One of the biggest reasons Zero RB will smash in 2024 is hiding in plain sight

How to build winners this year

We have a lot of new additions to the newsletter community over the past few weeks, so I just want to say welcome. I’ll have more information soon about what to expect between now and the end of the football season, but broadly speaking this is the one-stop shop for all my fantasy football content. A paid subscription to this newsletter includes, in the coming weeks, access to my rankings, breakdowns of each offense, strategy conversations, and so much more. Come the regular season, it’ll include access to my acclaimed weekly recap series that breaks down each game from a fantasy football angle on Mondays and Tuesdays.

I’m happy to have you on the free subscription if that suits you, and I’ll have plenty of content that is geared toward free subs. I did just want to write this quick intro because much of the higher-level stuff does get paywalled (including this piece). Note that if you do sign up for an annual premium subscription, that will give you access to all my content for 12 months, i.e. into next July. Like I said, more information to come.

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If you’ve been paying attention to any of my offseason work, the podcasts, or the YouTube streams lately (I’ll have one this morning at 11 am ET, so come hang, subscribe, turn on notifications, etc.), you know I’m in on a Zero RB sort of structure this year. How that manifests is going to be dependent on the league type you’re in — those of you in softer home leagues know from my past recommendations you can certainly take early RBs, because the pressure to get adequate WR depth isn’t as heavy. The opposite is true in situations like the Underdog best ball streets.

When and how to take “detours” from the goal of adequate WR depth is an incredibly important discussion, and it’s something we’ll hit on several ways in the coming weeks. I also hit on many of the key reasons this is the way to approach fantasy in my recent appearance on The Athletic Football Show with Robert Mays.

That’s not going to be the focus today, as we’ll instead dive a little more into one of the unique elements of 2024. For many best ball bros, hammering WR depth early in drafts over and over is becoming tiresome, and the big discussion point is shifting to whether we’re not getting enough of the other top options. What about Isiah Pacheco, who looks like a good value? What about those elite QBs?

I want to refocus one key element of the Zero RB and Zero RB-adjacent discussion today. A key element I think any successful best ball portfolio should have this year is an underweight stance on the collective RBs that go in the first seven or so rounds. For many, that’s tough to justify, as the prices on those early RBs have never been better.

But a major reason for that stance, and why being light on early RBs will be the play this year, is hiding in plain sight.