Dynasty Rookie Draft Tips & Tricks for 2024

On the most recent Fantasy Footballers Dynasty Podcast, we discussed some rookie draft tips & tricks to give you some perspective before locking in your picks.

Mike, Betz, and myself each gave a few to file away for the next month.

In the 2024 Dynasty Pass, we are here to get you prepared for your upcoming rookie drafts:

• Rookie Rankings
• Startup Rankings
• Production Profiles
• Post-Combine Mock Drafts
• SuperFlex Mock Drafts

Be Ready to Pounce After the Draft

The waiver wire after the draft can be a gold mine if you are willing to take multiple shots. While most of these players fell this far for a reason, it doesn’t mean you can’t think of them as “extra 3rd round picks”.

Here are some examples of who went after Round 3 of rookie drafts (Pick 37 or later per RotoViz)

2023 

• Puka Nacua
• Dontayvion Wicks
• Demario Douglas
• Keaton Mitchell

2022

• Kyren Williams (after a poor combine + 5th Round draft capital)
• Isaiah Likely
• Isaiah Pacheco

Be ready to cut veterans who are hanging onto your dynasty roster than honestly have zero upside remaining.

Assign Name(s) to Your Rookie Picks

Betz talked about this briefly a couple of episodes ago, but this is a way to be realistic with the value of your pick/player prior to your rookie draft.

Use current rookie ADP to get a sense of the guys who will fall to your range rather than ambiguous values and the hopes and dreams of a “1st round pick”.

For example, the 1.08-10 range in this class (1QB) is probably Caleb Williams, Troy Franklin, AD Mitchell, or Xavier Worthy types. The 2.02 – 2.07 in this range is probably Keon Coleman, Ladd McConkey, a QB, Xavier Leggette, Blake Corum or Jaylen Wright. Remove the blinders and put real names to these picks in trade negotiations.

Here are some example trades from Discord. If you replace the pick # with player names, are you willing to do these deals?

• Kyle Pitts or Travis Kelce + 2.07 (1QB)
• Saquon Barkley or the 1.09 (SF)
• Davante Adams or the 2.06 + 3.09

Historical Data is a Suggestion, not Gospel

This tip sprung from a conversation Andy and I have been having about analytics.

Analytics blindness:

My problem with analytics (at times) is that:
– We cannot measure and quantify everything, so you’re missing pieces of every puzzle, sometimes huge pieces that we simply don’t have analytical access to.

– Who determines how far you drill down to qualify a…

— Andy Holloway (@andyholloway) March 15, 2024

Historical data gives us some boundaries to work with… but it is not perfect. Part of my research process often is finding the historical significance of certain positions. I think this is one of the areas I feel most informed when researching for the dynasty podcast, DFS & Betting Podcast, and especially for the Fantasy Footballers main podcast. Heck, I feel like I’m looking something up in my spreadsheets or on certain websites (thanks Stathead!) almost daily to find out how often something has occurred in recent history.

You’ll see stats like “x% of QBs have busted over the last decade” and often that data is used to support what will happen in the future just because that player happens to be a QB fitting that same criteria. However, stats like these are orthogonal to someone’s performance in 2024. In other words, it is statistically independent and does not influence their actual performance. There is ZERO correlation between the two points.

We have “buckets” to group players into because it is helpful for our brains to process. But every player has hundreds of buckets. Caleb Williams, for example, fits into a number of “identifying buckets” such as No. 1 overall picks, 1st round QBs, Heisman-winning QBs, and Bears QBs, to name just a few. All of these identifiers tell us who Caleb Williams is and what other QBs we can group him with. Helpful? Sure. But NONE of those categories bears any weight or effect on Caleb Williams’ actual performance on an NFL field in 2024. The fact the Bears have had crappy QBs over the years does little to influence future performance. The ghosts of Rex Grossman, Jay Cutler, Caleb Hanie, and Craig Krenzel (just to name a few) and the coaching of guys like Marc Trestman, Matt Nagy, and Dave Wannstedt should not influence your view of Williams.

“Performance-based” buckets can carry more weight in our mind because we compare positional players who also fit this narrative. I wrote an article on QBs in SuperFlex rookie drafts last year to illustrate this point. I looked at every QB taken in the first round of SuperFlex rookie drafts since 2014 and found that 54% hit 17+ fantasy points per game within their 1st two years. Only 38% percent (nine QBs) had a top-6 season within the first 3 years. We use historical data as part of the equation thinking of player’s future performance in probabilities.  

However, both identifiers and performance-based buckets, in themselves, do not directly impact Caleb Williams in 2024. This is an entirely different set of circumstances and thus we can use that data to color in the details of our decisions but basing our evaluations for fantasy on one stat is foolish.

Do Not Assume What Your Leaguemates Will Do

Don’t write down the picks in Sharpie! 

We love playing fantasy manager… for other fantasy managers. “This is what they will do because they need a QB/ RB, etc.” Despite all the mock drafts you could do, things get wild in rookie drafts and no two leagues are exactly alike.

Both of Mike’s main dynasty leagues (Ballers Dynasty and Dino Jr.) are 1QB leagues but the order went very different for the back half of the 1st round.

Question the Consensus

Projecting how rookies will perform in the NFL is one of the more difficult things to do – the NFL gets this wrong all the time! Still, dynasty managers often feel “locked” into a player or two at each pick.

Looking at rookie draft ADP over the last 3 years from MyFantasyLeague.com, there were certain players you might’ve felt “slotted in” to take.

Jonathan Mingo (2023)

• 4-year player, 2nd round Draft capital to CAR (with a rookie QB)
• Senior season breakout – he was out-produced by Malik Heath who was a UDFA
• Career 1.56 Rec yards per team pass attempt, 1.48 YPRR
• He was the 1.12 in rookie drafts

Skyy Moore (2022)

• 2nd round Draft capital (54th overall); played at Western Michigan
• 5”10”, 195 lbs. → slot only guy at the NFL level?
• 13th WR off the board
• Yet he was taken as the WR6 on average

Trey Sermon (2021)

• Round 3 pick, 89th overall non-early declare
• 33rd percentile speed score
• He was a top-10 pick in rookie drafts.

Landing Spot Immunity

I am often quite forgetful not learning from past mistakes. Or misremembering what I thought at the time.

Conventional wisdom holds that the landing spot plays a crucial role in determining a player’s output in their first year but our perception is relative and often hazy when we look back and ask, “why did I pick this guy?” There is an awesome article (“What Matters More for Rookies: Skill or Landing Spot?“) by one of our former writers (Harvard PhD candidate Matt DiSorbo) if you want a full dive on the subject.

He looked at the major positions and found the following:

Running Backs– Skill & landing spot matter the exact same amount! This makes sense that the most opportunity-based position would have more ebbs and flows. The NFL’s draft capital is our strongest indication but opportunity windows for RBs are much shorter (1-3 years) than we realize. Takeaway: Don’t double-count the landing spot. If it confirms your talent evaluation, then you are in a better place.

For example, Clyde Edwards-Helaire was the RB4 post-NFL combine. He was liked but no one was considering him RB1-level based on talent alone. Welp, he was drafted by Kansas City with the final pick of the 1st round “hand-picked” by Patrick Mahomes and CEH skyrocketed to  1.01/1.02 in rookie drafs and from a 5th round startup pick before the draft to early 2nd round that summer of 2020. Whoops!

Wide Receivers– DiSorbo found that skill was TWICE as strong as situation. Because the position is dependent on a QB’s efficiency, “available targets” can be overrated. Your evaluation and the metrics that matter for WRs come into play even more than perceived opportunity. Can they beat ZONE coverage? Very few level up from college to the pros in this area. Takeaway: Lean into talent.

Jaylen Waddle was selected at 1.06 by Miami in 2021 but fell to 1.10 in Rookie Drafts. Why? The draft capital was clearly there but it was hard seeing a path for him to succeed in a Miami offense with Tua Tagovailoa who was injured and ineffective as a rookie.

Remember N’Keal Harry? Taken at that fateful 32nd spot by New England in 2019, he was the 1.01/1.02 in Rookie Drafts. Why? The landing spot looked so good and as the 2nd WR drafted so far, he looked like the best bet. I found this quote from a website that at the time perfectly summed up what we were all feeling at the time: “Paired up with a quarterback like Tom Brady, who throws with pinpoint accuracy and anticipation, Harry won’t need to separate early in his routes… [he] likely couldn’t have found a better landing spot. New England desperately needs pass-catchers, and Harry is a solid value here.”

Quarterbacks– A bad landing spot* is the strongest for QBs across all positions that we’ve seen. Keep in mind this player should have multiple years to “prove it” and weapons can come in a flurry. However, these teams picking QBs early often stink and if they trade away multiple assets to get a QB, it leaves the team short at filling in other premium positional needs.

Bryce Young was taken 1.01 by Carolina after they traded the house to get him and he was the consensus 1.02 in SFlex in Rookie Drafts. Here is a headline I found: “Here are six reasons why the Panthers are the ideal landing spot for the former Crimson Tide QB”. Narrator: but it was not the ideal landing spot.