The 2024 Perfect Startup Draft: 1QB Fake Punt

Tim Riordan Posted On August 5, 2024

Over the span of the next few weeks, we’re going to be bringing you our 2024 versions of the “Perfect Draft.” Anyone who has followed us for any length of time knows you can’t enter a draft without a strategy but which strategy you choose will directly affect who you want to target. With that in mind, these are the strategies we’re going to cover:

Win Now
Value
Balanced
Productive Struggle
Fake Punt
Bully QB/TE
Robust RB

Today, we’ll continue the series with an analysis of a superflex draft using Ryan McDowell’s “Fake Punt” strategy. With this strategy, we start out building our team similar to a “productive struggle” strategy. In that strategy, we’re focusing on young, ascending players, especially at the wide receiver position. But, as we hit the middle and the end of the draft, we start targeting some win-now veteran players.

This is an ideal draft strategy for me because my motto in dynasty is “win now and win later.” I don’t believe in rebuilding, I don’t believe in selling out for championships. I want my team to be great now, and great three years from now. That’s what we are going to try to accomplish with these dynasty builds. We’re going to look at three different areas of the draft to demonstrate how to execute this strategy from anywhere in the draft order. Early is defined as picks one to four, middle as picks five to eight, and late as picks nine through 12. Many start-up draft picks are bound to be traded and every draft format is a little different but this will give you an idea of who you can target throughout the draft.

Using July ADP, let’s have the perfect dynasty startup draft.

First Round

Early (Team One): Justin Jefferson, WR MIN

In one quarterback drafts, Jefferson is my number one target at the top of the draft. He’s proven to be quarterback-proof, and the Vikings have the long-term answer at QB in JJ McCarthy. Jefferson works just fine for this build, because he is still young and he’s been incredibly productive.

Mid (Team Two): Marvin Harrison Jr., WR ARI

Harrison is going to be a major target in productive struggle and fake punt drafts. He’s got incredible upside and he’s just a rookie. I am really excited about the Cardinals offense this year and believe they will start to turn it around with Harrison lining up outside.

Late (Team Three): Malik Nabers, WR NYG

Nabers isn’t typically a receiver I'd want to target in the first round of a dynasty draft, but we know we’ll be targeting some win-now receivers later on to help us fill out our team to win in 2024. Nabers is outstanding, but the Giants offense is going to struggle this season. We have no clue what his quarterback situation is going to look like long-term. But, we’ve seen that elite wide receivers can be QB-proof for fantasy, so he’ll just need to prove that he can be elite at the professional level.