- Know how your roster status affects your strategy: A team that’s just a few drafts away from contention should start thinking about player targets, packing late-round capital into earlier picks and preparing to convert draft picks into production. Once you’re several years away, the focus shifts to acquiring more choices and more shots.
- “Best Available Player” gets you so far: Your roster, your timeline, and your competition format all determine what “best” really means. When you’re competing, rookie running backs are often the best value. When you’re rebuilding, wide receivers tend to hold their value better.
- Receive PFF+ with a 30% discount: Use promotional code HOLIDAY 30 to unlock the PFF Player Prop Tool, Premium Stats, fantasy dashboards, the PFF Mock Draft Simulator, industry-leading fantasy rankings and much more – everything you need to win your season.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
The fantasy football season has (mostly) concluded for another year. Now you can finally see where it all went wrong. The good news? In dynasty there is always next year. The bad news? There’s always next year.
Part of that hope is the new draft picks, new draft picks that you convince yourself will propel you to a three-peat and total dominance of your league.
How one uses their rookie picks is a matter of debate. Do you ship them Les Snead style? Are you constantly trading back, looking for drops in the rookie draft and sniffing out great value?
Do you stay where you are and take the best player available? Or are you in the middle of a total rebuild and the rookie draft picks are falling out of your pockets?
The thing is, there’s no one right way to use them. But there are some good rules of thumb to follow.
1. Buy and sell Rookie Picks at the right time
Most managers pay too much for picks in the offseason or right before the rookie draft. That’s when the new hype machine goes into overdrive and everyone has visions of Makai Lemon catching 100 balls from Cam Ward.
But, as outlined in our ‘what to expect’ series, it’s not as simple as pulling generational talent out of college.
Marvin Harrison Jr. for example, hasn’t reached the heights many thought he would, with WR30 and WR49 finishes in standard scoring PPR leagues. He was likely taken in the top three of the 2024 rookie draft.
But when is the best time to acquire rookie picks? During the season.
Once the regular fantasy season starts, rookie picks are at their lowest value. They are abstract. They don’t score any points.
The key is to target contenders that are starting to wobble. Maybe their RB1 just tore an ACL. Maybe their quarterback room is falling apart.
If they think they’re still in the hunt, they might give you a future scoop on a flex-worthy wide receiver or running back that can help them survive. They see a title window; you see a crumbling foundation.
2. Rebuild? Know your timeline
If your roster is bad—and not just “missed the playoffs” is bad, but “needs a fire sale” is bad—your rookie picks are your most important tool. But the way you use them depends entirely on your timeline.
A team that’s just a few drafts away from contention should start thinking about player targets, packing late-round capital into earlier picks and preparing to convert draft picks into production.
For example, with the volatility of the tight end position, your best bet might be to go with a proven producer like Trey McBride (84.8 PFF receiving grade) or even Jake Ferguson, who recorded 100 targets for the Cowboys this season, racking up 600 yards and eight touchdowns.
But if you’re several years away, if your roster has no cornerstones and nothing resembling a starting lineup, then the focus shifts to volume. You want more choices, more shots and more time.
That means you’re willing to sell anything that isn’t part of your next competitive period. A 28 year old RB scoring 17 points per game isn’t going to help you if you’re out for three years. Turn him over.
Javonte Williams entered the season as a low-end RB2 in fantasy after a disappointing end to his time with the Cowboys.
Still, he was the RB6 and sixth-best rusher (77.9) through the first month of the season, while showing his old explosion with seven carries of 10-plus yards.
Williams finished the season as the RB12, but his stock was never higher than in that first month. When you’re rebuilding, you have to turn those veterans around when they’re in trouble. Don’t push your luck.
And don’t rush to consolidate those choices too early. If your team is miles away from the competition, your rookie picks should be spent on the upside, not safety. Take swings. Sign guys who can explode. If they miss, you’ll be setting up early again anyway.
3. Talent, but also purpose
“Best player available” is a great motto until you’ve drafted five wide receivers in the first round over the last three years and your RB1 is still AJ Dillon.
Drafting BPA makes sense in a vacuum. But fantasy football doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Your roster, your timeline, and your competition format all determine what “best” really means.
If you’re in contention, rookie running backs are often the best value, especially those highly drafted, as outlined in our “What to Expect from First-Round Running Backs” piece.
They can often produce early, they are hot and their careers are short. Set one up ready to go in week 1, and you’ll have immediate production. Even if it drops out in three years, that might be all you need.
Even Ashton Jeanty, who posted a PFF rushing grade of 73.1 (22nd of 29 qualified running backs), did enough in a terrible situation for the Las Vegas Raiders, who finished the 2025 campaign with a PFF run-blocking grade of 53.0 and a PFF pass-blocking grade of 56.9 (30th and 29th in the NFL, respectively), to be ranked like the RB11.
When you’re rebuilding, wide receivers tend to hold their value better. They take longer to break out, but once they do, they stick around. The best example is Jaxson Smith-Njigba.
He posted a slightly above-average 63.9 PFF grade in his 2023 rookie campaign. That rose to 83.5 last season before exploding with an elite 93.1 PFF grade in the 2025 regular season.
In fantasy football, that means he goes from WR48 in his rookie season to WR10 last season and WR2 in 2025 – and he’s still only 23. So even if your rebuild takes three years, he’ll still be an elite player.
Quarterbacks and tight ends are trickier, but in superflex or TE premium formats, scarcity makes them valuable by default. Just know that the belt is longer and the bust percentage is higher.
As outlined in our “what to expect from a #1 overall quarterback” article, you can expect low to average QB2 production from a starting signal caller. However, the number of hits on quarterbacks drops when you pick those selected outside the first round in the real NFL draft.
It is also the position that can lose its value the fastest. Take Michael Penix Jr. Entering the 2025 offseason, his stock was relatively high. During his three-game stint at the end of 2024, he produced nine big throws (behind only Bryce Young) and an average target depth of 35 feet (behind only C.J. Stroud).
Now? His worth is at his knees. An uninspiring season as the Falcons’ starting quarterback before it was cut short by another serious knee injury has left his value at an all-time low, though not yet in Anthony Richardson Sr.’s category. or JJ McCarthy.
The bottom line: you need to understand your competition to know when to hold them and when to fold them. As you rebuild, you can take advantage of your aging veteran’s strengths and turn them into a team for some draft picks or riskier younger players in a win-now window.
If you want to push all your chips to the center of the table, look for stability in unstable positions so that you have the solutions to multiple problems. And worry about the schedule status later if you need to. That’s a problem for the future, you becoming champion.
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