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New Fantasy Football 2026 Mock Draft Strategy, Dynasty and Keeper Cheat Sheet

Zach Buckley

Aug 20, 2026

Week 2 of the 2026 NFL preseason kicks off with a two-game slate Thursday night.

The fantasy football world is researching the cram-session portion of its pre-draft process.

Mock drafts are firing on all cylinders, rankings are being continually fine-tuned and keeper debates are nearing their decision point. It's a lot, so we're to help share that burden by identifying a couple of key mock draft strategies and finishing with our cheat sheet-style dynasty rankings.

Strategy: Mock as often as you can

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With the sports world growing increasingly focused on efficiency, there has been a general devaluing of volume. That absolutely does not apply, though, to mock drafts.

A single mock can swing wildly toward the individual whims of the specific mock managers involved. The data, then, tells you nothing beyond the particular preferences of those people—which might be not at all applicable to your actual draft room.

So, the aim should be running multiple mocks. And honestly, it's very much a the-more-the-merrier kind of deal. The more mocks you enter, the more data you're able to cobble together and hopefully use to identify patterns and form reasonable takeaways. If you notice a particular player going significantly higher or lower than their average draft position, then that's probably useful information to apply to your draft board.

Plus, this gives you more freedom to experiment with different draft approaches. You might hammer the running position early in one and then avoid it entirely for the first several rounds in another. Even if you have a preference for a strategy going into the mock, you just might come out of it with real interest in changing how you do things.

Strategy: Try different approaches with quarterbacks

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Given the wealth of advice available to fantasy managers in this digital world, it's hard to find any kind of consensus on things you should or shouldn't do during your draft. If there is a universal piece of expert advice, though, it's that you shouldn't overpay for a quarterback.

The thinking goes that the production gap between the elites at the position and the good options isn't nearly as wide as what you'd find at wide receiver or running back. So, if you were to spend a second- or third-round pick on someone like Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson, the opportunity cost would be too great to justify that investment.

That's definitely a compelling argument to be made. It's also not necessarily something you need to follow.

Maybe waiting on a quarterback has worked for you in the past. Perhaps it will treat you well again this season. But if you're always doing it—and everyone else seems to be doing it—then you don't really have a feel for how your team might look if you didn't do it. That's one of the main reasons mock drafts exist. They allow you a brief escape to do something different from your norm, and maybe you'll find that you like a roster with an elite quarterback a lot more than you think.