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2025 Fantasy Football Mock Draft Strategy and Cheat Sheet for Opening Rounds

Zach BuckleyAug 21, 2025

Fantasy football's mock draft season will soon give way to the actual drafts themselves.

There's still a smattering of time, however, to sneak in a few mocks before the 2025 NFL campaign kicks off.

We're here to help you make the most of this process by laying out our top mock draft strategies and providing both cheat sheet rankings and first-round targets.

Mock Draft Strategy

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Run as many mocks as you can.

Ever been in a draft room with someone who's such a big fan of their favorite NFL team that they feel compelled to add that club's players in fantasy at an elevated cost? Well, that's an extreme example of the fact that any draft can take an unexpected turn or even serve up surprise selections throughout it.

Because mock drafts allow for experimentation, you might see even more twists and turns than normal. That's why it's important to conduct as many as your schedule allows. A mock draft with—how can we put this politely?—creative drafters could distort the data to the point that it pertains to that draft room only. Multiple mocks, on the other hand, should quiet the small-sample noise and deliver the kind of results you can reasonably expect to see in your actual draft.

Draft from different starting spots.

If your fantasy draft position isn't predetermined, then you better be prepared to pick from any point on the board. You won't find a better preparation than mock drafting out of different selection spots.

While you don't have to draft from all 10 or 12 different starting spots, you should at least try to move into different sections. You can break most rounds down into tiers, like breaking up 12-team leagues into four-pick sections of each draft. The more aware you are of the players who are consistently available in these tiers, the easier it will be to build your roster on the fly.

Gauge the position markets.

Save for waiting on defenses and kickers, there really isn't fantasy advice followed by the majority of the fantasy community. While many favor waiting on quarterbacks, the average draft positions of the elites still land within the first three rounds. While some might suggest loading up on featured running backs early, others will steer you toward a zero-RB strategy in which you leave the position untouched until the fifth or sixth round.

It doesn't matter how you plan to value these positions, you just need to know who's going at the top of drafts and where you can expect to find value picks and sleepers. Tiering players ahead of time can be hugely helpful, since you can then get a realistic view of where each tier starts and stops.

1st-Round Draft Targets

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Top-four pick: Ja'Marr Chase, WR, CIN

While you often need the first overall pick to land Chase, that isn't always the case. What is universally true, though, is that if you have a top-four pick and can invest it in him, that's always a great idea.

There isn't a better combination of elevated floor and sky-high ceiling in fantasy. You can essentially pencil him in for 1,000 receiving yards and 10ish touchdowns while hoping for so much, like the 1,708 and 17 he delivered last season, respectively.

Middle-four pick: Justin Jefferson, WR, MIN

Assuming there are no major surprises within the first four picks, Jefferson is our preference to be next off the board. There are just enough question marks about the running backs in this tier to covet the security of an elite wide receiver instead, and Jefferson just so happens to be among the best in the business.

As long as he's healthy, he's spectacular. During the four seasons in which he's played 16-plus games, he's never had fewer than 1,400 receiving yards and has hauled in an average of 8.8 touchdown catches.

Bottom-four pick: Christian McCaffrey, RB, SF

There's some risk with McCaffrey, which you usually want to avoid early in a draft, but this is the range where his upside is too great to ignore. If he simply stays upright, he has a realistic chance of outscoring every non-quarterback in fantasy.

That should sound hyperbolic, but the stat sheet backs it up. Before his 2024 dud, his 2023 dominance featured 2,023 scrimmage yards and a whopping 21 touchdowns in 16 tilts.