. give me Marvin Harrison Jr. and then make sure you are drafting wide receivers to the flex plus one or two before the wide
23:06receiver cliff. And then of course the note is that in half PPR running backs drafted rounds one through six can count
23:12towards the flex if you are drafting three or more of those players. Now before we get into the mock draft, let's
23:17talk about quarterbacks and tight ends.
23:19All right, let's talk about quarterbacks and tight end strategy. Essentially, this was the graph from earlier or the graphic from earlier showing the league
23:27winner rates and the bust rates at every part of the draft by position. We already know all the data for running
23:34backs and wide receivers. But now, let's talk about the tight ends first. With the tight ends and with the quarterbacks, we don't have enough
23:39players over the last five seasons getting drafted in the first two rounds to have enough data to really definitively say anything about those
23:47players. I still like Brock Bowers. I like Trey McBride, but just know it is very much a boom bust pick, but so are
23:53the running backs and wide receivers here. But we can then move to round three to four for tight ends. And this
23:58is the sweet spot. That's where you drafted Trey McBride last year. And this year, I am all over Coloulston Level. I
24:03will say like another part of this draft strategy video is to win your league.
24:06Check out the channel, subscribe. I will have a video very soon on my breakout candidates or whatever. Colonel will be somebody that we talk about a ton this
24:13off seasonason. And then after that, there's nothing more definitive, right?
24:16Like a 14.3% tight end league winner rate in rounds three to four is crazy.
24:20It's more than the running backs. It's more than the wide receivers. It's more than the quarterbacks. League winning tight ends are often times found in this
24:27three to four pocket. Then everything after that is kind of whatever. Around five to six, not really. Around seven to nine, not really. You're not really
24:33going to find a league like a true, you know, we're talking Trey McBride last season, Kelsey and his prime. You're not
24:38going to find one of those guys outside of the first four rounds at a high rate.
24:43But you can always just stream tight ends later. I like Kyle Pittz, Dallas GD, and Jawan Johnson as we get down the
24:50rest of that board. Then we get to quarterbacks. And what I'll lead with on the quarterbacks is that Josh Allen is
24:54the exception to the rule. We don't have round one and two data, but he is somebody that has been getting drafted
24:59in round two and round three over the last five seasons. He has paid off every single time. We have the wins above
25:05replacement expectation line. He has gone above that in each of the last five seasons. It is absolutely absurd. Josh Allen. I if all else fails and you are
25:14in the late second or anywhere in the third and Josh Allen is available and you don't like anybody on the board, you
25:18can absolutely just take Josh Allen and that is completely fine. Now, what I will say is that the round three to four
25:25quarterbacks have been a death sentence here with a 22.2% bust rate, a higher bust rate than even round one and two
25:32running backs. I know that you might see the 11.1% league winner rate and say, "Well, we should just take quarterbacks there." Well, not so much. There is a
25:40higher league winner rate with a much lower bust risk in rounds five through six for quarterback. And then same deal in rounds seven through nine. A 9.1%
25:47league winner rate in round seven through nine is not worth jumping up for 11.1% in rounds three through four. So sadly, even though I love Lamar Jackson
25:56and we called him a bounceback candidate, somebody I'm drafting in baseball in a home league setting where he is going in the third round right
26:03now, he is a fade for me. Some of the biggest misses at quarterback have been uh Mahomes in that area in 2023, Lamar
26:09last year in that area, Jaden Daniels last year in that area, CJ Strad in 2024 was getting drafted in rounds three or
26:15four. Especially in these home leagues where you can get better value later, I am waiting until round seven or later because yes, does the quarterback league
26:23winner rate go up to 33.3% in round five through six? Sure. But I just can't pass on the wide receivers there. The wide receiver league winner
26:33rate 10.7% with only a 5.4% bust rate means the wide receivers in this range have a high floor but can also be massive wins. This is where I
26:43want to be targeting wide receivers. And then there's also just better quarter like it's not a novel idea that the late
26:48round quarterback strategy works. But it's what I would say I would say go Josh Allen or wait until round seven or
26:53later and go Justin Herbert, Brock Purie, Kyler Murray or Malik Willis. If you wait all the way until that range, you probably want to take two
27:01quarterbacks by the end of the draft.
27:03But if you're in a shallower league, you can probably just play the waiverss and grab just one of those quarterbacks. I
27:08do want to give a little bit of a disclaimer before we get into the mock drafts here that of course strategyy's
27:13cool. The blueprint's cool, having a plan is cool. It's all awesome, but also it does come down to just drafting the
27:20right players. It comes down to did you draft enough of these guys at the top of the wins of above replacement
27:24leaderboard. That's what we're trying to guide ourselves down. At the end of the day, did you have the guys that mattered
27:29when you flip the cards over? Did you have the trump card? That's truly what it comes down to. And then only a Sith
27:34deals and absolutes. We mentioned it earlier, but yes, we're avoiding the dead zone. But if Cam Scavo falls to round five, take Cam Scatabo. If there's
27:41a value, a falling value on the board, if you have a if if Bucky Irving is your guy and you're saying, you know what, he
27:46has the upside to outscore those wide receivers in rounds five through six, then go and draft them. These are not hard and fast rules. These are just
27:52guidelines to guide yourself down. Of course, know your league mates, know their tendencies, know your league settings if it's a six-point passing,
27:58touchdown league, elevate the pocket passers, lower the scramblers. You have PPR, tight end premium, everything across the board. Know how all of that
28:07works as well. And then I'll also say stick around, subscribe to the channel, check out the Patreon for the inseason content, check out the draft guide to
28:14prepare you for the draft so you can draft right off my rankings with all of these guidelines in mind. And with that
28:20being said, let's get to the mockdraft part of this video. All right, let's hop into a mock draft. Here we have Sleeper.
28:26This is a full PPR, two wide receiver, two flex mock draft. Here we are going to, I guess, randomize where I pick.
28:33We'll see where it goes. Bang. We're going to draft from the three spot.
28:37We're going to take the link, put it in the draft guide, which we can even do mock drafts in terms of league sync over
28:44on the basementdraftguide.com.
28:46Bang. Here we are ready to roll. We are drafting from the three spot. It should update as we go. Let's start this thing
28:54up and see what comes back to us. Now, I will say Oh, all right. You guys saw that I didn't Should I Should I be a good guy and not
29:03take Jamir Gibbs here? All right. We're not going to take Gibbs. Let's You take Gibbs. You like that? Just shouldn't ever happen. Uh, we will take Jamar
29:10Chase. He's my highest ranked player. I don't even really have to look. Uh we are now fully updated, fully synced into the main frame here. Uh and we'll
29:22see what comes back. Uh I will say as well, the league refresh is pretty good or the league sync is pretty good, but
29:27of course it's a little tough when it's the AI uh just snaping every single player.
29:35Running backs got not fully depleted. We have Kenneth Walker here, who I really like. I assume that's going to be our
29:40highest ranked player when we look at the draft guide. Of course, there is Kenneth Walker. So, we will take a running back here in round two and we'll
29:48see who comes back to us. Uh, we talked about it earlier, but Josh Allen Oh, so Josh Allen goes I was going to say maybe
29:52we think about Josh Allen here. I think we're actually going to take Derk Henry.
29:56He's our next best ranked player, things refreshed after the picks were made.
30:01Let's go take Derk Henry uh and add him to the squad. So, now we have two awesome running backs that I think are
30:08both capable of outproducing their ADP, right? When we talk about the high upside players, Kenneth Walker end of round two on the Chiefs. And then
30:14Dererick Henry, who we've seen hit like 19.8 points per game at his peak, you take that in early round three. He can
30:20very easily outperform that wins above replacement expectation line. But now we are pretty much done at running back for a little bit until like round seven plus
30:30we'll be done at running back. These three picks we probably want to be quarterbacks, tight ends, wide receivers as well. Wow, Devonte Smith at the 410
30:40has to be our highest ranked player here. Yeah, 28th. I have him as my third round target, which I know I've gotten
30:46questions about. Uh, you know, do I have target rounds in the draft guide? I do.
30:50So, we take Dvonte Smith. We see who comes back around. I wonder where Jaylen Herz goes in these. He'll likely be gone
30:57by the time he comes back, but I don't want to take Jaylen Herz in the fifth round. So, uh, and but I was just sort
31:02of debating in terms of, uh, a stack. We could also think about Burrow. Two in is tough to pass down, but we'll go McLaren
31:07here. See who comes back. I think McLaren's a fine play. We now have Kenneth Walker, Dererick Henry, Jamar Chase, Devonte Smith, Terry McLaren in a
31:16full PPR.
31:18Honestly, I love this start. Uh, of course, Sleeper is sleeper. These are bots. It's not fully up to date. It's not fully on par, but I'm just kind of
31:26showing you what I would do if I was in this position. We'll see. Oh, Jaylen Herz actually came back.
31:33Again, I don't really want to take Jaylen Herz here because I know I'm going to like Am I actually going to
31:37like the wide receivers here?
31:40Who are we going to have ranked highly in the ranks? Jadarian Price. Wow. So, we have running backs pushed up here,
31:46but Parker Washington is the last receiver in a tier for me here. And we do know this guy took Josh Allen.
31:54How far down is Parker Washington? This would be some cheese to be honest if I played the game of like, is this
32:00guy even going to take Parker Washington? No, we're we're going to play it honorably. We're going to go Parker Washington cuz I think in a sharp
32:05league you'd have to take him here. So, now we have wide receivers through the flex. We'll see if this guy takes
32:10quarterback. Oh, he doesn't. All right.
32:11So, we can actually just take Jaylen Herz in round seven. Now, I will say I get this question all the time. No, you
32:16don't have to stack in a manage league.
32:17But, if we're going to take Dvonte Smith, if Dvonte Smith is going to crush this year, then you have to think so is
32:22Jayen Herz. So, we will take Jaylen Herz here. We'll see what comes back. The end of the day, you do have to start
32:27somebody at quarterback. So, why not take an elite one that also his ceiling outcome is correlated with Devonte Smith and we'll see what comes back. Probably
32:36just going to be a late round tight end team now that I'm looking at it. So, now we can actually check how close we are
32:41to the wide receiver cliff. Nine wide receivers before the cliff. We have four wide receivers through the flex. We're looking for honestly plus one. Actually,
32:50h yeah, because we have Jamar Chase, we probably need one more. So, that means to me we can probably take a running back
32:57here. Uh, I guess they're not up to speed. I guess Jonathan Brooks is around eight target for me. We'll take Jonathan Brooks here.
33:04We had him as a target. Uh, we actually have to scroll way down. We'll do a video eventually on like the ADP values,
33:10which you just saw there. Like Brooks I had to scroll down for. Something I've gotten questions a ton about in terms of
33:15the fantasy nexus tool that we had last year. That will be over in the draft guide. can do that here where you can go
33:23uh NFC ADP, the high stakes ADP versus Fantasy Pros versus Sleeper, ESPN, Yahoo, all of that. Again, it's all in the draft guide. This has been a labor
33:30of love. My life's work is what I would say. Uh and now we are back on the clock. Probably only need one more wide
33:36receiver. The cliff is wide receiver 50 all the way down here. Uh I guess you could talk me into the idea that like
33:42these bots will probably sleep on the receivers. I could maybe take somebody else, but I'm not crazy about any of these running backs here. So, I will
33:48probably just take my best ranked player uh and take Jaden Reed. Though, I would be tempted to go Josh Downs just for uh
33:55some fun. So, we'll take Jaden Reed, and that will be us satisfying the requirement of the flex check. We can see the tool
34:03says bang, we are now all done. There are seven wide receivers before the cliff. But if we don't take another one
34:07before the cliff, uh it's not a big deal. And now we can just kind of do whatever we want on the board. I'll show
34:14you guys the entire thing so you can kind of see how things have gone. Uh, we probably want to start thinking about
34:18tight end here. Let's see who's my highest ranked player available. You don't have to manually collect refresh, by the way. Like, yeah, it'll come up.
34:24So, downs is going to be really tough to turn down. We underestimated here. There were wide receivers before the cliff. We
34:31could have maybe just snuck a tight end in there, but we can just take Mark Andrews if we'd like, man. We can just
34:37take Mark Andrews. Uh, I'm not crazy about taking a tight end here. Uh, we could also take Rashad White, huh? So,
34:45let's see. I feel pretty good at wide receiver. I don't really think we need any more receivers uh on this team.
34:50Maybe one.
34:53Downs is too good to pass up, but there's just no way in a competitive league that DS makes it this far. So,
34:58we're going to again do the honorable thing and try and make this a little bit more realistic. Uh so, let's go.
35:06Let's go Rashad White and hope that these AI guys like don't reach on a tight end. Actually, no. We're going to
35:12take Andrews. Andrews to me is like way better than all these other options.
35:16So, we'll take Andrews and we'll see what comes back. One of these uh bench spots needs to be a second tight end.
35:24They don't take Josh Downs, which is absurd. But again, we're going to be honorable. We'll draft a realistic team.
35:28And this is where we will draft uh Rashad White, who is my next best ranked player after Josh Downs. Uh cuz again, I
35:35I just don't want to cheese the Sleeper uh ADP. So, we'll draft a realistic team here. Uh this is my start so far. It
35:42should populate on the draft guide over here.
35:47You could see so far we have drafted uh Jaylen Herz, Kenneth Walker, Dererick Henry, Jamar Chase, Devonte Smith, Mark Andrews, Terry McLaren, Parker
35:56Washington on the bench, Jonathan Brooks, Jaden Reed, Rashad White. We have three more picks to make.
36:03Here we are. I got super scared there that we weren't going to have a draft to return to.
36:09See, we don't need a backup quarterback with Herz. We can just play the waiverwire on this team. We need a backup tight end. No doubt.
36:16Debo's hanging around. I don't really these wide receivers like now you can see the cliff has happened. I don't want any of these receivers. Let's just take
36:24I might take Katon Mitchell, right? We should probably take I guess tight ends are pretty scarce here. Oh, maybe Chico Conquo is like a fun late round guy.
36:31Let's do Chico Conquo here. So, now we have our second tight end. Two more picks to make. Kind of have the
36:37flexibility to do whatever. Uh, I suppose we could take a wide share, but I don't really want to. Yeah. No, we'll
36:43take our We'll just keep on hammering running backs here. We'll take Keen Mitchell. You know, you guys, uh, the last video I posted on here was me and
36:48Gretch waxing poetic about Keon Mitchell's upside. So, let's take him.
36:53And, yeah, like I don't know that we have anything else that's really pressing. This is a This is an awesome team. I would say we have uh, Jaylen
36:59Herz, Kenneth Walker, Dererick Henry, Jamar Chase, Dvonte Smith, Mark Andrews.
37:02Like, the only weak part on this team is tight end. And I feel like in fantasy football, it's pretty standard to be
37:06like, I'm just going to play a late round tight end. Like, we'll just find somebody later. Uh, we'll play the the
37:11weekly matchup game between Andrews and Chico Conquo. Uh, we have Kenneth Walker, Dererick Henry, and then even behind him, I feel good about Jonathan
37:18Brooks, Rashad White, Keian Mitchell.
37:20Uh, who's my highest ranked player left on the board in the 14th round? Should I take Tank Bsby?
37:29That's a That's a That's a tip I'll give out. That's something free game I'll give out is that when we talk about
37:34correlation, I get this question all the time with correlation. What is correlation? Well, Tang Bsby the backup running back. If Dvonte Smith crushes,
37:40if Jaylen Herz crushes, maybe that's a world where Saquon goes down, they have to pass the ball more. And if they have
37:46to pass the ball more because Saquon goes down, Herz thrives, Devonte Smith thrives, and then Tang Bsby gets thrusted into a starting role and bang,
37:54there is our final team. I would feel very good about that. We drafted it right in the draft guide. We synced up
38:01the mock draft. you can sync up your sleeper league to it. All right, and here's where we ended up with the half
38:06PPPR mock. We go Jonathan Taylor out the gate. Kenneth Walker. Uh, again, this is two wide receiver, only one flex here.
38:13So, we go Neighbors is kind of a falling value. I told you guys round three and four, Coulson Level, and this is
38:18somebody we're all over. Comes back around. We take Swift. This is half PPR.
38:22So, we put Swift in the flex spot. We take Christian Watson as our wide receiver, too. Marvin Harrison in the flex spot as flex depth behind DeAndre
38:30Swift. We get Dart. You don't have to stack your quarterback, but Dart was just kind of staring me in the face. And
38:34of course, he stacks up to Coloulston Lovel. Then you have Jordan Addison.
38:39It's just kind of the best player available at that point. Gives us some wide receiver depth here. Jordan Mason as a flyer at running back. Matthew
38:47Golden for some more wide receiver depth. And then Chris Rodriguez to round out the squad. Uh, I'd feel pretty good about that in a very like normal casual
38:56looking half PPR league. You can see where everybody was picked, how the lineup looks. I think that all looks great. And then I will show you a full
39:04PPR draft that we did on the channel.
39:07You can see uh above me here. Uh we streamed it. We stream every night from now through week one. We do high stakes
39:14drafts. We do real money drafts. We do underdog drafts. Everything under the sun we do uh on these streams. This is a
39:20$350 draft I actually did last night.
39:23This is a three wide receiver, one flex full PPR league. We start at the 11 spot with Jefferson. Then we go Squin is kind
39:30of a hero RB build here. It's a bit of a wonky format. There is third round reversal. So we take Nico Collins. Come
39:34back around. We take JMO. Then we have wide receivers through our wide receiver spots. We take Coulson Leland again.
39:39Jadarian prices an upside RB2 swing.
39:42Then we get wide receivers through the flex with Metaf plus one with Reed. So now I feel satisfied there. It's time to
39:48hammer out Pard Chris Rodriguez. We take Jaylen Herz and we stack him to Saquon kind of but not really. This is a
39:55six-point passing touchdown league. So Herz in the 11th is a fine price to pay.
40:00Take another swing at running back in Jonah Coleman. We take Jordan Love. Then we take a swing at wide receiver upside
40:05with Omar Cooper. Kenyan Sadique. We grab. It's a very deep draft. Like these guys, you know, in your home league, you're not going to be drafting. This is
40:12another kind of like how I'm looking at things. We took Saquon early. We're hammering out some RB2s in this range.
40:17We we got out before the wide receiver Cliff so we could spend these picks on running backs and quarterbacks. But hope
40:24that this helped. That was my entire game plan for 2026, how I'm attacking each position. You guys saw everything that I'm thinking through for
40:34this year. All my videos from here on out through the rest of the summer will be player takes where I talk about my
40:39targets, my fades, sleepers, breakout picks. We'll do some in-depth analysis on like a double hero RB build, hero RB, all of that stuff. But this was the
40:49overarching strategy as we kind of go into the rest of the summer. This is what all of my strategy videos stem from
40:57is this one right here. If you enjoyed, leave a like, subscribe if you're new, and again, make sure you check out the
41:03basementdraftguide.com. You get my rankings, my player notes, my tiers, my target rounds, my PPR half PPR superflex rankings, the flex check tool, the ADP
41:13edge tool, league sync, everything across the board. Again, patrons get it for half off. If you're annual on the Patreon, you get it for free. And the
41:21draft guide is before the draft. Patreon is going to be for in season. So, my weekly rankings, Waverwire article, my uh rest of season rankings, start sit
41:30streams, dynasty content, all of that on the Patreon. Make sure you check it all out. But if not, thank you for watching
41:35and I'll see you all in the next one.
41:42Yeah.
41:49Le stones like this froze ice cold like I'm frozen.
