Fantasy Football Strategy: Roster Construction-Based Rankings – The Full Picture

When I first started this Roster Construction-Based Ranking Series, it was just one article. During the writing process, it kept getting longer and longer, as I provided samples for the different types of drafts strategies for each position. The individual positional breakdowns (RB, WR, QB) allowed me to highlight even more draft strategies than condensing it down. However, breaking up the positions prevented showing how this whole process really benefits you on draft day.

In this edition, it’s time to bring the whole process full circle and showcase the full draft board that will be created with the Roster Construction-Based Ranking program. When you identify and combine the types of positional draft strategies that you’re planning to utilize, along with your rankings and ADP, you can have a well laid out roster construction plan. Adding in the players ADP will help you identify any areas that your list is not realistic. It’s obvious that you cannot combine a draft strategy that looks to go RB Heavy and target multiple top WRs. However, a top QB/TE strategy can be added to an RB-Heavy or ZeroRB plan. Below are a few of the more common overall draft strategies and how to produce this list.

Balance Approach

The most common roster construction plan for most owners is an overall balanced plan, acquiring players at each position that rank near the top. An owner going for a balanced approach will likely have 2-3 RBs and 2-3 WRs rosters in the first 5-6 rounds, then shifting focus to a top 10 QB and TE, before proceeding to fill out a balanced bench of players.

Using the Roster Construction Rankings, the list for RB1 and WR1 will likely each have players in the top 10 at their position, and players in the top 20 of each position at the second required roster spots. Being the most common draft strategy for many players, the final results of your draft are going to look very similar to other owners and will likely closely mirror ADP. This is not a bad strategy, it just limits your ability to have significant roster differentiation, making trading and in-season start-sit decisions more difficult.

*In all the charts below, the number in parentheses is the player’s round ADP. Example: (4) represents a 4th Round ADP. 

RB-Heavy

As laid out in the RB Edition, the RB-Heavy approach will likely see a lot of use in 2019 drafts. The key to building a draft board in this format is recognizing where you can draft your top WR. If you’re content with a player who is likely their teams #2 WR, such as Chris Godwin, Jarvis Landry or Mike Williams as your top WR option, you can make this plan work. But therein lies the benefit of the roster-construction rankings process; you can lay out a draft plan that will help you identify that comfort threshold.

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ZeroRB

After the 2015 season, also known as the RB-pocalypse, the fantasy industry went all-in on ZeroRB. While still a perfectly viable draft strategy, the past few seasons have pushed it back into the minority of draft plans. One of the most commonly used clichés in fantasy football is to zig when others zag. In 2019, ZeroRB can again be considered a viable zig to the RB-Heavy zag. Owners willing to follow this draft strategy are often coming out of drafts with a WR corps that was all first round players within the past few seasons. Using current PPR ADP found in the Ultimate Draft Kit,  A team could realistically fill their three WR spots and Flex position with a squad of Michael Thomas (late first ADP), Julio Jones (early second ADP), A.J. Green (late third ADP) and Julian Edelman (early fourth ADP). Those four players roughly project for a combined 500 receptions, 5,000 yards, and 40 TDs. If that doesn’t excite you in a PPR league, I don’t know what will. The cost of that roster build is having your two starting RBs be James White and Tarik Cohen.

Stud QB/TE

A stud QB or TE can easily be added into any of the roster builds shows above with minimal variation to the strategies, but the tricky part comes when acquiring a top player at both positions. You will be sacrificing a key starter at RB and/or WR in this build, but some owners feel it is beneficial. If you want stack Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes on a team, it’s going to cost you mid-second (Kelce), and mid-third (Mahomes) draft picks to do so.

Superflex

One of the most significant changes in a Superflex league is the ADP impact on the other positions as much as the QBs. Here, the key is finding reliable ADP data to utilize in your process, because using standard ADP data is useless. In the sample below, the ADP data has been pulled from Fantasy Football Calculator’s 2QB ADP. In a Superflex/2QB format, you’ll want to roster three QBs, so additional spots have been added for that purpose. While I am only sharing a sample of a balanced draft plan below, you can read more about the variousSuperflex draft strategies in my “4 Ways to Draft QBs in Superflex/2QB Leagues Article“.

Watch out for the final edition of this draft strategy series, where I will put this whole program to the test by running through a Mock Draft using the Roster Construction-based Rankings Program!