10 Unspoken Rules Experts Use to Win Their Fantasy Drafts

If you have a fantasy football draft coming up, you're in the right place because today we are breaking down the 10 unspoken rules that experts use every year to win their fantasy leagues. It's simple. There are rules that most people, probably including you, just don't know about. You come in in August, you want to draft your team, have some fun, and you don't know about these while other people do. Now it's your time to gather this information. Use it to your advantage. And we'll start with tip number one.

Don't let byweeks determine your draft picks. This one drives me nuts every year. As you can see here, the by-weeks are from weeks 5 through 14. All right. So, there's a bunch of byweeks. It's not like every single guy has the same exact buy and you're automatically taking a loss. And other teams, by the way, in your league will be dealing with these by-weeks. So, when we look at these things, like the weeks where there's just two teams on by week five this year, the Panthers and Chiefs, Steelers and Titans, it's barely a by-week. There's not enough meaningful people, especially on the Titans and Steelers and even the Panthers and Chiefs to some extent that we really care about. You're really only worrying about these mega byeweeks right here, like week 11 where there's six teams on by. I understand if you're concerned with drafting a bunch of players and they all have week 11 buys, but it's week 11. By the time that week comes, you'll be making waiver moves. You'll have injuries that you'll have to make trades or make some more waiver moves for. Players on your bench might have became breakout players and now you don't have a by-week issue. Do not go into your draft worrying about week 11 in the fantasy season or oh my god, by the time it's week six, Joe Burrow is going to be on buy. Does that mean that I can't take another guy from the Dolphins? Who cares? You'll figure it out when the time comes. I want you to take the best available player. If there is a guy who is clearly better at the running back position than another player, do not draft the worst player just because you already have some guys with that bye-week. You're making a worse lineup and you're not going to win your league. I promise you, you will not lose your fantasy league because of byweeks. If week 11 comes and you take a loss because you have a bunch of guys out and you're not going to make the playoffs now, you probably already lost it in the first 10 weeks of the season.

Tip number two is you don't have to fill your starting lineup first. This is a trap that I see people fall into every single year. Heck, I I see it with my dad every single year. I see it with some of my closest friends who say they're fantasy hardos every single year. They're worried about getting their quarterback in tight end spot filled in like round six to eight. You don't have to do that. Here's a perfect example from last year's Flock League draft. Uh this was my draft, right? So I go running back, running back early. I then go tight end. This was only a two wide receiver league. I take DJ Moore and George Pickkins. Based on this, I should have taken a quarterback next, right? Not the case. I end up taking three more wide receivers in a row. Chris Ave breakout candidate was nice. Jacobe Myers solid for round seven pick. Jaden Reed gets hurt. So, really hard to tell that one gets hurt in week two. And then Brock Party with my ninth round pick. Look, you do not have to take a quarterback in round seven just to fill your starting lineup. Even if there's a good name there, right? Just wait a couple of more rounds, get a similar type talent, especially if there's other positions of better value in that range. Do not fill your starting lineup first. It is so dumb. And then people will say, "Well, why do I want to have a guy on my bench that I can't play?" This is exactly the reason right here. I took Chris when I didn't need to take another wide receiver last year with my sixth round pick. ended up winning this league, going 14-2, by the way, in the Flock League. $10,000 first prize. It was beautiful. I took Chris Ave. That was very helpful considering the fact that I took DJ Moore in round four. He was pointless. He was on my bench. This is why you take the best available player. You get depth because you don't know how your early round picks are going to perform. In this situation, DJ Moore was not great. Guys like Kenneth Walker were fourth round picks last year and he wasn't great. If you took a Javvante Williams in round 10, well, there you go. You can now start that guy instead. It's better to have the depth than just taking a worse player at a different position just to fill your lineup.

Tip number three is if the same position goes four plus times in a row, considering pivoting to another position. Now, this really only applies to the middle or later rounds. In the early rounds, like rounds one through three. Obviously, if there's a good running back on the board, don't take another position just because a bunch of running backs just went. But the whole concept here has to do with tiers, and these are my current tiers. They will be updated by the time this video goes out. The whole idea here is about tiers. Like, if you're in the middle rounds and a Javvante Williams, a Travis EN, and a Josh Jacobs, all who are in tier four just went off the board, odds are there's no good players left in that tier. For me, there's only three players in that tier. So now, if you're on the board with a Cam Scatter, a DeAndre Swift, and a David Montgomery, they might be quality running backs, but there's a good chance you're getting the worst value in this range, which would be like the fourth or fifth round of drafts compared to the wide receivers like a Lad Maki, a Garrett Wilson, a Rashi Rice, who are still available. You should not always, it's not a hard rule, you don't have to follow this, but definitely in like rounds six through 10, if four running backs go off the board in a row, you probably just lost out on the position. If you take a fifth running back there, you're getting the worst possible value. Here's an example of this from the Flock League draft last year. Now, this one actually was in the early rounds in round three. It's a unique uh example because of the onesie positions of quarterbacks and tight ends. So, here in the third round, I took Trey McBride. I was very interested in looking at some of the elite mobile quarterbacks that went in this range or just a different running back or a different wide receiver. Josh Allen ends up going. Lamar Jackson ends up going. Jackson Smith and Jigba, who I wasn't high on last year, but in the early third round, I wasn't against him. He ends up going. So there was a tear drop across the wide receiver position for me and definitely the quarterback position. The best available player in terms of tiers was the tight end Trey McBride. So I ended up following the tei. I took the best available player there. I didn't take four plus or three plus in a row quarterbacks, three out of four picks. If I take a quarterback here and probably a Jaylen Herz last year, I easily would have been getting the worst quarterback value in that range of the draft compared to a Josh Allen and a Lamar Jackson last year. It's not a perfect example of the four plus because it's an earlier round and this was a league full of fantasy experts. So people use this tip. They know this tip. They didn't end up taking six running backs in a row and getting the worst value. So, in your drafts, if four running backs go off the board in the seventh or eighth round, probably not a good idea to take another running back.

And this next tip is the perfect thing to flow into because it's you want to be drafting with player tiers, not rankings. Rankings do not help you at all. Are they better than nothing? Sure. Are they going to help you win a league when other people's in your in your league are using tiers? They probably won't. So, I'll pull up those tiers once again right here. It's pretty simple what tiers are, right? These are my updated tiers. By the time this video goes out in a couple of days to a week, they'll be updated once again. But as you can see, it's tiered off. So, for example, when we go into tier five right here, my running backs, you can see Josh Jacobs to me is a tier four running back. Travis Etn and Javvante Williams are tier four running backs. When you go into tier five, that is a break. That is a perfect time to say these are not the worst running backs. Kyron Williams, he's only separated in one ranking from Jacobs, who's 17 overall for me, and Williams, who is 18 overall. But it might be time to look across to another position. Is there still somebody in a higher tier at the wide receiver position or the tight end position or the quarterback position depending on my team build? Tiers give you so much more information. If rankings are one or two-dimensional view at how your draft is going, tiers are a three or a 4D version. It tells you how to compare players across positions, how to compare players across the exact same position as well, which is normally hard. If a guy is ranked 15th overall at the running back position and a guy is ranked 18th and the guy who's ranked 15th goes, well maybe the RB18 is not that bad, but there's a chance that he's two tiers below and you should pivot to another position. You will never have this information unless you're using tiers. You will never be drafting optimally in my opinion unless you're using tiers, which is the perfect time to TELL YOU THAT I ACTUALLY offer tiers. Right, there you go. Wow, what a sales pitch, S. But I do have the fantasy blueprint. It is available. Tens of thousands of people have used it the last few years alone, including this year, to win more fantasy leagues. It is basically my proven system to winning your fantasy league. If you want to learn more about it, you want to get the tiers, you want to get my top 250 rankings and a whole bunch more, you can check it out at jointhebloopprint.com. That is jointhebloopprint.com. It's linked below. And I have to make this very clear. This is not a draft guide. This is not something that you're buying just for your draft and then you're done. It is something that is going to help you prepare for your draft, dominate your draft, and then you'll have the fantasy blueprint from week one to championship week. I have all inseason tools, start uh start sit type tools, waiverss, trades, one-on-one support for me, uh matchup notes for every fantasy relevant player, and a whole bunch more. So, if you want to learn more about the blueprint, you can check it out with that link in the description. There'll be a video that answers so many frequently asked questions and let you know everything that you get and what to prepare for. There'll be other stuff in terms of what you can get and prepare for testimonials from real people on real platforms, whether it's email, social media, who have reached out and said, "I won my league or multiple leagues or I won three years in a row because of the fantasy blueprint." Check it all out right now. Especially those tiers, the top 250 rankings for your draft and then all the inseason tools. They'll actually help you win more, right? Uh over 90% of people who joined last year have returned for this year. There's a reason for that. nine out of 10 people because they're probably getting benefit out of it, winning their leagues more and getting to the championship games. So check it out, join the blueprint.com, link in the description below.

Tier number five is do not, and I repeat, do not ignore the preeason games. Your friends are going to say the preseason doesn't matter. The games don't matter. Backups are in for more than half of the game. And honestly, a lot of that is correct, except the fact that some of this stuff does matter. Boy, oh boy. I cannot wait for the preseasons to start, the first real week on August 13th because when all these games are going on on August 13th, 14th, 15th, right, this entire week, that next Monday, I'm going to be releasing a bunch of information for all of you um who are in the fantasy blueprint and on some social platforms, we'll put some stuff out as well about the biggest takeaways from week one of the preseason. Now, what does this mean? What do the takeaways mean? Well, a couple of things. We're only going to get one or two drives, maybe a half of football from the starting offense, but what does some of this stuff tell us? How do the offensive line looks, especially when it comes to run blocking? Who's out there in third down and long situations out of the back field, passing down situations, pass protection? Who's out there in the red zone? Which wide receivers are out there in three and four wide receiver sets? Which wide receivers are put in motion the most? Which wide receivers are being used out of the slot play action? How does the offenses look? Especially for situations where we have new play callers like the Chargers and Mike McDaniel or all the other offenses that we have out there that we're trying to see. What does the personnel and usage look like? We're going to get glimpses of that and they're not going to just be putting random players out there. They're trying to get a test run for their offenses. So, when you're watching these preseason games, yeah, no, in the third and fourth quarter, you probably don't have to pay attention. But for those first one to two to three to four drives of the game when the starting offense is in some ways out there, it's important to look at the takeaways. All information and data points are useful. Are they the end all beall? No. But they go into the sample of what becomes a projection in a in a ranking in a tier in the fantasy blueprint. They help us a little bit more. More information is better than no information.

Tip number six is the later you take your quarterback one, the earlier you take your quarterback two. Look, it's very simple. I'll pull up the quarterback ADPs right now. You can see Josh Allen usually goes 23rd overall, 38th overall Lamar Jackson, Drake May 54th, and so on and so forth. The earlier you take your quarterback one, so let's say you take Josh Allen in the second or third round, the later you could take your quarterback, too. You don't even have to take one, honestly, if you're in a home league draft, but if you really wanted to, you probably don't have to take another quarterback until like earliest round 12 where there's a Malik Willis. If you really wanted to, you could wait a little bit longer for a Tyler Shuck in round 13 or round 12. But the opposite side of this, the later you take your quarterback one, which could be somebody in this range, like let's say you take a Brock party in round nine of drafts, the earlier you should take your quarterback two because he's not as trustworthy of course as a round two or three Josh Allen. So for this example, if you take a Brock party in round nine, it makes a lot of sense to come back around and get a Kyler Murray in like round 11, one or two rounds later. You could actually realistically double tap the position in the later rounds. take a a Kyler Murray in round 11 and then take a Jordan Love or a Malik Willis in round 12. The reason you're taking two quick back-to-back picks is because you waited so long. Those guys in the later rounds are in the later rounds for a reason. They're not as reliable. So maybe get two of them. So hopefully you could patch together some usable weeks.

Tip number seven is it is absolutely okay to be different. Every single year in fantasy drafts, there are players across all different positions who go in rounds four, five, seven, 10 and on that actually win leagues and you draft those guys because you're being different. Otherwise, if people knew they were going to be great, they'd be first round picks. some examples of this from the Flock League last year for example, you could see I mean as early as we round one I was doing it taking Christian McAffrey over a Saquon Barkley or Justin Jefferson. But if we scroll down a little bit more the perfect example of this would be Chris Ave. I got him in round six last year. Uh sometimes he would go in round six or round seven. Nobody wanted Chris last year. People were taking Zay Flowers over him uh across different positions. Ricky Pearl was going ahead of Zay Flowers as you can see or or going ahead of Chris Ave as you can see right here. Nobody wanted Chris last year. George Pickkins was a fifth round pick. You could have reached on him in the fourth round and that would have paid off for you completely. The whole point of this is that there's going to be ADP. It's group think. It's average draft position. It is helpful, but you should not just be following average draft position. You win your leagues by actually reaching on some guys. Does that mean you should take George Pickkins in the first round of your fantasy draft? No. If he goes in round five and you feel very good about him, it's okay to take him at the end of round four. If you like Chris Ave and he goes in round seven, it's okay to take him in round six to make sure you get him. It is absolutely okay to be different. People who just draft off of ADP, basically autopicking their league off of average draft position, they'll have a solid team. They might finish fifth overall. Heck, they might even make the playoffs. They're not going to win their league most times out of now. Now, before we keep going, I just want to let you know that my top 50 rankings and tiered their tiered rankings are free this year. You can get them right now if you want to dominate your fantasy drafts. They're available at fantasy rankingsfree.com. That's also linked down below. All you do is you get here, you enter your email. Once you enter your email, you click this button to get the top 50, and then they're sent to your email. Be sure to check your spam and promotional folders, especially on Gmail. They sometimes end up in there. But the whole point of this is to help you dominate your first five rounds of your draft. Those first five rounds are the rounds that you cannot afford to mess up, right? You cannot, like we talked about earlier, you cannot afford to mess up these early rounds of your drafts. So, make sure you check that out. FantasyRankingsfree.com. It is linked down below right now. And then if you want to go through and test drive that for the first five rounds and you need more information, that's where the blueprint gives you all the bells and whistles for all the rounds of your drafts, you can check it out. So, link down below, fantasy rankingsfree.com.

And this is a perfect flow to our next tip because tip eight is you need to seek out reliability in rounds one and two. So if we pull up the current draft order this year of fantasy drafts, you can see it right here. Here are your first six picks. Bejan, Jamir Gibbs, right? So rounds one and two, you want reliability. Obviously guys like Bejian, Jamir Gibbs, Jamar Chase, they've been reliable for not just one year but multiple years now. They're proven players and proven situations. We can project them out. So when you say what does reliability mean, S? Part of it is like a vibe. you kind of understand that these workhorse running backs have proven roles and part of it is you can project them out whether it's target share role in the offense the play caller is the same. There's less questions. It basically comes down to there's less questions because the more questions there are the harder it is for a player to come through. They're less reliable and you just can't afford to make mistakes in your fantasy draft really at all but definitely not in your first two rounds. So I'm looking for the most reliable players. So when I see this range of the first round where uh guys like Aman Rosane Brown goes eighth overall, a guy who's finished as a top five wide receiver three years in a row, is still in his prime of his career, never dealt with real injuries, has the same quarterback coach and offense this year for the most part. I know there's a new play caller, but the same head coach. Uh and then I see an Ashen Genty who goes 10th overall, who I like Ashen Genty. If he was a second round pick, I'd love him. But 10th overall, you're telling me these guys go in the same range of the first round of the draft. One guy's been super consistent for four plus years. One guy, Ashen Genty, was a let down last year. And although it wasn't all his fault, he now has two new quarterbacks. He has a returning ginged up offensive line from last year. He has a new play caller. He has no weapons in terms of wide receivers on his team to actually make some noise. I know Mrock Bowers is there as a tight end, but no wide receivers. Like this offense could stall out and be bad. And Genty then you're taking as a projection. There's a lot of questions quarterback, offensive line, his own situation in this new offense with a new play caller. Why are we taking somebody with way more questions than we can take a guy in James Cook who led the NFL in rushing has the same uh quarterback and same run scheme this year? Uh we could take Almanra, right? It just doesn't make any sense to me. You need to be drafting for a liability in rounds one or two. If you don't, if you mess this up and you make those mistakes, you will not win your league because other people in your league will be hitting on their first two round picks.

Tip number nine is you want to queue up the players that you are targeting in your drafts. This one is very, very simple. I don't know where you're going to be drafting on, but if you're drafting on sleeper, like I'll just queue up a couple of example guys right here. All you simply have to do is just click the little Q button and they're going to go into your overall queue. Why do you want to do this? You want to do it before your draft starts because ideally where I have three players in my queue, Kenneth Walker, Jeremiah Love, Saquon, guys that I am interested in this year depending on when I can get them. You want this to be like 40 to 50 names long. List every single position in the blueprint. If you do become a member, we have a whole area where we do this for you. We list our wants and avoids at ADP at every single position. So, you could just do that right before the draft. The whole point is there's nothing worse than spending all summer spending a couple of weeks watching videos, watching a video like this, studying, doing a bunch of mock drafts like this one on Sleeper Here, and then you get to your pick and you don't have anything queued up and the guy that you wanted goes one pick before you. He gets sniped and now you have 60, 90 seconds, 30 seconds in some leagues to make your pick and you're panicking. Oh, who's available? Oh, okay. That's available at running back. Who's available at tight end? Oh, okay. That's available. Who's available? What? Oh my god, I only have 4 seconds panic panic. Make a panic pick. You just made a bad pick. You spend two weeks watching videos, maybe a month watching videos, all offseason, excited for your draft, and you just made a terrible panic pick. Queue up the players that you want in your drafts. Make sure you know how to queue up as well before the draft starts. Get in there 30 minutes early, whatever it is. Click the queue button on all these players as much as you possibly can. Do it before your draft. And after you pick every round, go back through, get ready for the next round of your draft by queuing up more players and making sure the guys that you actually want are in there.

Now, tip number 10 is you want to spy on your league mates. Know what your league mates need during the draft. Here's a perfect example. It's round eight in your fantasy league. It's a 12 team league and all 11 other teams already drafted a quarterback. Odds are they're not going to be drafting that many quarterbacks, if any, in the next two to three rounds. So, even if you were going to take a round eight quarterback, wait a couple of rounds because you could probably get that same guy or someone very similar. Heck, if you really want to take it a step further, you could start planning and looking into some of the other stuff that they're they're doing. Who are they following on Twitter? Get them into some mock drafts and see their habits, right? Believe it or not, people will go into mock drafts with their league. My league mates do it all the time to get a sense for a real life draft. You could just draft fake in there and you could actually see what your leaguemates are doing. Here are some of the things that you can gather from your league when you're doing mock drafts with them or you're just paying attention during your actual fantasy draft. In mock drafts or in past years in your fantasy league, you can see, do they usually go running back or wide receiver early? Do they usually wait on quarterback? Do they like going elite tight ends? All of this is information. And like we touched on earlier, every piece of information is another data point. It's not going to be on its own the thing that wins you your league. But when you start to stack these small edges, small pieces of information that your league mates don't have and aren't putting the work in for, that's when you get to separate yourself from a playoff team to a championship contender to a winning the actual league.

And a little bonus tip for you is in your final round of your draft, draft somebody who might be on IR, but is somebody who's going to come back in like four to eight weeks because the second the draft ends, you could put them in your IR spot, assuming you have one, and then just pick up another player. It's a sneaky way to get an extra guy on your roster who actually has some upside. So, there we go. So, those are 10 unspoken rules that are now spoken that fantasy experts use to win their leagues every year. I've been doing this for 10 years full-time, uh, and whether I'm drafting with ex experts, picking their brains, these are the tips that I always hear talked about the most. So, appreciate you all tuning in to this video. Now, if you want to see these seven players who could genuinely break fantasy football this year across all position, these are the guys that I think if you have a couple of them on your roster, you're probably going to win your league. In this video right here, I break down those seven players who could genuinely break fantasy football. I think it's going to help you out a ton. So, if you have the time right now, be sure to follow follow and watch this.