Daniel Dopp
- Daniel Dopp is a writer and contributor for fantasy football at ESPN. Daniel also appears on “Fantasy Football Now” and the Fantasy Focus Football podcast.
Every year the fantasy football landscape changes just enough to make us reconsider the way we approach drafts. Maybe it’s a face in a new place, or maybe it’s a new head coach or offensive coordinator. Or better yet, an exciting rookie comes into the league and fantasy expectations go through the roof with the hopes of what could be.
After drafting more than 60 best ball teams and doing at least 45 mock drafts, I’ve found a handful of situations that have kept me up at night thinking about how I’m going to approach a specific player or position.
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The beautiful thing about fantasy football is that nobody runs your team but you. You can read this entire article, think it’s rubbish and move on with your day and draft the players you’re most excited about. Or you can read this article and think: “Hey, Dopp had a few good nuggets in there. I’ll keep those in my back pocket when I’m doing my drafts this year.”
There is no right or wrong way to draft, as long as you draft with conviction. Sports are emotional, and fantasy sports are no different.
The biggest takeaway I have from doing over 100 drafts of various types is to not let your emotions get the best of you come draft day. Have a plan. Create tiers rather than using static rankings, and be at peace with your decisions. If you want to reach by a round to grab a guy you love, do it! You’re the one who has to set your lineup and live with the decisions you made during the draft, so don’t compromise based on what others think.
With that little pep talk out of the way, let’s dive into a few of my biggest fantasy football draft observations from this summer.
You can draft a top-tier QB or a top-tier TE, but it’s tough to do both
Addressing the “island” positions of quarterback and tight end feels more important this year than in years past, especially at tight end.
We have a clear top tier of four or five quarterbacks (some don’t have Joe Burrow in the same tier as Jalen Hurts, Josh Allen, Jayden Daniels and Lamar Jackson) and an even clearer top tight end tier of Brock Bowers and Trey McBride, with George Kittle right on their heels. Getting a top-tier QB or TE is quite easy given the options at our disposal, but it’s difficult to land an elite option at both positions because of what you have to bypass in the early rounds to do so.
The QBs mentioned above are generally coming off the board in the range of the third round to late fourth round, with the tight ends going in the late second to early fourth. If you grab both positions early, you are really leaving your starting RB and/or WR depth quite shallow.
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If I decided to take this approach, I’d likely lock up the RBs as quickly as possible, knowing how deep the WR position is this year. But even then, it’s not ideal. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible, just difficult with how the draft will likely play out.
To that end, I just tried drafting a QB and TE in the first four rounds of a 10-team league, picking from the No. 5 draft slot. Below is my current starting lineup. I’ll let you be the judge of whether this is a team you’d be happy with upon leaving the draft.
QB: Jalen Hurts (fourth round)
RB: Derrick Henry (second)
RB: D’Andre Swift (seventh)
WR: Justin Jefferson (first)
WR: Xavier Worthy (fifth)
TE: Trey McBride (third)
Flex: DK Metcalf (sixth)
Travis Hunter is a conundrum, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying
None of us know how Hunter is going to be used in 2025. We know he’s a unicorn who will play on both sides of the ball, but what does that mean for us in fantasy? How many snaps will he play on offense vs. defense? We’ve heard his stamina is unmatched, but it’s still unknown how he’ll stand up to the rigors of the NFL game for a full season.
Hunter is supertalented and should be drafted as a potential starter for your fantasy squad. I see him as a WR3/flex option with upside for more based on how the Jags approach his usage. On one of the recent episodes of the “Fantasy Focus Football” podcast, our YouTube chat participated in a poll that asked if listeners/viewers were targeting Hunter in drafts or if they’d rather target a player with fewer question marks surrounding his situation. A whopping 63% of our listeners/viewers said they were avoiding Hunter in drafts.
He’s a conundrum for sure. He’ll dominate in IDP leagues where he will also get points for playing on the offensive side of the ball, but in standard fantasy leagues, he won’t get points for tackles, interceptions or forced fumbles (unless your league manager customizes the scoring settings, of course). The most important thing is to know how you view Hunter before you head into your draft rather than just winging it.
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Why there is risk in drafting Saquon Barkley early
Tristan Cockcroft weighs in on when would be the best time for fantasy managers to draft Saquon Barkley.
Saquon Barkley’s workload last season was amazing, but for 2025 it’s a problem
Barkley’s 2024 fantasy season was one for the record books. It was also a season that gives savvy fantasy managers pause given his ridiculous workload. Including the postseason, he had 436 total carries (tied for the most over the past 25 years) and 482 touches (third most over that same span). He also played in 20 games!
Historically, running backs who see that kind of volume see a major drop-off in fantasy production the following season. Be it due to obvious regression or injury, six of the past eight RBs who saw 450 touches in a season saw an average drop in production of at least 6 fantasy points per game the following season.
This isn’t about hating on Barkley or the Philadelphia Eagles. He’s one of the best RBs in football, running behind one of the best offensive lines, on a team that throws the ball at the lowest rate in the NFL. He could regress from 2,300 total yards to 1,600 total yards and still be great, but I’m just not interested in trying to guess who is going to be a historical outlier.
This year, I’m passing on Saquon and his expected regression and simply taking the best player available on the board. Whether that’s a WR or RB, it doesn’t matter; I just can’t select a player coming off a career season in which he played 20 games, at least not at Barkley’s early-first-round cost. If you do draft Barkley this year, be aware that you’ll want to have some extra RB depth just in case.
Buy the dip on players who returned from injury late last season
There are two players who returned to the field late last season and clearly didn’t look like their former selves: Isiah Pacheco and T.J. Hockenson. I’m buying the dip on both.
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My co-host on “Fantasy Focus,” Stephania Bell, often talks about the difference between players returning to performance and just returning to play. Being out there on the field isn’t enough, as Pacheco managers learned down the stretch last season. He returned in Week 13 after fracturing his fibula in Week 2, and he looked nothing like the angry runner we were used to seeing. He lost weight while he was out and clearly didn’t have the burst we’re used to seeing him play with.
But the team hardly addressed the RB position this year. Behind Pacheco are Kareem Hunt, Elijah Mitchell and seventh-round rookie Brashard Smith. That’s not a lot of competition, which is why I’m pouncing on Pacheco in drafts this year. Last season, he was among the top 12 to 15 RBs in drafts, but this year you can get him in the 20 to 25 range.
Hockenson has a similar profile. He returned earlier than Pacheco, coming back after missing the first seven games while dealing with an ACL/MCL tear that occurred in 2023. He had a few weeks that made him look like the old T.J., with four games over 10 fantasy points, but he also looked out of sync with the offense at times, turning in six games below 6 fantasy points. He wasn’t back to full form yet, and it showed.
Now, Hockenson is fully recovered from his injury and will benefit from Jordan Addison’s absence for the first three games of the season, propelling him to the No. 2 pass catcher in this offense. A former top-four tight end option in drafts, Hockenson is now viewed closer to the TE6 to TE8 range. Personally, I have him as my TE5, just behind Sam LaPorta, and I’m buying his ADP dip. If I don’t get one of the early tight ends, I don’t mind waiting and grabbing Hockenson in the middle rounds. He’ll provide nice value at a position that gets thin quicker than any other in fantasy football. Give me both Pacheco and Hockenson, as players who are being undervalued.
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