Five Last-Minute Fantasy Football Draft Tips for 2025
Matthew Freedman shares five key tips to help with your last-minute prep for your fantasy drafts.
Let's imagine that you're not a fantasy football degenerate.
Haha, I know, that's a laughable idea. But let's go with it.
Let's imagine that you're someone who is a mature and busy adult. You have a job. Kids. Parents. Commitments.
You volunteer. You exercise. You meditate.
Honestly, you sound like a great person.
It's almost disgusting.
Anyway, with all these other important things occupying your time and energy, you've had no time to research for fantasy this year—and your draft is almost here.
Oh no!
Not to worry. Here are five (somewhat off-the-cuff) last-minute draft tips to get you ready.
To access everything we have to offer (like my 2025 draft rankings and season-long player projections), use promo code FREEDMAN for 20% off the FantasyLife+ package.
Do a Mock Draft
In our Draft Champion Simulator, you can configure and customize the settings to match those of your league—and then you can do a mock to get a sense for how your real draft might go.
On top of that, you can assign specific draft strategies to opposing teams—such as Zero RB, Late-Round QB, Heavy RB, Punt TE, etc.—if you know that particular leaguemates of yours tend to employ those approaches.
Check out our mock draft simulator. It's a great resource.
Leverage Our ADP Draft Board
In our Fantasy Life ADP Draft Board, we pull in data from almost all the platforms in the industry (including my personal favorite form of redraft, Guillotine Leagues™).
While I have respect for all the platforms and the players they serve, I tend to think the average draft positions at Underdog and FFPC are the sharpest.
And that means you can use our ADP tool to compare across platforms and find potential value.
Example: Among RBs, first-round rookie Omarion Hampton—Matthew Berry's 2025 Ride-or-Die—is No. 12 at Underdog but No. 17 at CBS. Similarly, second-round rookie TreVeyon Henderson is No. 16 at Underdog but No. 20 at CBS.
And that means, if I were doing my friends-and-family draft on CBS, I'd probably have Hampton and Henderson on my list of guys to target.
Buy The One-Year Dip
In addition to using our ADP tool to compare across platforms, you can also use it to get a basic sense of 2025 market value—and then you can look to target guys who are way cheaper now than they were last year.
In general, I believe markets tend toward efficiency … but I also believe markets overreact.
And that means we might have some opportunities this year to buy at discounted rates some players who underperformed last year, but are still essentially the guys we thought they were when they were more expensive to acquire.
As an example: From this perspective, there are two players who stand out to me almost immediately—RB Christian McCaffrey and WR Tyreek Hill.
Last year, McCaffrey was the 1.01 in almost all formats and Hill was a top-three pick.
But McCaffrey played in only three full games, and Hill dealt with an injured wrist all season and was without starting QB Tua Tagovailoa for six games.
Now, McCaffrey is always available in the middle of Round 1, and Hill almost never goes before Round 3.
I'm expecting bounce-back performances for both guys. McCaffrey is among the RBs projected for 50+ targets and RBs projected for 10+ TDs. And Hill is one of the WRs projected for 120+ targets.
I'm not saying that all guys who are cheaper now than they were last year should be targeted. Sometimes, guys have fallen in value for good reason.
Example: WR Garrett Wilson. I have a low projection for him—but my gut agrees with it.
QB Justin Fields is a mediocre passer, and OC Tanner Engstrand is a first-time NFL playcaller. The Jets could have an inefficient, slow, and run-heavy offense. Wilson's price dip makes sense.
But, in general, guys who are way cheaper now than they were in 2024 deserve sustained consideration.
Target Preseason Snoozers
Dwain McFarland writes what I consider to be the best preseason recap pieces in the industry.
In it, he looks at preseason usage and specifically notes who played with the first-team offense, how involved they were, etc.
And that, I believe, presents us with opportunities to get guys at a discount who have poor preseason production numbers but strong underlying data.
For the purpose of illustration, let's look at WR Marvin Mims.
He's one of my favorite 2025 fantasy bench picks, and he's also one of our top fantasy WR sleepers.
To this point in his two-year career, he has been a first-team All-Pro returner who has averaged 10.4 yards per target as a receiver and garnered 22 carries as a runner.
He's talented—but he hasn't been used as a full-time player, and that has limited his ability to produce.
Now, let's look at what he's done this preseason: Three yards on one target and one carry.
That's nothing.
With his lack of preseason hype and his failure to put up fantasy-friendly numbers over the past two seasons, do you think typical friends-and-family drafters will prioritize Mims?
No.
But they should, because—per Dwain's weekly writeups—he played a full-time role with the starters in Week 1, he rested with the starters in Week 2, and then (after the team traded away slot starter Devaughn Vele) he once again had a full-time role with the first-team offense in Week 3.
Even though he had almost no production in preseason games, the preseason itself couldn't have gone better for Mims.
Guys like him—guys with little preseason production but positive preseason indicators—feel like they'll be available later than they should in many drafts.
It's worth reading Dwain's pieces to find some of these guys for yourself.
Focus on the Negative
Sometimes, fantasy is more about the guys you don't draft—the guys you intentionally choose to bypass.
Here's my do-not-draft list.
Familiarize yourself with it, and more importantly, think about the types of risk you want to assume when constructing your roster and those you want to avoid.
Some risk is fine. Too much of it, or the wrong type of it, can destroy your team before your season even starts.
Focus on the negative—and be sure to avoid the guys you think are overpriced for whatever reasons you think are important.
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