Fantasy Football: How to Draft From the 11th Spot

Every draft has a person who gets to pick first, and every draft has a person who has to pick last. That's just the way things are. Most people would usually say they'd prefer to pick near the top of their fantasy football drafts. After all, that's where you get players like Christian McCaffrey and Justin Jefferson. If you have, say, the 11th pick in a 12-team draft, you're just not getting your hands on those top players.

But just because you don't have a top draft pick doesn't mean you can't find success when drafting from the 11th spot. You can still take down your foes as long as you have a solid strategy entering your draft. Fortunately, we're here to help.

Fantasy Football 11th Pick Strategy

Rounds 1 and 2

Before we even talk about specific players, it is essential to cover what it means to pick near the turn.

Picking from the 11th spot in a 12-team draft means that you'll get the 11th and 14th picks of the draft. And then...you'll wait. You won't get to pick again until the 35th overall pick. You'll make your second-round pick, and then 20 more players will be gone by the time you're up in the third round. The draft board will look completely different by the time you make that third pick.

Without one of fantasy's true top tier of players on your team, and without 20 of the game's next-best players, you'll need to get the most out of your top picks as you possibly can. One way to do this is by embracing the "stack", or pairing a top pass-catcher with his NFL quarterback.

The first two rounds of fantasy drafts this year offer a few different ways of applying this strategy. If Travis Kelce is still available, you can draft him with the 11th pick before circling back to Patrick Mahomes with pick 14. If Stefon Diggs is your guy in the first, try to scoop up Josh Allen in the second.

It might feel uncomfortable leaning into just one NFL team so hard at the top of your draft, but hear us out. Diggs and Kelce are already considered consensus first-round picks in most formats. There's a good chance you would be picking one of them in the first round anyways, regardless of strategy. After them, Allen and Mahomes have had strangleholds on the fantasy football QB leaderboards over the last two seasons and are often taken in the second rounds of fantasy drafts themselves. You're not losing out on any ADP equity by taking those players around their usual ADPs, but you are slapping a nice power-multiplier onto your fantasy squads.

Kelce and Diggs are already the top targets for two of the top passers in the game. If they have big games (which they are known for doing), then it stands to reason that Mahomes and Allen are having pretty big games, as well. If Diggs catches a 40-yard touchdown, that's 10.5 half-PPR points for Diggs and another 5-6 points for Allen (depending on QB scoring). Each Diggs/Allen touchdown becomes a massive swing for your fantasy team, eeking the maximum amount of efficiency from your lineup.

Rounds 3 and 4

Arguably the scarcest commodity in fantasy football this season is a consistent, high-volume workload in the receiving game. When the draft finally comes back around your way, that pretty much needs to be your top priority.

We'll get to specific player recommendations for these picks in a moment, but first let's cover why that is. Earning targets is a valuable skill in the NFL, and not every receiver can do it; even fewer can do it consistently on a weekly basis. If a top receiver suffers an injury, you just can't simply assign his passing game work to the next man up. Other players on his NFL team may need to pick up more slack without their WR1 available, but we can't expect someone to assume his mantle. Starting that team's WR2 could easily result in a donut hole for your fantasy team.

That's less true for running backs. If Saquon Barkley misses a week with an injury, the New York Giants can't just scrap their whole running game. The Giants would essentially have to give Barkley's backup (currently Matt Breida) some number of touches with Barkley sidelined. Fantasy managers could then project Breida for at least 10 touches in his start, meaning we could then confidently put him into a starting lineup in a pinch.

In other words, you're way more likely to find a startable running back on your league's waiver wire than you are to find a startable wide receiver, so you need to draft accordingly.

As for specific players to target with the 35th and 38th overall picks, look for studs like Deebo Samuel, Calvin Ridley, D.K. Metcalf, and Amari Cooper in rounds 3 and 4. They're favorites to lead their NFL teams in targets this year and have been proven producers during the NFL careers. If you're looking for reliable production from the receiver position (and you should be), these should be among your top targets in this part of the draft.

Rounds 5 and 6

At this point, you can essentially go one of two ways. You can try to balance out your roster by selecting some running backs after a WR/QB/WR/WR start to the draft, fleshing out your starting lineup, or you can go bold and skew even more heavily into the wide receiver position.

Personally, I like leaning even further into receivers here and taking a volume approach at running backs in the later rounds. Your Week 1 lineup won't look as fancy, but making sure you're locking in the best possible production out of your WR positions each week is of critical importance.

If you've followed the outline above, you probably have one elite receiver paired with two more borderline fantasy WR1s. With reliable production already on the roster, you can start digging for some more upside.

For upside, think about which players you could see becoming second- or third-round picks in 2024 fantasy drafts. Mike Williams isn't likely to suddenly become a superstar in his seventh NFL season, but players like Drake London, Christian Watson, or even Treylon Burks are still on the upswings of their careers. If any of those guys have a break out season and you drafted them in the fifth or sixth round, you'll be playing with house money for the rest of the season.

Takeaways

Drafting with later first-round picks can be challenging, but having a plan in mind can help narrow the gap between your 11th-pick squad and those teams drafting from the 1.01. Focus on hoarding the scarcest commodity in fantasy football -- elite receiver production -- while playing the field at the running back position. That way, your team will still look good as new partway through the season while your opponents' teams struggle to field a competent receiver corps.

The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author's advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.