Fantasy Football Mock Draft: Lessons learned from 10-team half-PPR exercise

Yahoo

08-05-2025

Mock drafting isn't for everyone — like people who really only enjoy draft day for the beer and childish insults social aspects, not the roster construction. It's probably not for them.
But if you consider yourself a competitive fantasy player and you're looking for every edge, mock drafting is an incredibly useful tool. We recommend doing it. Mock drafts help us learn the pitfalls of the player pool; mocking helps to inform and improve our decision-making.
As I see it, there are three primary benefits to participation in mock drafts:
To get comfortable with different draft slots;
To test-drive different draft strategies;
To better understand the depth and limits at each position.
Also, if you happen to be a raging diva like Dalton Del Don, then you participate in mock drafts for the sole purpose of drawing attention to yourself.
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Which brings us to today's draft results. Recently, the full Yahoo Fantasy squad conducted a 10-team mock with standard default settings (half-PPR and one starting QB — also note we drafted before George Pickens was dealt to the Cowboys). Nine of us drafted honorably, as we might in an actual league. One of us was performing — shamelessly twisting the mock into a vanity exercise, a celebration of himself.
On behalf of Yahoo and our corporate partners, please accept my apologies for Dalton's appalling mock habits. He picked first, selected Ja'Marr Chase, then embarked on a Zero RB journey that led him to a second-round tight end, a fourth-round quarterback and a pair of mid-draft rookie running backs.
Just another classic look-at-me draft from Del Don. At this point, we expect nothing else. You can find our full mock results right here:
And, well, um … yes, I did also draft two rookie running backs as my presumptive starters. But please know I did it with sincerity and authenticity, unlike Dalton. I conducted myself as an absolute professional in the draft room, laser-focused on the integrity of the mock.
No, actually, Dalton and I were each messing around with different-yet-related draft strategies (see second bullet above) emphasizing receivers at the top and trusting the depth at running back. For me, it was a Hero RB approach: Ashton Jeanty in the first, then five straight receivers. I didn't take a second running back until the ninth round, at which point upside was the priority.
And this leads to our first mock takeaway…
Maybe it's a mirage — a product of our collective optimism regarding the rookie class — but this position looks deeper and more talent-rich than it has in many years.
In the range we'd normally consider the RB dead zone, the names coming off the board in our mock included plenty of high-ceiling/high-floor backs. Kenneth Walker III, David Montgomery and James Conner were taken in the fifth round and Alvin Kamara waited until the sixth. Each of those guys has top-10 potential and none of them seems likely to faceplant, except via injury.
When the non-Jeanty rookie running backs began to fly in the sixth round, it became a weird sub-category position run. Kaleb Johnson, R.J. Harvey, Omarion Hampton, TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins were all selected (in that order) between picks No. 51 and 63. A second wave of rookie RBs waited until rounds 9-11, when Cam Skattebo (my team), Bhayshul Tuten and Jayden Blue were taken.
Honestly, the backs who were selected in our mock's final six rounds — near or beyond the first 100 picks — are of a type we'd typically consider dead zoney. Jaylen Warren, Najee Harris, Jordan Mason and Rhamondre Stevenson went in the 10th, Blue and J.K. Dobbins in the 11th, then Travis Etienne Jr. and Tank Bigsby in the 12th. A few of those players are obviously doomed, but that's not really the point. We have running backs with bankable if somewhat tenuous roles getting picked where we commonly reach for lottery tickets.
All things considered, this year seems remarkably well-suited to Zero RB drafting. Dalton may have accidentally stumbled onto something (while also attempting to showboat).
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It's as if an entire tier of receivers has gone missing.
One minute, we were drafting from a group of familiar, trustworthy high-quality names — players with legit WR2 credentials: Davante Adams, Zay Flowers, D.J. Moore, D.K. Metcalf. And then in an instant, it was Rome Odunze, Jayden Reed, Jerry Jeudy and Xavier Worthy at the top of the position queue. Not ideal.
This, obviously, is another compelling reason to consider locking up your receiver spots inside the first five rounds. It gets late early at the position.
Truly, the quarterback-to-fantasy-team ratio has never felt so wrong. Unless your league involves 16 or more teams, you should definitely be Superflexing. It's well past time to make Superflex the default format.
Just look at this list of quarterbacks who went undrafted in our mock:
Jordan Love
Justin Herbert
Dak Prescott
Trevor Lawrence
C.J. Stroud
Geno Smith
Sam Darnold
Tua Tagovailoa
Caleb Williams
Matthew Stafford
Bryce Young
Opinions will vary across the fantasy community about the value of specific players, of course. But three of the quarterbacks above — Love, Prescott and Smith — have actually finished top-5 at the position at some point in the past three years. Dak is only one season removed from ranking as the overall QB3 and finishing as the MVP runner-up. Herbert was the overall QB2 just four years ago. Lawrence and Stroud both have recent top-10 seasonal finishes to their credit, and both are working with upgraded receiving corps in 2025.
In reality, these guys are all among the most valuable offensive players in the game, but, in fantasy, they're all simply spare parts. It's weird and wrong to see them unattached at the conclusion of a draft. Replacement value is now so high at QB that the position isn't terribly different from kicker.
No one should be happy with this situation.
An argument certainly still exists to select one of the elite dual-threat quarterbacks in the third or fourth round, as happened in our mock, because those guys are often unfair. But when the consensus top four are off the board in a one-QB draft, you might as well wait until the closing rounds to fill the position.
Next mock, I'm taking a premium kicker in round 14, then closing my draft with Love or Prescott.