The best way to play home leagues in 2025
The blueprint for dominating the current landscape
Ten years ago today, my first fantasy football article was published. People liked it, and it got shared, and I remember it was crazy to think it had been viewed over 10,000 times the first few days. I was thrilled to do it, and didn’t even consider pay or anything, but a week or so later, based on how revenue sharing was done there, I found out I had a couple hundred bucks in an account on a site called Tinypass. I remember being in a hotel somewhere, and going outside my room and near the elevator bank to call… my brother, I think? “I’m getting paid to write about fantasy football, dude!”
That first article was about C.J. Spiller, and why he had top-10 upside. I had some good research in that article that’s hilariously still applicable today about the value of receptions for RBs, and Sean Payton’s running back roles, and how not only were target rates impressive but backs typically carried higher catch rates (which then sometimes plummeted after the Saints, with Reggie Bush and Darren Sproles as examples). And then like a very green analyst, I took that good analysis that got me 80% of the way there and then pattern-matched Spiller having good catch rates as my main piece of data about him being the winner. Way to finish off that final 20%, Ben.
As bad as that conclusion was, it’s kind of cool that first article featured an obsession with RB receiving, and how that’s been a key part of so much of what I’ve done since with High-Value Touches and all that. I’ve learned a ton over the years, but RB receiving value remains a throughline. I probably even think those high catch rates are still a thing in Payton offenses, with how he dials up first-read swing passes that aren’t your typical screens, and similar stuff. Marvin Mims got a good chunk of those late last year out of the backfield after the other RBs weren’t really good enough, but the new RBs could really benefit.
The people at RotoViz were so incredible those first years. By January, I was on the small editing team, and I was so fortunate to have those influences. I learned an insane amount in an extremely short time. Shawn Siegele, Kevin Cole, Nick Giffen, Josh Hermsmeyer, Charlie Kleinheksel, and an incredible roster of writers all working under a guy with a pseudonym, The Fantasy Douche, whose depth and breadth of knowledge in esoteric conversations behind the scenes somehow outpaced his fantasy football work (and there was no one whose fantasy football work I read a higher percentage of).
Less than a year later, I got a chance to meet Evan Silva. He’d seen something I wrote and DM’d me and said something like, “If you’re ever in Chicago, hit me up.” So I literally bought a plane ticket to go hang out with Evan Silva. I still remember feeling so out of my depth when he was talking about the sixth offensive lineman on the Cowboys being a swing guy who could cover multiple spots and how that depth meant rookie Ezekiel Elliott was worth the roughly sixth overall pick I’d seen Silva make in a couple industry drafts, and asked him about. I think it was Ronald Leary, and I think he was relied upon at guard after an early injury, and the line didn’t miss a beat as Zeke finished RB2.
I also remember some drunk guy in a bar babbling about the Bears, and I made a comment they hadn’t landed anyone significant for fantasy in the draft, and Silva was like, “dude, Jordan Howard’s gonna be sick, what are you talking about?” The guy knew Silva and he’d introduced me and made the guy feel stupid for not knowing who I was. It was probably only a couple weeks after the draft and I was not on my game about Day 3 running backs at that point of my life, but I still felt stupid as hell for forgetting Howard, who I’d just totally spaced. Of course he had a 1,600-yard season as a rookie that year.
That winter, in January, 2017, I planned to fly down to what is now called the FSGA, (but back then was FSTA, and was the thing everyone traveled to before FF Expo), because it was in Los Angeles. About a week before I was scheduled to travel, I popped my plantar fascia in a rec league basketball game. I went to drive and when I pushed off my toe, it felt like someone had run up behind me from the other court and kicked the bottom of my foot super hard. I spent the FSTA conference in a walking boot, which was a hell of a conversation starter. That was fun, man. By then, I had a little bit of a profile, and I got a chance to meet a ton of people.
It’s always a bit awkward at those things, because you don’t even necessarily recognize people in real life when you’ve only seen their faces, and back then you didn’t have as many streams and so even knowing their faces real well was hard. But you’ve maybe interacted with them on social, and you know these are good people, so it’s just a matter of introducing and breaking the ice and that stuff. But you have to do it with everyone, and some of the people aren’t going to know who you are, and some aren’t going to ring as much of a bell for you as you do for them, so you feel bad being like, “Who are you?”
I remember an embarrassing moment where I got a chance to talk to a couple of the Fantasy Footballers, and I knew of them and how big they were but unfortunately wasn’t familiar enough with their work, and I had some misconception about where they were based out of, and asked a question like, “You’re based [somewhere], right?” but that somewhere was way wrong. They were super nice and patient, but I just remember how I had to have come across like this new little twerp in the industry trying to big time these super successful guys.
One big memory that first night was talking to Matthew Berry outside the hotel bar, like a legit one-on-one conversation, and realizing he actually knew who I was and had read some of my stuff (RotoViz was a key part of his Rotopass product back then, but I still had no idea or expectation the biggest personality in the industry even knew my name). I’ve had a chance to talk to him more in the years since, and for someone with his stature (I just saw on social he was on Jimmy Fallon last night), he’s always legitimately interested in what you have going on, and that’s super cool.
And then later, at a bar after an evening of being a 29-year-old with two young kids who was out of the house and off on his own in a totally uncomfortable social situation and trying to speed up connections through drinking too much, I remember JJ Zachariason being another insanely kind and patient individual, helping me into an Uber or a normal taxi or whatever we did back then, to get me back to my hotel. I think a lot of people had already taken off, and I was certainly not his problem, but he took care of a probably blacked out idiot, just because he’s a good dude. Seems like he probably paid for my transportation. Doubt I ever thanked him for that; I think I was so embarrassed I avoided interacting with him for like two years after that. Great first impression.
There’s not somewhere I’m going with this. I had some awesome memories in Nashville a couple years later, while working with Rotogrinders. Sang some karaoke; there’s a video on Twitter somewhere. Obviously got a chance to work with CBS, and getting to know Jamey, Dave, Heath, Adam, Chris, and everyone else there was the coolest stretch, and a time in my life when my confidence really took off. I owe so much to those guys, and to so many other people in the industry I haven’t named, and this isn’t an awards show but I’ll feel stupid later for not adding people here even if I try to keep going. Pat and Pete and the time at Ship Chasing. Already mentioned Shawn but he’s been a close mentor throughout. The crew in the Elite Lemonade dynasty league that was my first league starting in 2016, that’s still kicking. People in my home leagues that I’ve played this stupid hobby with for even longer. A wife and two wonderful daughters who somehow accept that not seeing their husband/dad on Sundays (and most of Mondays and Tuesdays) every fall is our normal.
But I didn’t mean to write 10+ paragraphs reminiscing when I have actual work to get to. It’s crazy I’ve been writing about fantasy football for 10 years. It’s been a whirlwind and I’m so grateful for the friends in the industry and every single one of you who has ever read a single thing I’ve written. Anniversaries are kind of cool, I guess.
Now let’s go win some leagues.
Laying the foundation
I’ve already gotten some questions about what this piece is going to look like this year, and some of it has referred to public drafts I’ve been doing, and how not everything aligns with stuff I’ve written in the past. And those have been astute observations.
Two years ago, I started this “home league draft guide” concept to address a common question from subscribers across the years leading up to 2023 about how a lot of my strategy work focused on difficult draft rooms and on higher-stakes formats, but in home leagues, with softer environments, it was easier to navigate. With more room for “detours,” different strategies could be employed.
Fortunately, that 2023 guide was a huge success. It developed organically, after I’d written a piece the day before about “the most important range of 2023 drafts,” which argued that the core of the RB Dead Zone — the Round 4-5 range — actually featured a pocket of specific, unique RB targets, alongside some weaker WR options. In the introduction of that piece, I’d recapped my idea of structural drafting with these notes:
The biggest things to remember about structural drafting, as things like Zero RB are argued to be overly constricting, is that the idea isn’t to prevent you from doing anything. It’s merely to keep you on track, targeting the right positions at the right times to give you the best chance of hitting on the players that actually matter for fantasy — at all positions — in the best cost-adjusted areas to be taking those swings. Ideally, we’d be able to draft the best players at every position, but that’s not how it works, obviously.
But what was always true was if the landscape shifted dramatically, such that the types of players that have the ability to truly impact fantasy seasons were more interspersed throughout the various draft ranges, then our approach would need to shift as well. That doesn’t mean suddenly targeting the wrong types of players simply due to changing costs. It also doesn’t mean abandoning chief tenets like the understanding that high-end WR seasons do not come from the late rounds of drafts, and there is a legitimate window that will close at that position after about 50 or so are drafted, every year, like clockwork.
I probably got a little boastful over the past couple years writing about how even the biggest proponents of RB-heavy drafting have shifted, seemingly acknowledging the difficulty of consistently winning when you don’t get adequate WR depth in the first 10 or so rounds of drafts. I know there have been times when I’ve argued heavily in favor of structural drafting against people who consistently say that you can do whatever that one year says to do, because every year is unique.
Those arguments often paint these structural drafting ideas as too rigid, but my argument has typically been that they are more malleable than you think, and yet there are tentpoles that really need to be adhered to if you’re going to be successful. So in some ways, that debate would be a matter of perception, but my position has long been not to constrict draft strategy, but rather to ensure that by taking a hard line against structural elements, one isn’t getting too loose, and risking the build no longer really working.
I first tried to list those tentpole elements in a piece called, “The 7 pillars of 2022 drafts.” My subtitle there included the phrase “uncertainty reigns in 2022,” which has more or less just been par for the course in the years since, as the market continues to evolve, but not always predictably, or correctly. It remains imperative to understand the tenets of good fantasy drafting, and a core to that is getting early WR depth, as I wrote for one of those seven pillars:
Get WR depth early — This is always the game. I’ve talked about it a ton over the past two years. I get asked a lot about formats where there are only two WR slots and a Flex, and I do think in those setups the depth you need is different. But I’ve harped before on the idea you should get very comfortable taking a bench WR before you’ve filled your starting lineup, and if you can start four WRs, you should probably be thinking in terms of getting two bench WRs before that point.
This idea of “detours” has evolved to mean basically any pick that gets you off track in your goal to build adequate early WR depth. But as I said above, in home leagues, there is more room for detours, making it feel like structure or strategy doesn’t really matter. You can always get back on track when the room is soft, right?
That’s not really the case. As I argued in 2023, it’s not as simple as just checking a box of getting enough WRs on your roster through about Round 10. The WRs at the very top of drafts are there for a reason. Here’s what I wrote in that first home league guide for the 2023 season:
And again, those elite WRs are the ones who offer security. Yes, injuries will happen. But year in and year out, we know who the elites are in advance. Nothing is black and white in fantasy, but the trend of the top-scoring WRs consistently being among the highest drafted is about as close as it gets, such that you almost have to be intentionally misleading yourself or others to try to ignore it. If you go to WR points per game from last year, the list is literally just Round 1 and Round 2 WRs — Kupp, Jefferson, Chase, Hill, Diggs, Adams, Brown, Lamb.
[To follow up, in 2023, the top three WRs all had ADPs no later than the 1-2 turn (Lamb, Hill, St. Brown), but Puka Nacua did come out of nowhere to finish top five and become one of the very rare exceptions to this rule. The rest of the top 10 featured players from the single-digit rounds at worst, and several more had the very high ADPs. In 2024, the top three WRs were all clear first-round picks (Chase, Jefferson, St. Brown), while even more top scorers had very high ADPs, and there also weren’t any WRs from outside the WR window until I think Jakobi Meyers at WR20. Again, that upside WRs are only available before the WR Window closes is as reliable as trends get in fantasy, which is why I used the term “clockwork” above. Our ability to identify the actually good producers at WR also means there are clear tiers in profiles within the WR Window.]
That paragraph about the elite WRs from the 2023 guide comes from a section titled, “Why WR-WR is your PPR blueprint,” where I argued starting with two straight WRs at the top of drafts was a potential cheat code. The next section was called, “Having your cake and eating it, too,” which talked about that dynamic group of young RB options in the Dead Zone, and how you could still get access to elite RB ceilings without having to pay very high-end upside, which meant not losing access to the very best WRs, and also not taking on the extreme risk associated with RBs in the very first rounds. In a later round-by-round breakdown, I specifically named Breece Hall, Jahmyr Gibbs, or Travis Etienne as the Round 4 targets of that cohort; they finished the year RB6, RB7, and RB8 in PPR points per game, and RB2, RB3, and RB9 in total points.
It was a dynamic enough gameplan that I employed versions of it in some of my high stakes drafts, and even though it was more difficult to navigate in those rooms, I was fortunate enough to have three teams finish in the top 30 overall in either the FFPC Main Event or NFFC Primetime contests (which have seven- and six-figure first prizes, respectively). All three very closely adhered to the exact structure I laid out, round by round, in the home league guide.
But last year, things were a bit different. I didn’t feel like there was a clear and obvious line to take in fantasy drafts. There wasn’t some magic, “have your cake and eat it, too” path. In the conclusion to the 2024 home league guide, which featured a bunch of if/then statements, and sections like, “A couple common paths,” that shared different examples, I wrote, “Hopefully the explanations help you see the logic behind the builds I shared later, but the builds aren’t meant to give you a specific path you must follow, because I do think you can get there a few different ways this year, and there’s going to be nuance to your league that you understand better than I can hit on.”
It’s my understanding that Stealing Signals subs still did very well last year, employing some of those looser guidelines. But there was clearly not going to be a repeat of 2023, where the guide gave such a narrow approach that everyone could follow that it was a pretty great December and January getting to hear from so many of you smashing your leagues.
Obviously whenever I write these guides, the goal is for every one of you to win your leagues. I think I’ve used my sister-in-law as an example before. She’s a teacher, and she plays in a league with her colleagues, and for the past couple of years I’ve given her a cheat sheet for her drafts. But I also try to give her a couple quick strategic points, and she’s super competitive and she’s awesome and engages with that, although she’s not the type that’s going to be reading all these long newsletters like you guys.
And then after her draft, we’ll look at her team, and we’ll talk and she’ll explain some of the decisions she made, and maybe reference that a couple things I mentioned were a little confusing, or the way things played out wasn’t exactly how I anticipated when I gave the quick pointers, and she sort of did the best she could. And I almost always really love the team, because there are a bunch of players I have ranked highly, but also, there’s typically maybe two or three spots where there are things I would have done differently, like she drafted for need or didn’t know about how different tier breaks at various positions would play out in the future rounds in a way that would’ve helped her break a structural tie between different positions in a current round (i.e. where something like a Round 7 RB pick and a later Round 11 WR pick could have been a 2v2 the other way), and probably the sum of those two or three missed opportunities makes it quite a bit less likely to win the league.
And when I talk about that, I usually think about the idea that in a 12-team league, you start with an 8.3% chance to win your league, which is equivalent to 1 in 12. What I’m hoping for everyone I help is not just that through a draft they can advance that a little bit — I’m supposed to be a fantasy “expert,” that should be par for the course — but that I can help that 8.3% really balloon. I think for situations like my example with my sister-in-law, the teams she shares with me are still so much sounder than many other teams in the league that are probably not in a real good spot, that she may be looking at something like a post-draft win probability in the 15% range. But because it’s a pretty soft league, I often find myself fixating on those two or three that could have gone a different direction and feeling like that was a missed opportunity to take that number up to 25% or 30%. I want you to leave your draft with like a 1 in 4 chance of being the winner. I want the downside to be a wild card playoff berth, and the upside to be the No. 1 seed, and by a lot.
That gap between my player picks maybe taking you to 15%, and how we can get you up to that 25% or higher figure, is what this piece is. I think I successfully did that for most subs in 2023. It was harder to find those answers in 2024, but I tried to give you every contingent scenario and muster all the tacit knowledge I could so the people who were really engaging would understand how I’d make all the little pivots.
But that brings us to 2025. And I’m happy to say this year feels far more like 2023. I don’t think I have all the answers. But I do have a step-by-step approach you can follow in softer home league draft rooms that I think is going to provide a really strong floor at worst, and carry with it the extreme upside we’re looking for to go out and win a bunch of leagues. Let’s get into it.