2026 Home League Strategy & Draft Plans

Today, and as is now officially tradition, I’m going to lay out some theoretical draft plans for your upcoming home league drafts. These will take you round-by-round with targets, backup/other targets, and then notes where I deem necessary. The idea here is to give you an exact plan I’d take into a draft with me, giving you my targets from varying pick slots to give you a relatively custom plan based on where you’re drafting

Before we go any further, I did want to note that unlike last year, these draft plans are on my actual website in the draft strategy section. The current versions of these plans are screenshotted below, but they will consistently updated on the site for the remainder of the offseason.

In these draft plans, the “targets” column will hold the priority target for that round, and then the “other targets” column will have varying amounts of backup options or alternatives depending on how you drafted to that point (ie: priority target was one of the elite TEs, “other” target would be a later TE in case you didn’t land that elite guy). Lastly on these plans, the “notes” column will give any additional context and info where necessary (strategy notes, selecting certain player if there).

These draft plans are based off FantasyPros real-time half PPR ADP, and are for 12-team leagues that start 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, and 2 Flex. I used ESPN ADP last year for these, but I’ve found this real-time ADP is much sharper and probably more realistic for most of your guys’ leagues. I do also plan to add draft plans for 10 team leagues at some point in the next few days.

You will notice the round-by-round targets stop after round 11, and the remaining round 4, 5, or 6 rounds (depending on your league) are grouped together at the bottom of each plan (the same for all 3 draft plans). Here’s why:

• Remaining picks are very context-dependent on what you did earlier in the draft

• Players here vary greatly in terms range of where they are selected.

• While there are specific targets I have here, the player archetype we should be targeting here is more important (elite handcuff potential, punted QB/TE)

These draft plans, used alongside my Redraft Player Rankings, should give you guys pretty good understanding of guys I would target at their respective prices. They also are helpful examples of how I’d structure teams. I like using these plans as “cheat sheets” while drafting, along with my said rankings.

Before revealing the draft plans (scroll to bottom if you want to see them, or check them out directly on my website as mentioned above), I did just want to touch on some general strategy tips for your home leagues…

1. Have A Round-By-Round Plan: This is the whole basis of why I create these draft plans. Having an idea of what you want to do each round, with a backup plan if things go a bit sideways, is quite important to staying on track and making sure you’re strong enough at both WR and RB.

2. Use Best Ball ADP To Find Values: I always keep Underdog best ball ADP on hand in home league drafts. This ADP is much sharper than any redraft ADP you’ll use (money backed drafts by most in-tune/up-to-date drafters out there), and can be very useful in finding values (where UD ADP is much higher on certain players than redraft ADP). Don’t follow it blindly because you’ll likely end up with too many WRs and not enough RBs, but use it to spot major discrepancies in ADP and values that remain on the draft board later than they should.

3. Hammer RB Early: This was my general home-league thesis last year, and it’s even more applicable in 2026 from how I see it. RBs are priced way up across the board this year, reviving the “dead zone” and making most of the round 3, 4, and 5 guys worse bets than last year (and so on, to a lesser degree). I like getting a couple RBs early in rounds 1 and 2 when I can as the depth at the position dries up much quicker than WR, and lets me avoid selecting what I see as mostly poor bets at RB in round 3 and 4. There’s some high-upside guys at RB I like in the middle rounds (RD5-6 particularly) if I don’t double-up on RB early (or even if I do), but the WR position just feels like a much stronger bet in these middle rounds (projection wise and more importantly in terms of upside).