8 Players Going at a Discount in Salary Cap Drafts

Aug 03, 2025

Brett Davis-Imagn Images

If you're gearing up for a salary cap fantasy draft, you should have already made your way through my tips and tricks piece and my nomination strategies piece. But while there were various highlights on certain players throughout each of those articles, both were meant as bird's-eye-view strategy guides. What about the specific players worth targeting at discounts in 2025 drafts?

I've got you covered there, too. Here are my eight favorite "discounts" in salary cap drafts right now — notably, not all are "bargain bin" prices, but all are going for less than they're worth. If you come away with these guys at "consensus cost," you're getting major value ... and I wouldn't mind spending a little extra to lock a few of them down. For reference, I'll be using FantasyPros' Dollar Value Calculator and our 4for4 Salary Cap Print Sheets to ballpark the "consensus costs" based on 12-team, half-PPR, $200 salary formats.

And always remember, these numbers are subject to shift dramatically from league to league — be adaptable!

QB Dak Prescott

FantasyPros Value: $4

4for4 Cheat Sheets: $1

In the FantasyPros calculator, Dak Prescott is going for $4 as the QB13. Other players going for $4 include Tank Bigsby, Jake Ferguson, and Marvin Mims, who are going multiple rounds later in snake draft ADP. Put simply, the opportunity for QB value outside the top 12 in salary cap drafts is absurd, and I believe Prescott is 2025's best example. Let's just take a look at his last 17 healthy games — the last 10 of 2023 and the first seven of 2024. Over that "full season span," Prescott threw for 4,724 yards, 36 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions, totaling 335 fantasy points. The list of quarterbacks with more fantasy points over that span is three names long: Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, and Baker Mayfield.

In three full seasons since his 2019 breakout, Prescott has finished as the QB2 (2019), QB7 (2021), and QB3 (2023) overall. The only thing keeping him out of the elite tier in drafts is his injury history, as he missed a total of 26 games over the last five seasons. But the injuries responsible have been scattered and fluky, and I'm unwilling to slap Prescott with an "injury-prone" tag. That means we should be projecting him for a full 2025 season, with CeeDee Lamb, George Pickens, and a run game unlikely to carry significant volume. Our 4for4 projections have him tying J.J. McCarthy for the third-most pass attempts in the entire league. That volume, combined with Prescott's history of efficiency, makes him a baseline QB1 with easy top-six upside ... all for less than $5 in salary cap drafts.