Fantasy Football draft strategy and rankings: Post-draft takeaways to help you formulate winning strategies

The 2025 NFL Draft is over. The 2025 Fantasy Football prep season has begun!

And it’s not stopping until September, so take a deep breath, lock out any negative thoughts, picture yourself with your league’s trophy/title belt/shiny whatever and let’s focus on what’s seriously important: Your make-believe football team. 

My colleagues and I have revealed our initial 2025 Fantasy Football rankings, both in full PPR and non-PPR. It’s our first attempt to give you a blueprint of where we’d draft the players you know — and some you don’t. And yes, it’s early and things will change, but it’s a safe bet that the primary takeaways of these rankings are here for the rest of the summer and fall.

More detailed drill-downs into specific positions, teams, and players will definitely follow. This is just an overview, a 30,000-foot view, and an appetizer. It’s also the very first piece of pre-draft work you’ll read and react to in your journey for another championship.

Primary Takeaways

1. Running back depth hasn’t been this good in at least a decade. The Raiders, Chargers, Browns, Steelers, Patriots, and Broncos appear to have found their new bulk-carriers. The Cowboys, Jaguars, and Giants added some solid depth to their rooms, each of whom have a shot at mattering at some point this season. The talent-pool crunch we’ve felt at this position in years past will happen later on.
2. Insuring/handcuffing older running backs will be more common. Expect an emphasis on the younger running backs just behind the older rushers on their teams’ depth charts. There’s consensus on locked-in No. 2 guys like Isaac Guerendo (49ers) and Jordan Mason (Vikings) being popular picks past Round 8, as will Zach Charbonnet (Seahawks) even though the guy in front of him isn’t old, but backups like Trey Benson (Cardinals), Braelon Allen (Jets), Devin Neal (Saints), Jaydon Blue (Cowboys) and Roschon Johnson (Bears) figure to make a few late-round wish lists … for now. 
3. Wide receiver depth is still great, but there are only so many true No. 1s. There’s a consensus top three at wide receiver, and also a consensus top nine. You’ll find other names like Drake London, Tee Higgins, and Ladd McConkey ranked inside the top 13, but there’s not a ton of consensus after that. And it gets worse — there’s a lot of suspect receiver options, be it because of age, talent, or target volume concerns. You may choose to prioritize receivers early in leagues where catches count.
4. Tight ends seem deeper. It feels like I write that sentence every year and then there’s a larger-than-expected group of mediocre tight ends who were drafted with much higher expectations. You’d think we’d learn our lesson by now but two top 15 picks in the draft were tight ends, and both were taken within the first 75 picks in our most recent PPR mock draft. Value will still be the name of the game when it comes to taking tight ends for your Fantasy team, and Round 2 might be too soon to get started.
5. Quarterbacks are still the deepest position, but there’s a drop-off in tiers after the first five. You know the names: Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Jayden Daniels, Joe Burrow, and Jalen Hurts. They’re our consensus top-five Fantasy QBs, but we each have a different quarterback atop our rankings. Once they’re gone, Patrick Mahomes is the consensus sixth quarterback, but then there’s all sorts of differences after that. The days of waiting to take a quarterback or two aren’t over, but giving up the advantage you’ll have with one of those top-five passers isn’t an easy choice.