For the real weirdos who were already knee deep in best ball drafts before the conclusion of last year’s Super Bowl, home leagues can seem like a formality in the final few weeks before the NFL regular season kicks off. As part of this cohort, it can be a shock to my system entering the first home league draft room of the year, only to find ADPs that can best be described as radical; both in their deviation from what I have seen all summer, and with the ease that (I tell myself) I will be able to exploit them.
While it is easy for the shock to transition into cocksureness, we (and by “we,” I mean “I”) must remind ourselves that the odds are always significantly stacked against us to bring home a title in any fantasy league. With the baseline odds of winning a 12-team league sitting at 8.3%, the chances of winning even the most casual of leagues does not rise anywhere close to a 50/50 split. This is especially true when there are bragging rights on the line.
Nevertheless, home leagues generally represent some of the softer rooms that seasoned best-ball and high-stakes drafters will compete in all season. This leads to some exploitable weaknesses. While the general public is starting to come around on concepts like the Running Back Dead Zone, RB is still king in the early rounds for most casual players. With this type of mentality, there is still the possibility that savvy drafters can accomplish the elusive goal that Shawn Siegele originally laid out as part of his Zero-RB blueprint: drafting six of the top-15 fantasy WRs. With this as my target in essentially every one of my home leagues, let’s look how we can implement this strategy in our Yahoo leagues for 2024.
Drafting tonight and need player targets now? Shawn Siegele’s 25 Priority Targets for home leagues has got you covered!
Mat Irby has also put together some of his favorite mid-round WR selections on Yahoo. Packed with tons of actionable information and an intro that concludes with one of the greatest lines of any fantasy article I have ever read, it’s a must-read for anyone playing on Yahoo.
