Player Profiler is home to award-winning dynasty rankings and tools. Our Dynasty Deluxe package includes complete Dynasty Rankings, Rookie Rankings, Trade Analyzer, Draft Planner, Mock Drafts, and more. Check it out! Below, Dan Williamson explores the Psychology of Winning Fantasy Leagues.
I want to get this out of the way right now. Winning a fantasy league is hard. By the end of the season, we all realize this. But before the season begins, it seems much easier than it actually is.
Your baseline rate of winning a 10-team league is only 10 percent. For a 12-teamer, that drops to 8.3 percent. And it just gets worse from there for 14 or 16-team leagues. You’re probably thinking, “But I’m better at fantasy than most of my leaguemates, so my odds are way higher than that.”
Maybe so. But the odds are, you’re overestimating the advantage you have. It’s never been easier to access quality fantasy advice, and you better believe most, if not all, of your competitors are reading the same or similar advice as you. And don’t even get me started on how injuries can derail even the best of teams! But it’s still possible to gain an edge.
We can double, or even triple, our chances of winning any given league. We must first understand the proper psychology of winning fantasy leagues and diligently practice it to improve.
But it’s not hard! We just need to beat our competitors at 4 basic concepts:
1. Eliminate noise and focus on signal.
2. Identify leaks in our process and plug them.
3. Properly assess risk/reward.
4. Look forward, not backward.
By improving on how we approach these key concepts, we are controlling what we can control (ourselves and our actions) rather than relying on blind luck or the mistakes of our competitors to give us an edge. It is often said that fantasy football is an easy game if you just draft the right players. Consciously exert this control, and these “right players” become incredibly obvious. And in turn, the poorest pick options will also reveal themselves as traps. Let’s explore this psychology of winning!
Eliminate Noise And Focus On Signal
The internet and social media are a massive river of information. The volume and velocity of information coming at us daily are overwhelming, to say the least. Of course, we would never attempt to drink straight from a river. Likewise, we must find ways to control the flood of available information and decontaminate it before we consume it.
That doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t follow a plethora of analysts or fantasy gurus. But it does mean we should be critical of what information we take from them and how we consume it. I follow some analysts solely because they are popular and they influence ADP. I follow others because I respect their process and opinions. This second group of analysts is my water treatment plant for the river of fantasy information. What do they do that we can mimic?
Learn from the past, but don’t become stuck in it
At the end of each season, it’s good to try to break down exactly what happened and how leagues and tournaments were won. But at the same time, while these are valuable lessons, each football season is a snowflake unto itself. Blindly forcing last year’s “solution” on the current season is far more likely to lead us astray than it is to help us win THIS year. Let’s look at one example to illustrate.
In 2024, drafting RBs early and often was crucial to many winning fantasy squads. Was this the harbinger of a return to glory for the Robust RB strategies of the past? Or was it a fluke season, driven by an unusual lack of injuries to RBs and a (perhaps final) run of dominance by the prolific RB class of 2017?
How you answer these questions will majorly impact on your 2025 success. It’s quite possible that 2024 marked a significant shift in philosophy by NFL offenses, and we should expect the shift back towards a heavier emphasis on the run game to continue. At the same time, betting on the outlier season of RB health to continue in 2025 is a poor bet.
Understand the difference between predictive and descriptive stats
In addition to the river of information, we are bombarded by statistics from all directions. It’s easy to be led astray by cool-sounding stats for RBs like Explosive Run Rate or Stuff Rate. Stats like these are neither very sticky nor very predictive. For WRs, we might see catch rate, contested catch rate, or drop rate to explain why a player is headed for a bigger (or smaller) role this year. These stats are also neither sticky nor predictive.
Generally, production stats are more predictive than volume stats, and both are more predictive than efficiency stats. That’s a fancy way of saying that teams don’t generally go away from heavily utilizing proven producers. It’s also shorthand for saying that efficiency over small sample sizes in 2024 likely won’t lead to a larger role in 2025 unless the team has already carved out extra touches for that player through offseason moves.
It’s beyond the scope of this article to delve into the predictive nature of many commonly used fantasy football statistics. However, if this is an area about which you’d like to learn more, you can simply do a browser search for “predictive vs descriptive fantasy football statistics. This will yield a trove of information that will make you a more educated consumer of statistics.
Breaking Ties between players
Often during drafts, we encounter several potential choices each time we’re on the clock. Often, these choices are hard to compare directly against each other. Once you’ve allowed your team’s needs and your draft plan to help you narrow the field of potential picks, you still might be torn as to which player to take. This is where we break the tie in favor of the better offense.
For example, you may find yourself choosing between Jauan Jennings and Jakobi Meyers as you look to draft your WR4. In this case, I will take Jennings, as the 49ers offense is projected to score more points over the season than the Raiders offense. Receptions and yards all make up the bulk of scoring for any WR, but TDs are the magic elixir. Frequent end zone trips turn mediocre fantasy WRs into good ones and turn good WRs into great ones.
Training Camp News
Currently, all the camp “news” on social media is overwhelming. There’s a ceaseless barrage of videos of insane throws, catches, jukes, and long TDs. Yet almost none of them offer any context. Did that WR juke a starting defender out of his jock, or was it a guy who’s going to be working for UPS next month? Do yourself a favor and just ignore all those video snippets.
A much better way to ingest training camp news is to listen to the coaches first and the beat writers second. Look and listen for steady drumbeats of positivity or negativity surrounding fantasy-relevant players. Also, get in the habit of reading the original source material for player news blurbs. Often, there is additional context that’s beyond the scope of the blurb. Occasionally, when going to the source material, you’ll find a blurb is outright misleading in some way.
Ignore “fanalysts” completely as they rarely have access to any team insiders with pertinent information. They mostly hype up their team’s players and are generally unqualified to render accurate opinions. Beware also of “puff-piece” journalism, which often comes from beat writers. These pieces aren’t news at all, but are instead designed to hype up particular players. While these pieces may contain direct quotes from coaches, they are generally fantasizing about best-case scenarios.
In 2024, listening to the “drumbeat” of coaches’ comments would have netted you breakout players like Bucky Irving, Chase Brown, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Jerry Jeudy, and Ladd McConkey. Conversely, there were early warning signs that players like Zack Moss, Javonte Williams, Raheem Mostert, and Anthony Richardson were at risk of being major busts. Learn to sharpen your focus by examining the context around the news you consume.
Identify Leaks And Plug Them
Self-scouting is vital to improve your skills as a fantasy drafter and manager. Take the time to examine your results from previous years. What went wrong? Why did it go wrong? Were you just unlucky with injuries? Did you make bad assumptions about players or teams? Was your draft structurally sound, or did you force yourself into making suboptimal picks as the draft unfolded? These are great questions to ask. It’s so easy to fall into bad habits, and we must be honest in assessing our drafting skills. Let’s look at some common leaks.
Anchoring to Past Performance and Recency Bias
Most fantasy managers are incurable optimists. We tend to anchor our expectations to peak performances and set them as the standard. Conversely, we often punish players when they fail to uphold that (perhaps) unattainable standard. “I’ll never draft Michael Pittman again!!” is a common sentiment this year. Never mind that he played through a broken back for most of the season!
It’s OK to have takes about players and push players up or down draft boards based on those takes. Just be sure the stances you take on players are based on their opportunity and team environment. Don’t let feelings of anger or betrayal overwhelm common sense. On the flip side, don’t let yourself get irrationally exuberant about a player’s prospects. Drafting with your heart instead of your head is easily the biggest leak for most fantasy managers. Stay vigilant and recognize when you’re starting to fall into the trap.
Narrative Street is a Dark Alley
Player narratives can easily lead us astray, but simple analytics can often save us. They allow us to recognize potentially flawed narratives, no matter how convincing they might be. A good narrative is seductive because it sounds so plausible. But often narratives seem ridiculous with the benefit of hindsight. Most of us are old enough to remember when Ja’Marr Chase was fated to struggle catching the ball in the NFL because it didn’t have stripes on it like college footballs. How did that turn out?
Here are a few common narratives we see every year:
Narrative: Player X is going to get plenty of touches because there’s nobody else to take them.
Reality: If Player X isn’t good enough to satisfy the coaches, a better player will soon emerge, often from “out of nowhere” to steal his touches.
Narrative: The team has invested too much money or draft capital into Player X for him to fail.
Reality: Coaches and GMs like to stay employed, and tolerating poor performance is an easy way to get fired.
Narrative: The QB took a lot of sacks last year because of a poor offensive line, but they improved the line, so he’ll be better this year.
Reality: QB sacks are usually more of a QB stat than an offensive line stat. Poor pocket awareness is hard to fix.
Just because something sounds plausible or deductive doesn’t make it true. Demanding hard evidence almost always leads us to better decisions. At the very least, examining the evidence gives us a more accurate picture of the risk of being wrong. And that leads us straight to our next topic.
Properly Assess Risk and Reward
Most fantasy gamers don’t truly understand the benefit of embracing risk. Just a handful of players deliver truly league-winning seasonal performances each year. Then there is a larger cohort of players who are useful cogs in delivering fantasy wins, but not true difference makers. Often, these players will be valuable for a stretch of games, but not for the entire season. The last group of players is the replacement-level players who don’t generate fantasy wins at all.
Consistency is a Myth
Fantasy football is a weekly game played throughout an entire season. As a result, we often look at seasonal averages rather than weekly potential. That’s a great way to finish in the middle of the pack. Put another way, poor weeks matter less than big spike weeks.
Every lineup will endure poor performances throughout the season. A player capable of producing 20+ points a few times a season is worth enduring a few 5-8-point weeks. That’s the price of admission to a high ceiling. These players are also worth enduring a greater injury risk since they can be replaced in our lineups when they miss games.
One or two bad performances in your lineup won’t keep you from winning if you start mostly players capable of frequent spike weeks. Most weeks, every team in your league starts a couple of single-digit performers. What truly matters is having the most and the biggest spike weeks.
Chasing spike weeks is how leagues are won. Once you make the playoffs, then consistency is almost completely out the window. If you don’t have players who can deliver big weeks, you will inevitably get bounced by a team that does have such players.
Stop worrying about consistency or single-digit weeks.
The Myth of Downside Risk
Many drafters spend far too much time asking “what could go wrong for Player X” when they should instead be asking “what could go right?” As noted in the previous section, hitting on players providing big spike weeks is critical to winning. By the same token, hitting on one player who massively outperforms his ADP can outweigh several players who underperform or outright flop.
Why is that? In managed leagues, we are not tied to players who flop. We can work the waiver wire and replace those players. At worst, we should be able to find a replacement-level player each week, even if that means we have to stream the position for a while. At best, by continuing to work the waiver wire, we have a good chance of eventually hitting on a player who exceeds that minimum threshold for the rest of the season.
For example, what about Tetairoa McMillan? It’s easy to see the downside. The Panthers have been a poverty franchise for a few years now. While we saw some encouraging signs from Bryce Young at the end of last year, it’s still a small sample size of games. Rookies like McMillan can be slow learners or slow starters, rendering them unstartable until midseason. Can you afford to waste a late 4th or early 5th round pick on such a player? The answer is a resounding yes.
If McMillan does start slow, you can always stash him on your bench for a few weeks. Meanwhile, the lack of bye weeks and the general health of the league at the start of the season make for plentiful replacement options. The upside case makes the risk worthwhile.
So what is that upside case? For a concrete example, we need look no further than last year’s WR5 overall, Brian Thomas Jr. But let’s also look specifically at McMillan’s situation. Tet is a top 10 pick in the NFL draft. Receivers taken that high have a strong track record of producing well as rookies, especially late in the season. On a franchise with few palatable receiving options, Tet could easily earn 150+ targets on the year. The Panthers’ defense still looks bad, which could force the team to try to win shootouts, again pushing up passing volume. A high ceiling is definitely in the cards.
Look Forward, Not Backward
Now it’s time to pull all this together and decide which players we will target. First and foremost, you want to have a general plan before you walk into any draft. If your plan is too specific, it will be utterly useless once it runs into the chaos and surprises that come with every draft. If you don’t have any plan at all, you will be a prisoner of the moment and miss opportunities to build the strongest possible team. Build a firm but flexible plan.
I’ll first look at ADP for the particular style of league I’m drafting. It’s vital to find ADP from drafts or mocks that most closely resemble my league. Taking the time to find a close match is the only way to make this exercise worthwhile. Once I have this ADP, I’ll look at it round by round. I want to note who the best players available are in every round, with special emphasis on my target players. Once I’ve done this, it’s time to start mapping out a strategy.
Draft Using Next Year’s ADP
What do I mean by that? As we already noted, only a handful of players have the leverage to win fantasy leagues. As such, it’s vital to draft in such a way as to maximize the odds of drafting more of these players than anyone else. These league winners almost always jump to the earliest rounds of next year’s draft. For RBs, WRs, and TEs, that means the first 2 rounds. So I imagine how next year’s ADP might change from the current ADP.
Of course, I don’t have a crystal ball, so I won’t get it perfect. But this will push me to draft younger players and players with elite athleticism. It also forces me to consider how players and teams might evolve throughout the season.
At the beginning of the draft, I’m looking for key players on prolific offenses. These players only require good health to succeed. Secondary targets in this range would include elite players like Garrett Wilson, who might get held back somewhat by flaws in their team’s offense. As the draft moves into the middle rounds, I want players like TreVeyon Henderson who look primed to ascend on offenses that could also markedly improve in 2025. I’ll also begin considering secondary players on elite offenses, like Jaylen Waddle, who could ascend to stardom if a roadblock (Tyreek Hill) is hurt or succumbs to age.
I’ll consciously avoid players on the wrong side of the age cliff unless I can get them at a discount. If James Conner falls by a full round, and I’d have to reach for any of my target players, color me interested. Otherwise, I’ll move on to one of my clear targets. I simply will not draft a player with no clear path for significantly beating his ADP.
Tony Pollard is one example. He’s on a bad team, is slipping over the age apex for RBs, and has significant competition for touches. It’s easy to imagine how his ADP could crater next season. James Conner is a player who can be useful if he falls in the draft. Tony Pollard (no offense to him) is the worst sort of player. Even if he falls well past ADP, he’s still a bad pick.
By being hyper-focused on only players who give my team an edge, it becomes crystal clear when it’s appropriate to reach for a player. If all of my target players for a given round are gone and no players of interest are available at a discount, then it’s time to move on to my targets in the next round. I will never take a player just because ADP “demands” it.
The Draft Plan
I like to plan my drafts backwards. This might seem crazy for a section titled “Look Forward, Not Backward”, but looking forward requires starting at the back of the draft and working toward the front. That way, I can more accurately predict how future rounds might unfold before the draft even begins. From there, I can take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves to me.
For example, we might notice that we have little confidence in most WRs after the 7th round, while we see plenty of RBs available in the mid-rounds. That pushes us to emphasize getting our WRs squared away early in the draft. That’s not to say we can’t take any RBs early, but we have to guard against finding ourselves weak at WR just as the pool of these players dries up.
I don’t need to plan out every pick for the later rounds of the draft. But I do want a general idea of what types of players will be available. Now is when I’ll fortify any potential weaknesses in my starting lineup using these picks. These later rounds are also where I will make pure upside bets. There is no sense drafting players who are no different than the players who will be inhabiting the waiver wire all year. If I can’t see how a player could become a regular starter and excel in the role, I won’t draft him. Handcuff RBs come in all flavors, but I want the most talented ones on the best offenses. I want WRs and TEs with intriguing skills and shaky starters in front of them.
For these later rounds, I’ll list all the players I’m interested in, sorted by their ADPs and position. In this last third of the draft, I will pay less attention to a player’s ADP than normal. I’ll take whoever fits my build the best, using ADP only to break ties. The last thing I want to do is lose a player who is a great fit for my team, all because I am a slave to ADP.
Next, I’ll experiment with how to piece together the earlier rounds. This process is trial-and-error as I map out how the draft looks when I take different positions in different rounds. Usually, I will settle on a handful of key decision points. For example, if I take a target RB in the 3rd round, it might push me to take WRs in the next 2 rounds. Ultimately, I want a plan for making the strongest roster possible with potential deviations thought out in advance in case the draft gets weird on me.
Putting It All Together
We started by eliminating noise and focusing on signal. In this way, we take in the proper information as we prepare to draft and don’t get sidetracked by meaningless stats or fluff. Simultaneously, always be vigilant about what has caused you to make suboptimal decisions in the past and work to avoid them.
Learning to embrace risk and abandon the false security spawned by consistency will put you on a path to making the best possible draft choices. ‘Keep your eye firmly on the future as you plan your draft. Have clear targets and avoids.
Above all, don’t give in to the seduction of mindlessly following ADP. By understanding the psychology behind good drafting habits, you’ll find that you’re putting together dangerous teams with league and tournament-winning upside.
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