The #1 Strategy in 2026 Fantasy Football Drafts

If you want to dominate your fantasy football draft this year, you're in the right place because today we are talking about the number one strategy in your fantasy football drafts this year. Now, if you're not familiar, I'm Salvetri. I've helped over 10,000 people win their fantasy leagues alone the last few years, and I plan to do the same for you with this video.

Now, today I'm going to be going through a mock draft. This is the beginning of the mock draft right here, and I'm going to talk about every single round for 2026, what you should be looking to do. I'll give you tips per round specific to this year, how you should approach them, and then I'll go right through the draft and I'll actually execute the exact theories and tips that I'm talking about.

But the one thing that I want to start with is a tip for you before the draft even begins. Cue up players that you want to target before your draft begins and do the same before every single round. Now, this one seems very simple, but you might have an in-person draft. You have a couple of beverages, you're laughing, and you forget, and then the draft starts a minute later. It takes just 5 to 10 minutes. Queue up 20 or 30 players that you know you're interested in. X out guys that you might not be interested in so you know that you're not panicking when your pick comes.

All right, let's start with this mock draft. I am the number two pick in this mock draft, and Bijan Robinson went number one, which leaves me with a choice of Jahmyr Gibbs, Puka Nacua, Jamar Chase. I love the top four picks. You basically get a stud there, and then like the last three, two or three, also are solid this year. But Jahmyr Gibbs, I'm just going to take him. We're going to start this draft off.

Now, I always get the question, you can see right here, I just took Jahmyr Gibbs, and we'll go from there. Now, I always get the question, should I take a running back or should I take a wide receiver in round one? My answer is there's not a solid answer. It depends, and it really all depends on who the best available player is.

Your tip for round one and two is that you want to draft for reliability in these rounds. You cannot afford to miss on these picks. You don't want to be drafting injured players. You don't want to be drafting sketchy players or guys who are just getting a bunch of hype. You need reliability. These are going to be your cornerstone studs for your roster week in and week out.

And when it comes to the running back or wide receiver conversation, it's just the best available. Based on my tiers and rankings, which I'll show you in a second, Jahmyr Gibbs was easily my best available player. He is my number one overall player, and I got him at number two overall. So that is very solid.

But let's just say I was picking at number five, and those guys were gone, and my best available was a Puka Nacua. Then I'm taking the wide receiver, or Jaxon Smith-Njigba. I'm taking the wide receiver in rounds one and round two. Draft the best available player. Just because you took a running back in round one doesn't mean you have to force yourself to take a receiver in round two. If the best available player is a running back, take that player.

So now I'm on the board in round two, and here are the best available players right now: Kenneth Walker, AJ Brown, Chase Brown, Nico Collins. If I pull up my rankings and tiers in the Fantasy Blueprint, you can check it out at jointheblueprint.com. You can see right here, my Tier 1 is gone for both running back and wide receiver. Also for the tight end position, Brock Bowers and Trey McBride went. Josh Allen also went around two in this draft. My Tier 2 is gone at wide receiver. My Tier 3 is still available at the wide receiver position with guys like AJ Brown and Nico Collins, and Chase Brown is here.

Now, in my opinion, the best available player in my top 250 overall, when you're combining your running backs, your receivers, all positions, my best available player is actually going to be AJ Brown over a Chase Brown right now. So, I'm going to be going ahead, as of this recording, I'm going to take AJ Brown. We're going to take him in round two. So, we get our running back stud, Jahmyr Gibbs, in round one. Kind of going hero RB right now. We get AJ Brown, our wide receiver stud, in round two.

Now, I'm just going to be picking like two picks later, really quickly, in the third round. So, your tip for round three: start looking at elite mobile quarterbacks, but most likely you're going to be taking an upside running back or wide receiver. Now, in past years, guys like Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, even Jalen Hurts, like two years ago, would be great picks in round three. You get your guy, and then you don't have to take another quarterback. But 2026 is very unique because in like round five is like the new round three for elite quarterbacks. You get Jayden Daniels, you get Jalen Hurts, you get Drake May going in round five to six. I'm just going to wait for that round and hope to land one of those guys.

So, now I'm on the clock again, and these are the best available players. Unfortunately, Nico Collins just went one pick before me. He's the guy I was looking for. So, we still have Chase Brown now on the board in round three, which is crazy. Same thing for Kenneth Walker. So, when I look at this right now, we'll pull it up here. Kenneth Walker and Chase Brown. Chase Brown's ranked higher for me, personally. So, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to take Chase Brown here.

So, what does this mean for our team? It means we currently have starting out on our team Jahmyr Gibbs, Chase Brown, who are both for me in my rankings right now top 10 running backs. Chase Brown is a top 20 overall player. Got him in round three. That's great. And AJ Brown. So, a very strong start to this draft, in my opinion.

Now, what are we going to do for future rounds? Specifically, let's talk about these next couple of rounds: round four, round five, maybe even round six. In round four, you want to target Lamar Jackson or the best available player. Another tip would be, don't ignore like preseason usage. Everybody says the preseason doesn't matter. Training camp doesn't matter. No, I read one to two hours of beat reports a day. I track all the preseason usage. It matters way more than you think.

Now, unfortunately for this mock draft that I'm in, Lamar Jackson went as the 33rd overall pick in round three. So, for our idea of round four to target Lamar Jackson, he didn't make it there; he went at the end of round three. So, I'm going to be looking for the best available running back or wide receiver. As of right now, the available running backs or wide receivers are Ladd McConkey or Luther Burden. Actually, yeah, Luther Burden, Adonai Mitchell, you're going to have Quinyon Mitchell. We have two running backs. It doesn't mean we can't take a third, but just the way that this is going, I have my two running backs. I'm probably not taking another running back for a while here.

In terms of my best available wide receivers for me, like Tier 5 wide receiver, Terry McLaurin's there. We might get him in like two more picks. I'm going with Ladd McConkey. I mean, Ladd McConkey is going to be the pick for me. Specific for Ladd McConkey, we know how good this guy was in his rookie year. Absolutely dominated with no target competition. Then he gets more target competition last year himself. He deals with injury. Justin Herbert deals with injury. Keenan Allen comes in. He's 120 plus targets. Now Keenan Allen's gone. Mike McDaniel's taking over. And Ladd McConkey once again is going to look like an alpha, assuming he can stay healthy. I like that pick in round four for a massive bounce-back year.

All right. So, after my pick of Ladd McConkey, Quinyon Mitchell went to end round four. And to start round five, very interesting. Here we see Jalen Hurts go. Not interesting. He usually goes in this range. But the thing that matters for me, and I'm on the clock right now, round five and round six is like we said earlier, exactly where I'm going to start to look for those mobile quarterbacks. So, that's exactly your tip for round five and round six. You want to target either Tyler Warren, Drake May, Jayden Daniels, or one of the best available running backs or wide receivers.

Unfortunately for me, Tyler Warren's already gone, Drake May's already gone, but Jayden Daniels is still available. So, I think this is the time that we have to take Jayden Daniels. My concern is that if we wait, and we're going to wait 20 picks, Jayden Daniels is definitely going to go by the time my next pick comes around at the end of round six. And I don't really want Joe Burrow. I don't really want Justin Herbert. I don't mind Brock Purdy, but then we're taking a risk on like that being the guy we have to get in round nine.

There's, in my opinion, there's pockets of quarterbacks this year. You can go for Josh Allen in round three. You can get this pocket of Round 5 quarterbacks that we've been talking about, or you can wait until like Round 8 through 10 where you have a Brock Purdy, you have a Kyler Murray, Jackson Dart. You can kind of gamble with that range. I'm just going to go ahead right here. I'm going to take a Jayden Daniels.

Now, Terry McLaurin is also available. If we look at the wide receiver position, like there's a Terry McLaurin, there's a Luther Burden. So, it feels kind of, you know, like a toss-up. It kind of depends on your roster construction that you want to go with here. You know what? Screw it. Let's just go with Terry McLaurin. My best available wide receiver. We're going to go with this type of build instead because now we have, at least for the way that this draft is going, it's a two-wide receiver build. So, we have a starting lineup of Jahmyr Gibbs, Chase Brown, AJ Brown, Ladd McConkey, and Terry McLaurin. To me, that feels very good.

Now, what does this mean for in terms of like how we're going to go about the quarterback situation? Less than 5% chance Jayden Daniels makes it to the end of the sixth round. Maybe he does. It means that we're going to have to really start to focus in rounds eight through nine and make sure we get a Brock Purdy, top five quarterback in points per game last year when he was healthy, a Kyler Murray in a Vikings offense now, or maybe even a Jackson Dart. A lot of mobile upside.

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All right, now we are in round six. At the end of round six, I'll have a quick pick in round seven. And these are your best available players across all positions: Christian Watson, Tucker Kraft at tight end, Tony Pollard, you have Parker Washington, Alec Pierce, Brian Thomas, George Kittle. So, Jayden Daniels did not make it to us. These are my best available players overall. You can see some of my top tiers, like my best available tight end, easily Tucker Kraft in Tier 3. Quarterbacks are going off the board, unfortunately, but this is kind of a dead range for quarterbacks. I don't want Justin Herbert. I don't want Caleb Williams. I don't want Dak Prescott. I feel like two rounds later, you can get a similar or better quarterback.

So, in terms of wide receiver or running back, that's what we're going to do here. Here's actually a quick tip for you in round six. You don't need to fill your starting lineup first. Like if you look at the team that I have right now, the current team that I have going on, if I needed to fill my starting lineup, I would need a quarterback or a tight end. I think that's a mistake to be reaching on quarterback in this range. I think you could definitely take Tucker Kraft in this range, but there's some actually solid wide receivers available. So, I'm going to just go right back to the best available running back or wide receiver.

Now, if Jayden Daniels made it to us, it's obvious we're taking Jayden Daniels there. But Christian Watson is still on the board. Christian Watson at the end of round six is a very good pick. And I think it's kind of a like a 20% chance he would have made it all the way to the end of round six. He happened to. If I would have known for sure he was going to do that, I would have taken Jayden Daniels in round five and ended up getting Christian Watson in round six, and Watson is our flex option instead of McLaurin. But like it's a very slim chance that that would have happened for this specific draft. We're taking Christian Watson, and we're basically doing what my tip was here. We're not filling our starting lineup first. We're getting a bench spot instead.

Why? Well, injuries happen, bye. Although I'm not as concerned about that. But basically, like if you're telling me Christian Watson ends up breaking out and he's just a better player than an AJ Brown in my starting lineup or a Terry McLaurin, and he could be a trade piece or one of those guys can, why not do that over forcing a quarterback here, which is going to make your overall lineup worse when you can get a similar to better one later on?

So, now we're in round seven, and my tip for you here is to either take Tucker Kraft if he's still available, or you should start to lean running backs over wide receivers in these rounds. Now, the reason why I say running backs over wide receivers in these rounds: the wide receivers really start to thin out. Like there's a very strong wide receiver run from rounds like two through five or six. As you can see right here, the best available wide receivers for me: Alec Pierce, currently dealing with injury. Jaxon Smith-Njigba, as of this recording, dealing with injury and a rookie. Chris Godwin, we know he's in the later years of his career. DK Metcalf didn't look the greatest overall last year with an Aaron Rodgers in terms of upside. We know that Brian Thomas fell apart last year, right? You're starting to get in this murky range of wide receivers where at least for running backs, Rhamondre Stevenson was very useful last year. Tony Pollard is going to be a workhorse. Jaylen Warren's going to catch a ton of balls and get a bunch of targets this year from Aaron Rodgers. Blake Corum's one of the best, if not the best, handcuffs in all of fantasy football.

So, this is where for like round seven and eight, it's kind of the same tip. Tucker Kraft, if he's there, you should probably consider him. Otherwise, lean running backs over receivers. Obviously, if a great receiver value falls, take them. But for the most part, that's the idea.

Now, luckily for me, I have a beginning of the seventh-round pick, and Tucker Kraft happened to fall in this one. Now, I'm recording this obviously way before the season starts. So, like there is some risk in taking Tucker Kraft. Maybe he doesn't. The reports come out in like July or August, late July or August, that he's not as 100% as like he ideally should be, but to me, he's the number one target on the Packers. I know we just took Christian Watson. I'm going right back to Tucker Kraft. For me, it's between Tucker Kraft and Tony Pollard. You can go either way with this one. If I already have two strong RBs, like if you said, "Sal, you should be taking your third RB here," fine. I'm just going to get my actual starting tight end here because I think he's a way better upside player, and I'm starting to really like this draft we're building. We obviously still need a quarterback, but as you can see, our two stud running backs, Jahmyr Gibbs, Chase Brown. Our wide receivers are AJ Brown, Ladd McConkey, Terry McLaurin, with a bench player of Christian Watson and Tucker Kraft, who when he was healthy last year was a top two tight end in fantasy football. So, if not the best stretch right before the injury.

So, at this point, feeling really good. Definitely by the time my next pick comes at the end of round eight, and then we have one at the early round nine, we have to snag a quarterback. I'm going to be looking in these rounds, round eight and round nine specifically. Your tip starts to become, you want to start to look at guys like Brock Purdy, Jackson Dart, Kyler Murray. If you don't need a quarterback there, you already took one, or those guys aren't available, and you're going to wait even longer, then start to lean once again running backs over receivers.

All right, I'm on the board with my late round eight pick, looking for a quarterback, and unfortunately, a run on quarterbacks just went. Brock Purdy goes around where he usually goes. Patrick Mahomes went way earlier than expected. Same for Matthew Stafford. Thankfully, I didn't want those guys. Caleb Williams went way later. He was actually going to be a target of mine because he's like my quarterback six, somehow still available in round eight. He ends up going. The good news is we still have some options here.

If we look at the team that I'm currently sporting, like end of round eight, what are the quarterback situations? Justin Herbert. I mean, this late in drafts isn't terrible. Trevor Lawrence and Kyler Murray. So, since I have another pick at the beginning of round nine, just three more picks later, I'm just going to hold off and take one of these guys at round nine. Best available, whoever falls to me based on my current tiers. The rankings would be Herbert, Trevor Lawrence, and Kyler Murray. Do I love Justin Herbert? No. But in round nine, I think he's fine. He usually goes in like round seven or eight. So, that's where we're going to go. We kind of have the luxury here of just now taking the best available running back or wide receiver. I should also note, I took what I would consider a stud tight end in Tucker Kraft. So, like if your draft is only 14 or 16 rounds, don't take another one. If you took a stud, and you could probably only take one quarterback, no matter like even if you get a bad one later on, you can probably just take one if it's just a 14 or 16 round draft.

Okay, so with this round eight pick, before I take a quarterback in round nine, let's just see who's available here. You have Parker Washington, you have Michael Wilson, you have Rhamondre Stevenson. Keeping in mind, we already have right now a bench wide receiver. So, we have four wide receivers to two running backs. Maybe we lean running back here depending on who's available. A lot of good running backs just went off the board. Jaylen Warren of the world, Rashaad White, who I do like as late-round picks. If we pull up my tiers in the Fantasy Blueprint, you can see easily my best available player. He's a Round 6 player or a Tier 6 player for me at the running back position, is Rhamondre Stevenson. I don't even have any Tier 6 receivers left. Tier 7 receivers would be like Chris Godwin and Michael Wilson. But I'm just going to go with Rhamondre here. Like we saw it last year in the playoffs. No matter when it was, as long as he was healthy, he was playing over Tyjae Spears. Do I think it'll be the same split this year? I think Spears probably sees a good amount more work. But I think they still trust Rhamondre, especially with Vrabel still at the helm. So, I'm going to go ahead, draft Rhamondre here. I mean, Rhamondre Stevenson at this point, for some reason, they like slotted him into the slot. If we were starting a game today, he would not be my slot. It would be McLaurin or Watson. But Rhamondre Stevenson is now my RB3 on this team. I mean, that feels pretty good. Like, he's an RB3 who is going to go out there. He's going to have some dud weeks for sure. That's why I'm not going to start him. But when I have to, if I'm in a pinch with byes or injuries or something like that, I feel fine with Stevenson going out there, getting goal-line work, ability to catch passes in a good offense with Drake May. I feel completely fine with him going out and having 12 fantasy point games.

So, now we're in round nine. I said I would take the best available quarterback. Like, I like the upside and the potential of Kyler Murray this year. In my current rankings, it goes Herbert, Trevor Lawrence, Kyler Murray. So, like I'm fine with any of these three. They're all in the same tier for me. It's kind of interchangeable. I was kind of quietly hoping Herbert and Trevor Lawrence would go so I could just take Kyler Murray in this team. But he's too good to ignore at this point. Justin Herbert to me is not somebody I'm drafting at ADP, but he's currently going right now like he's the 80th overall player in ADP, and he's about to be selected way after that for me. I'm drafting Justin Herbert as my quarterback in round nine of a fantasy draft. This guy is usually going off the board for the most, most often in like round seven. So, falls in this draft. That's completely fine. If I wanted to, I could double back and take like another quarterback later on with like my round 16. This is a 16-round draft, no kicker, no defense, just for the purposes of this mock. So, I'm fine with just taking one quarterback, one tight end in this league, especially if it's a home league.

Now, let's move forward into round 10 and beyond. Your Round 10 tip is: don't let bye weeks determine your draft picks. And you always want to be using player tiers, especially in the later rounds. Now, specifically for the bye-week piece, it really matters in these later rounds when you actually have a roster and you could start to see that you have multiple guys with the same bye-week. I mean, if I come through here, you could see my two starting running backs, Jahmyr Gibbs and Chase Brown, are both on bye in Week 6. Oh my god, jump up and down. That's so terrible. Two or three of my starting players, or two of them at least, Tucker Kraft and AJ Brown, both have Week 11 byes. So does Christian Watson, right? And now you might be saying, "Oh my god, you need to make sure you get two more running backs who don't have a Week 6 bye." I don't care if the best available running back next up has a Week 6 bye and three of my four running backs that I draft have Week 6 byes. I'm fine with that. And I'm completely fine with that because first off, by the time Week 6 comes, the waiver wire, I might have hit on a slam-dunk guy and blew all my FAAB on a really good player. I might have made trades by then. I could just slot in Stevenson and somebody else. I'm not going to change, I'm not going to drastically change how I draft in Round 10 through 14 because of one week, because of just Week 6, right? I'm not going to draft suboptimally in those rounds where you're trying to find late-round league winners just because I'm worried about the bye-week. I do not care about it. If it's a best ball league, that's something different. You can't change your rosters. But for your home leagues, don't worry about it. So much is going to change in the next 6 to 12 weeks during bye weeks that it doesn't even matter.

And as for the tip on drafting with player tiers, that's what I'm doing right here because it's very easy to just see where the value pockets are. Like specifically right now, I haven't, I haven't yet taken off the guys who just went in Round 6. Like I took Rhamondre, obviously, but specifically right now, it makes it so much easier to see like, oh yeah, the running backs right now are still a pretty decent value, right? Like based on where we were in Round 8 before I took those guys, like Rhamondre and RJ Harvey and Blake Corum were all higher tier players and higher ranked players than what I had across different tiers. Now, obviously, this is different if you're loaded at one position and you just want to pick up a couple of more wide receivers. Then tiers don't matter as much. But when you're deciding between positions, you need to be using a top 250 rankings. You need to be using tiers. And that's exactly what I use. Those are my tiers. They're available right now if you want to use those and all my other tools in the Fantasy Blueprint. The Fantasy Blueprint is what I use in all my leagues that allowed me to win 75% of my leagues last year, by the way, including the Flock League, a $10,000 to first prize pool with other experts that I beat all of them. Went 14-2, scored the most points in the regular season, most points in the playoffs, dominated for $10,000, and ended up taking my dad to Italy first class for two weeks. It was amazing with that $10,000 prize pool. That's what fantasy football can do, believe it or not, which is crazy. But if you want to check out the Fantasy Blueprint, if you want to win more of your leagues or at least compete more, you can check it out with the link in the description below or by going to jointheblueprint.com. There'll be a video there. I am talking a little bit more about what you'll get. Writing out about what you get, testimonials as well, and as you scroll, you'll see even more information. Basically, answers all the questions you possibly could have, more testimonials. Check it out at jointheblueprint.com. I will say there are limited spots available this year because last year was just overwhelming the amount of support that we got. So, we're making it a little bit more exclusive this year. So, if you want to get in, now's the time. Jointheblueprint.com.

Okay, now we are at my 10th-round pick. And this is where you should definitely make sure you have a quarterback if you don't already. And this is kind of a dagger for me because the best available quarterback, Kyler Murray, is still here. He was in the same tier of quarterback as Herbert or Trevor Lawrence before my last pick, if you recall. Now, he was still ranked below those guys, but man, if I knew Kyler Murray would have made it to Round 10, I'm probably just taking Kyler Murray here. And in Round 9, I could have gotten just another guy, a Blake Corum, another running back, whatever it might have been. But that's fine. I'm not double-tapping quarterback, at least not yet. I don't need another tight end since I have Tucker Kraft. So, we're basically taking the best available running back or wide receiver. We currently have three running backs, four wide receivers. If we pull up my handy-dandy tiers, you can see right now that Jordan Mason, Chris Rodriguez are Tier 7 running backs for me. Josh Downs is a Tier 8 wide receiver. And then it kind of falls off a cliff. So, at this point in the draft, it basically comes down to backup handcuffs, running backs. Chris Rodriguez, Jordan Mason, or Josh Downs, based on the way that the draft is right now. I currently have multiple, if you see this, I have multiple, three different running backs as Tier 7 running backs. And I pick again in just two picks, right? There's a guy who's going to get back-to-back picks, the number one overall pick next, and then I go again. So, no matter what, I'm guaranteed to get one of Jordan Mason, Chris Rodriguez, and Tyron Tracy. I'm fine with any of them at this point. I would like Chris Rodriguez. Fine with any of them. So, I'm actually going to go ahead and take Josh Downs here because I just don't have as many guys in Tier 8. If Josh Downs and Jalen Coker were to go now, I'm kind of in a tough situation with wide receivers. At least the value drops off. So, we're going to take Josh Downs. We make him our fifth wide receiver. And by the way, I really like Josh Downs this year. Obviously, no Michael Pittman. 111 targets vacated from the past two years. You have Daniel Jones coming off an Achilles injury, maybe more shorter check-down targets, to a Tyler Warren, to a Jonathan Taylor, to a Josh Downs in the short to intermediate parts of the field. That feels good.

Now, we're in Round 11. So, what starts to happen in these later rounds? You have to remember that opportunity isn't all that matters. You also have to look at team investment, offensive scheme, and player talent. Now, that really matters in these later rounds because you're trying to look for diamonds in the rough. You want to make sure, is this player actually paid, is somebody under contract or a draft pick that they spent highly on? Does he have an actual role in this offense? Everything has to really start to come into play when you're nitpicking. I don't want dusty old veterans who are banged up and aren't really going to have that much of a role, and they just have a name value. I want guys who have actual upside.

So, my plan on just one of those running backs making it to us ended up working out. Jordan Mason and Chris Rodriguez are still on the board. They're in the same tier for me. The way that my lineup is currently going, I'm going to shoot for the higher upside player, Chris Rodriguez. Now, I literally just said I don't want dusty veterans who don't have any upside. Some people might look at Chris Rodriguez and say that. I don't think that's the case. He's played three years in the NFL. The guy averages five yards per carry per season. He's always been efficient. He outplayed Jakori Krosky Merritt last year, by the way. The guy was like the crazy explosive running back that everybody was down the stretch, easily outplayed him. He's now paired up with Leon Cont, once again, who knows how to call a rush offense. We saw that for Travis Etienne last year, Bucky Irving the year before, and he had experience with Leon Cont in college. Leon Cont loves Chris Rodriguez. Like compared to these guys, Jordan Mason still has Aaron Rodgers ahead of him. They drafted a rookie running back who's going to be there. I'll take Chris Rodriguez here. The running back position is where I want to go right now. In terms of like my best available players, Jordan Mason and Chris Rodriguez are basically neck and neck in my tiers. They're in the same tier. They're interchangeable for the most part. Jordan Mason is technically ranked higher, but for the type of lineup I'm building right now, I want a more upside player, not a more secure player. If I wanted a guy who if Aaron Rodgers went down, I know is going to get 14 to 16 touches, I'll take Jordan Mason. If I want to get the guy who I think can actually win out the starting job in the 11th round, it's not going to be Jordan Mason, in my opinion. It's going to be Chris Rodriguez.

So, we're really starting to build out this lineup. Let's pull it up right here for you. I'll make it a little bit bigger. Yep, there you go. You can see my starting lineup as of right now: Herbert, Jahmyr Gibbs, Chase Brown, AJ Brown, Ladd McConkey, Tucker Kraft. I mean, I think this is a beast lineup. I wish I can actually have this draft. It's going to say Rhamondre Stevenson. I don't know why I put the running back there, but it would actually be one of Terry McLaurin or Christian Watson on my bench. Then my bench would be Rhamondre, Chris Rodriguez, Josh Downs, and the other one of Terry McLaurin and Christian Watson. Feels really good. We're 11 rounds through this draft. I think it's like a 16-round draft. The last couple of rounds all kind of had the same theory. From basically Rounds 12 through 16, if your draft has 18 rounds, through Rounds 12 through 16, you want to take the highest upside players. Usually, this will be running backs because if an injury happens, and more often injuries happen to running backs, they can step in more easily compared to the wide receiver position. So, usually lean upside running backs, but either upside running backs or receivers.

All right, so with that said, the end of Round 12. I mean, this is just continues to be a gut punch. This is not going to happen in your drafts. Like Kyler Murray has an ADP of 110, which means in 12-team formats, he's definitely going in Round 9 or Round 10. He's for some reason still available at the end of Round 12. Obviously, if I knew that the 1% chance of this happening was going to happen in this mock draft, I would have taken him here, but odds are that wasn't going to happen. So, now we're at this point in the draft. My best available players based on my player tiers. Get them at jointheblueprint.com. Easily, it's Tyron Tracy right now. Tyron Tracy, Tier 7. I don't even have any Tier 7 or Tier 8 players left at wide receiver. Barely any Tier 9. If we do look at my wide receivers, Jaden Higgins in Year 2 with the Texans, a rookie Omar Cooper for the Jets, a rookie Denzel Boston, right? Rashid Shaheed, Jauan Jennings, who's now on the Vikings. You have Jalen Nailor, who they actually switched teams. He's now, well, they didn't switch teams, but they switched teams this offseason. Jalen Nailor, he's now on the 49ers, leaves the Vikings. So, wide receivers pretty thin at this point. I'm going to be going with the running back position. Some of my best available running backs: Brian Robinson, Keaton Mitchell, Tyron Tracy. At this point in the draft, Tyron Tracy is just an obvious slam-dunk value in Round 12, and I'm picking in a couple more picks. So, if Keaton Mitchell is there, I might snag him as well. So, we're going to take Tyron Tracy. That ends up being the fifth running back on our roster. We also have five wide receivers. It just happens to be that way. I'm not like a believer and you have to have the same amount of each position or only four running backs and this many receivers, right? Like it's not best ball. We're talking about redraft here. You don't have to worry about it as much. But the idea now for my Round 13 pick, which I'm now on the clock for, and even Round 14, is just continue to target these best available values first off, like Tyron Tracy just fell. And if it's just kind of close for all the different positions and all the different players in the tier, which most of the time it will be, target the highest upside, like younger, most likely player.

All right, so now I'm on the clock again. I mean, I'm only a couple picks later, so Kyler Murray's still available, but it's a pretty easy pick for me. It's going to be Keaton Mitchell here. Keaton Mitchell is my best available running back in Tier 8. Keaton Mitchell fits the standard of like a younger, like, you know, 25 or younger prime running back. He's on a new team now with the Chargers with Mike McDaniel. Could he be Mike McDaniel's new Devon Achane, the fast explosive player with a lot of upside? Maybe. Maybe the Batman and Robin with Amari Cooper in Round 13? I'm willing to pay that price to find out. So, Keaton Mitchell for me, we now get our sixth running back. So, we have running back up top in terms of the studs with Jahmyr Gibbs and Chase Brown. Kind of did like an anchor RB approach with the two of them. Two in the first three picks. Waited a bunch of rounds till like Round 10 and then loaded up on our Rhamondre Stevenson's, Chris Rodriguez, Tyron Tracy's, and now Keaton Mitchell.

So, now we're on the clock in Round 14. Obviously, getting a little bit gross. If you like quarterbacks, Jordan Love's still available. Malik Willis has a lot of upside in these later rounds. I might end up taking a quarterback like this come my next turn, like Round 15 or 16, if guys are available. I should mention that in Round 14, don't be drafting kickers. Like even if you have to start a kicker in your league, just draft another running back or wide receiver and like literally the day before or the day of your league starts, like if it's Sunday morning, you have to lock a kicker Week 1, just pick one up then. They're all going to score 5 to 12 points for the most part, right? So, just pick one of those guys up, then hold another running back or wide receiver on your roster because maybe an injury happens, maybe a guy in camp breaks out the final week or two, and now you have a sleeper on your hands, and you don't have to go to the waiver wire.

So, for me, if we go and look at this and we see my best availables across, let's just go across all positions. Now, you could see Jordan Love is easily my best available at any position. He's a Tier 5 quarterback for me. And then Tier 6 is where Malik Willis starts off. So, Jordan Love is in real consideration. I have Justin Herbert. Having Jordan Love would be really strong. Have two solid quarterbacks. A little bit of mobility for each of them. Tight ends I'm not worried about. Like I have Tucker Kraft. I don't really want Brenton Strange, Juwan Johnson. I'm probably dropping those guys for the most part. And then we go down here. I have a Tier 9 running back list: Sean Tucker, Jordan James, Nicholas Singleton, Jonah Coleman, Braelon Allen, Dylan Samson, Ray Davis, a lot of young guys with some upside. Wide receivers is really thin. Tier 10: Jalen Nailor, who might be the number one receiver on the Raiders, believe it or not. Deebo Samuel, currently a free agent. Ryan Flournoy, the wide receiver three for the Cowboys. And Trey Tucker, who maybe is also the wide receiver one or two with Jalen Nailor with the Raiders. So, not a lot of great players available. It's pretty obvious that like my options right now, in my opinion, are Jalen Nailor at wide receiver, take Jordan Love right now, and hope he doesn't go in the next two picks, or go for one of these young running backs. They're all basically in the exact same tier. I just went through them all in Tier 9. Like between Sean Tucker, Nick Singleton, Braelon Allen, like they're all the same tier to me. I'm just going to go ahead and I'm going to take Jordan Love because I don't love any of these picks overall. But if you tell me I can just get my quarterback two and Jordan Love right now at the end of Round 13, I'll take that. We have quarterbacks now of Jordan Love and Justin Herbert. I basically don't have to worry about the position outside of an injury the rest of the season.

So, there you go. We have our two quarterbacks now. So, our roster is starting to get really finalized here. Feel really good about Jordan Love in Round 14 and now Round 15. This is where you're going to start to like understand that not a lot is going to be left at these points. Probably the tip that I said earlier, target the high-upside running backs because wide receiver gets pretty dusty. So, if we pull up the running back page here, you're going to see Dylan Samson, Braelon Allen, Kiyon Black, the rookie for the 49ers, Ray Davis. For the most part, these are a lot of younger, Jordan James, a lot of younger running backs. If we pull up my tiers right now and who's the best available, it's going to say Sean Tucker, it's going to say Singleton. It's going to say a Dylan Samson. The way that I look at this is that I'm probably going to go out there and I'm going to try and say like what happens if best-case scenario breaks. Sean Tucker, there's two guys ahead of him in his backfield: Kenneth Gainwell and Bucky Irving. Like that's kind of tough. Jordan James is the RB2 to Christian McCaffrey. Probably be a split backfield if something did go wrong. But the RB2 in a Kyle Shanahan offense for a McCaffrey who is now 30. Actually stayed healthy last year. Rarely does that two years in a row. I'm going to probably lean Jordan James here. So, for me, I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to get Jordan James. Again, it's round like 15 at this point. It's not like any of these guys are probably even going to make it on my roster. But if they do, there's a reason why. So, Jordan James will try and beat the free agency spend there. We get Jordan James with our Round 15 pick, I believe that was, meaning we have one pick left.

Now, in my opinion, when your draft gets closer, Round 16, there's a very important tip. You want to draft somebody who's currently going to start the year on IR, but you think they're going to be a good player, you could just stash them there. Now, the reason why that's important is because once your draft ends, if your league has an IR spot, you just immediately put that player in the IR spot. Now, you have another player or another opening available on your team, and you just add another player. So, it's kind of like if your league is 16 rounds, you're technically kind of getting 17 picks out of it. The reason why you want to do it that way is because if you fill this final spot, my Round 16 empty bench spot, if you fill it with just another positional player, you then have to drop somebody to pick that player up on IR. Once you drop them, somebody else in your league can get them. So, instead, with Round 16, I'm not going to do it in this draft because we're not close enough to the season to know who's starting the year on the PUP. But in Round 16, this is where you should put a guy in IR the moment, and I mean the second your draft ends, go ahead, put him in your IR roster spot. And that's where a lineup spot opens up to add another player that you would have just taken there instead. It's kind of a little bit of a cheat code.

So, okay, let's now see. We're in my Round 16, who the best available players are across all positions here. Have my two quarterbacks. I'm not going to go with another tight end. I just don't seem to feel the need to. So, best players across all positions in Round 16. It's going to be a lot of tight ends and some dusty quarterbacks. I mean, you still have Dylan Samson here. A lot of upside. RB2 pass-catcher on a bad Cleveland Browns offense, but still he's still there. Jalen Nailor still available. Like he's not the guy I'm usually targeting at this late of a pick, but he might be the wide receiver one on his team. Imagine getting a wide receiver one on a team in Round 16. That's kind of where I'm leaning right now. I'm also leaning that way because we really did do a pretty big run on running backs these last like six rounds or so. You had Chris Rodriguez, Keaton Mitchell, Tyron Tracy, Jordan James. We're up to six running backs now. So, I'm going to go ahead and I'm just going to take, let me just look at my best available wide receivers real quick. So, if we pull up my tiers right now across these two positions, running back is like the clear and obvious one if you're just going based off of these tiers. Sean Tucker, Nicholas Singleton, Dylan Samson, Ray Davis, Braelon Allen, and then you also have a wide receiver, Jalen Nailor. The way that I'm going to look at this is like Jalen Nailor is like a potential wide receiver one on his team. Obviously, Brock Bowers is that wide receiver one, and Ashton Dulin is probably the wide receiver two out of the backfield, but in terms of downfield usage at the perimeter, it's probably Jalen Nailor for the most part, for like most versatile, can go into the slot. Do we want a Jalen Nailor? Like at this point, we did just take a wide receiver or a quarterback with our last pick. We currently have on this roster two starting wide receivers, and then on the bench we have Terry McLaurin, who's basically a flex, Christian Watson, and Josh Downs. So, we have five receivers. I'm going to probably at this point, it doesn't matter. It's Round 16. Let's just take a guy. I'm going to go with the higher upside player, one of these running backs off the bench for the per, we could just go with Ray Davis. Like, Sean Tucker is fine. He's ranked technically like two spots higher, but we'll go with Ray Davis.

And now, if we look at our roster, if we like think about some of the things, no, I don't want to subscribe. If we look, think about some of the things that we were saying, I think we kind of hit on it to a T. They're loading the roster right here. We'll give that a second to start. There were pockets to take a quarterback, and we took ours in that third pocket in Justin Herbert, who fell a couple of rounds. We ended up getting a stud running back, which was solid. In Round 1 and 2, you take the best available across any position. For me, that was Jahmyr Gibbs and AJ Brown. In Round 3, you do the same thing unless Josh Allen is available. He wasn't, so we end up taking Chase Brown there. And then we just hit this beautiful pocket, really from like Rounds 2 through 6 and sometimes even into Round 7. The wide receiver position is just great. We hit that pocket amazingly. AJ Brown in Round 2, Ladd McConkey in Round 4. We ended up going, if you recall, Terry McLaurin over Jayden Daniels in Round 5, and I actually appreciate that and I like that more than the roster we would have had Christian Watson in Round 6. Right? This is where things just start to get really nice. We were lucky enough that in Round 7, our tip was either draft Tucker Kraft or the best available running back or wide receiver. We took Tucker Kraft, right? We loaded up on some value in Rhamondre Stevenson and all the other running backs later on: Chris Rodriguez, Tyron Tracy, Keaton Mitchell, Jordan James, Ray Davis. We got our backup quarterback in like for Round 14 in Jordan Love. And everything over here feels really good. If you told me I could sign up for this roster as of right now, I would. And I think that's the signs of a very good plan and strategy. A plan in terms of all the tips and everything we were executing on, knowing how to adjust, adjust when the draft is going on, and a strategy which is basically all summed up in the Fantasy Blueprint. Once again, if you want to join the Fantasy Blueprint, you can right here at jointheblueprint.com. You can check it out. I appreciate you all tuning into this video, and I will see you all in the next.