An Expert's Cheat Sheet to Dominating ESPN Fantasy Football Drafts

Aug 24, 2025

Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

This cheat sheet is designed to show you what the average league on ESPN fantasy leagues will look like and how to take advantage. With fantasy draft season kicking into high gear as the season gets closer, let’s look at ESPN’s settings. A standard draft will be a 10-team PPR draft on ESPN with 16 rounds. You’ll be starting 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 FLEX (RB/WR/TE), 1 K, 1 D/ST, and 7 bench spots.

The standard roster only having two wide receivers will actually devalue them just a bit in the standard rankings, which allows us to take them with value later on. If your league settings have a third receiver starting, you will have to adjust to target receivers ahead of ADP. A third starting receiver will devalue quarterbacks and tight ends at their inflated rankings from the default settings. The same would be true with an additional flex spot.

If you’re playing a superflex league, obviously, quarterbacks become a major priority earlier in drafts, and the standard ADP goes out the window. The elite quarterbacks go to the top of the rankings, and then things stabilize from there a bit. Regardless, you’ll need to check your league settings before the draft to make sure you know what you’re walking into.

We’ll go through ADP trends, differences between other sites, and values and other rankings outliers on ESPN to help you dominate your drafts on that platform. Plus, how drafting on a platform with a 10-team default is different from drafting in a 12-team league.

ESPN ADP Trends

The first thing to notice when looking at the default ADPs on ESPN is that quarterbacks are going significantly earlier on the platform than they are elsewhere. Josh Allen (No. 20) is going at the end of Round 2. Lamar Jackson (No. 22), Jayden Daniels (No. 27), and Jalen Hurts (No. 28) are going in Round 3. Plus, Joe Burrow (No. 33) is coming off the board in early Round 4.

All of them are coming off the board, on average, a full round or two before they are coming off the board in best ball drafts between the standard ADP on ESPN, the lack of a third receiver spot, and the smaller default league. Obviously, if your league is a 12-team league or has an extra WR or FLEX spot, this won’t be the case, but the default ADPs will be the same.

Rookie ADPs are also wildly deflated on ESPN, and something to keep an eye on throughout your draft. Other than Patriots RB Treyveon Henderson (No. 46 on Underdog vs. No. 49 on ESPN) and Bears TE Colston Loveland (No. 110 vs. No. 113), no rookie is within five spots of their best ball ADP, and none are ahead of their best ball ADP in the top 150.

Finally, the last ADP trend is the push up of D/ST’s on ESPN versus other redraft sites. The top D/ST on ESPN is the Pittsburgh Steelers with an ADP of No. 84. On average, across all the redraft sites, the first D/ST off the board is the Denver Broncos with an average ADP of No. 132. Therefore, the smaller starting rosters and 10-team standard setup come into play again as the defenses are significantly boosted in the default ADP.