Perfect Fantasy Football Draft: 2nd in a 12-Team ESPN PPR League

Aug 23, 2023

Perfect Draft: 2nd in a 12-Team ESPN PPR League

Rob Carr/Getty Images

Drafting from the top two spots in 2023 ESPN fantasy football leagues offers one of the most significant draft-day advantages of the year, not just because of the upside of the players that you can draft in Round 1 but also because of the flexibility it allows you to have throughout your entire draft.

Assume that you draft a tier-one running back from the top of the draft—fantasy managers have the option to double down on the position near the 2-3 turn or take full advantage of ESPN’s full-PPR scoring system and load up on an onslaught of pass-catchers.

An obvious downside to drafting at the turns is the long wait between picks, but if you have your choice of which side of the board to be on, this is it in 2023.

In this article, I will walk through my favorite players in each round that should be available to me based on ESPN ADP according to 4for4’s Multi-Site ADP and discuss my overall draft strategy from this spot.

More Perfect Drafts

ESPN 12-Team PPR: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |12
ESPN 10-Team PPR: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
Yahoo 12-Team Half-PPR: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |12
Yahoo 10-Team Half-PPR: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

The 4for4 staff uses the Draft Hero software for all of our leagues. Draft Hero syncs directly to your league and optimizes each pick using projections and value-based rankings from 4for4. Draft Hero lets you customize your draft experience with settings on which rounds you want to draft a position, how many players you want at each position, and players to target or avoid.

For those new to Draft Hero, be sure to explore this walkthrough of the app.

My Plan of Attack When Drafting Second

Roster Settings: 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 Flex (WR/RB/TE), 1 Kicker, 1 DEF, seven bench spots

You should be flexible in every draft but if things fall according to ESPN ADP, my general plan of attack with a top-two pick is to draft one of the top-two wide receivers available, knowing that I can still anchor my running back spot with a reliable player in Round 2 or confidently load up on wide receivers in the early rounds since PPR scoring enhances a Zero-RB strategy.

In any league, building a fantasy football roster is a race to fill the flex and in full-PPR scoring, I want to have as many high-end wide receivers as possible in my starting lineup each week. This means I expect to start most ESPN PPR leagues with at least three wide receivers through the first five rounds and might continue to hammer the position in the early rounds if I miss out on a sought-after elite tight end or quarterback.

One of the downsides of drafting from the front end of the draft on ESPN is that I am likely to miss out on the uber-elite passers since I am typically unwilling to spend picks 23 or 26 on a quarterback—the top three quarterbacks are currently being drafted in the top-22 picks on ESPN and the QB5 is going at pick 37.

Continue reading for a breakdown of my favorite picks through Round 10 and a list of the best late-round targets at each position.