Avoid the nine mistakes most fantasy football managers make
The road to a fantasy football championship is full of pitfalls. Avoid making these mistakes on your way to victory.
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Pobody's nerfect.
Certain nuances of this wondrous fantasy football game trip us up, year after year. And it's not simple things, like "know your league's scoring settings," which is valid advice but directed more toward newcomers.
Even veteran fantasy footballers can fall prey to the game's pitfalls. Whether it's flawed logic, bad habits or simply following a herd mentality, the following missteps can tank your season. Let's dive deeper and prepare for the situations that can surface as early as draft day or as late as your championship matchup.
The advice here is simple: Don't. Do. These. Things.
1. Don't succumb to recency bias
"Yesterday" carries tremendous weight in fantasy decision-making. When Emeka Egbuka begins on a historic hot streak -- his 102.4 fantasy points over his first five games were third most by any rookie wide receiver in history -- we giddily trade the farm to acquire him, only to see 42 other wide receivers outscore him from that point forward.
Or, when Travis Etienne Jr., a top-10 scoring running back across his first two NFL seasons, struggles through a lost year -- he totaled just 812 yards and two touchdowns over 15 games in 2024 -- we avoid him at all costs the following season, only to watch him rebound to a top-10 running back finish in a rejuvenated Jacksonville Jaguars offense.
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Today is what matters in fantasy football and, while past results can guide our forecasting, small, relatively recent samples don't provide the full picture. They ignore factors like regression, progression, the schedule and circumstantial opportunity (such as a player thriving as an injury fill-in).
Using three-year averages to gauge a player's true skill set, while considering his immediate opportunity and upcoming matchups, is a more reasonable way to approach the decision-making process. Do not react solely off last year's stats nor last week's results. Those numbers are gone, done, finito already.
2. Don't fall for position runs in the draft
Ever see this pattern? Josh Allen gets drafted at the end of Round 3, then Jayden Daniels goes two picks later, Lamar Jackson one pick after that, and Drake Maye two after that. When five players at a single position fly off the board in a seven-pick span, all within the first 35 selections, managers can get antsy about the talent pool at that spot. Thus breeds the position run.
Following the crowd and selecting Joe Burrow 36th might land you a great NFL quarterback, but it will probably cost you a critical piece at another position. It might also mean you get only the fifth-best fantasy quarterback, which isn't nearly as important as drafting a weekly bona fide WR2 like Tetairoa McMillan.
If you're tempted to dive into a position run, it signals one of two things: You unwisely waited too long to address that position, or you failed to properly identify fallback candidates during your draft preparations. Do not let either happen.
3. Don't take out too much running back insurance.
Injuries are a huge factor in fantasy football, but there's no reason to waste draft resources over-insuring your team against disaster. Many managers go out of their way to draft backups to their starting running backs, often doing so at the expense of critical late-round sleepers.
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Consider: Among 34 "insurance policy" running backs from the past five seasons -- clear backups to starters selected in the first five rounds -- only 10 scored more fantasy points than the starter selected ahead of them. The backups averaged 3.2 starts, while the starters averaged 12.9.
The other 46 running backs selected after the fifth round, meanwhile, averaged only 0.19 fewer fantasy points per game and put up 0.7% fewer 15-point fantasy performances than did the insurance policies, negligible margins that demonstrate that you'd do just as well selecting any late-round running back than pairing one with your starter.
You will need a deep bench of running backs to successfully navigate the season, but draft, pick up and trade for those with the greatest odds of blossoming, independent of their ties to your current roster. Do not force a Isiah Pacheco pick to insure your Jahmyr Gibbs. Instead pick somebody like Jonathon Brooks, who has hopes of emerging as the Carolina Panthers' starter (health-willing).
An exception: Once you successfully steer your team deep into (and preferably beyond) the bye weeks, then use bench spots on insurance policies. Week 11 -- immediately following the Atlanta Falcons' bye -- is when Bijan Robinson's managers should prioritize a bench spot for Brian Robinson Jr.
4. Don't mismanage the bye weeks
Speaking of bye weeks, we're often tripped up by them in two regards. We fret too much about them on draft day, avoiding talented players simply because they share common bye weeks with players already on our roster. Then, once the season kicks off, we fail to properly prepare for them.
Consider when a player's bye week occurs, as there's a significant difference between a Week 5 and a Week 14 bye. For example, Gibbs' managers might want to avoid drafting Chase Brown as their RB2 because the Detroit Lions and Cincinnati Bengals share a Week 6 bye, which arrives too early in the season to potentially acquire two adequate substitutes or for bench-drafted backs to emerge.
Conversely, those drafting Jeremiyah Love shouldn't panic about pairing him with Javonte Williams, despite the Arizona Cardinals' and Dallas Cowboys' common Week 14 bye. Rosters change over 13 weeks, and one or both might not even be on your team by then.
As for "stacking" byes -- intentionally drafting numerous common-bye players to give you an advantage every other week -- there's no definitive yay or nay to the strategy's viability. That said, a team that loads up on Week 11 byes (when six teams are off) also needs to be able to field an active lineup, and bye-week players do take up precious bench spots while off. A good rule of thumb is no more than five common-bye players on your roster. To be clear, that's excluding kicker and defense. In most cases, you should simply drop them while adding their replacement during the bye week.
As the NFL place-kicker has evolved, so too must fantasy football conventional wisdom toward drafting the position. Raymond Carlin III-Imagn Images 5. Don't prioritize defense over kicker... seriously!
We've stressed for years that kickers are interchangeable, a candidate for exclusion in custom leagues and players to be drafted only in the final round. But with the rising rate of long-distance kicks -- a skill which only a certain subset of kickers possess -- that strategy is changing.
Two of the four best single-season fantasy points-per-game performances occurred last year (Ka'imi Fairbairn, 12.7 and Jason Myers, 11.5) and six of the best 20 on the list have occurred in one of the past three years. Three of the four players responsible (Fairbairn, Myers and Chris Boswell) rank among the top seven all time in successful kicks of 50 yards or greater. The fourth, Brandon Aubrey, has more 60-plus-yard field goals (six) than anyone in history.
Meanwhile, defenses have become as unpredictable and subject to their weekly matchups as ever. We haven't seen the top-drafted defense finish first in scoring in 13 years, and only three in the past 10 years even finished top 5.
A streaming strategy, selecting the D/ST last and with their Week 1 matchup in mind, is increasingly the way to go at that position, whereas it's your kicker which should be your target in the penultimate Round 15.
6. Don't draft to trade
"Best available player" is a viable and usually smart strategy, but it has its limits. With a finite number of lineup spots at each position, loading up too much at one position makes little sense, even if it's to open up future trade possibilities.
A team rich at wide receiver, for instance, can still start only three receivers at a time if using one at flex and, while you might have designs on trading away your surplus, trades require two people to agree -- whereas drafting the player you actually need upfront requires only your buy-in.
7. Don't stick with a struggling player for too long
Patience is a virtue... until bye weeks force your hand. This isn't to say that Ja'Marr Chase, who had three sub-10-point performances during the first four weeks of 2025, should have been set free to the waiver wire at the end of September. However, someone like Keon Coleman, who had 57.7 fantasy points and a 19% target share through the first six weeks, would have warranted a drop rather than a bench spot come the Buffalo Bills' Week 7 bye.
Consider the player's skill set, whether his role has significantly changed and if his underlying metrics hint at better things ahead. But in the absence of all three, be quick to move on. Fantasy football's seasonal schedule is a precariously small sample size, and you can't afford to sit too long on players who are sinking your weekly score or preventing you from picking up players who portend better upside.
8. Don't start Thursday (or any early-game players) in the flex
