Dynasty Fantasy Football Rookie Draft Guide: Strategy and Tips (2025)

John breaks down his dynasty fantasy football rookie draft guide for 2025. His best strategies and tips for 2025 NFL dynasty fantasy football rookie drafts.

A lot of rookie draft guides look pretty similar. Draft positions of need, trade up or down based on your assets, and most importantly, just let consensus rankings fully drive your draft selections. Nothing like every rookie draft looking pretty much the same, and groupthink dictating that any pick that's even five or more spots above a player's ADP is entirely insane. But every season, a redo of the rookie drafts looks completely insane compared to the original. It's thus strange that consensus is such a powerful dictator of how people draft.

Rather than flag planting on players, which can be a good idea to overcome the difficulty of breaking from the prevailing opinions, many fantasy managers are too nervous about "reaching." But reaching is a good idea if you flag-plant on the right players, and sometimes, it's not hard to identify when someone is underrated. Take Brian Thomas Jr., for example. He had to play on a college team with Malik Nabers. That's tough competition. Yet he was an insanely elite athlete and still put up huge numbers at LSU.

So, he was naturally very underrated. Draft strategies that don't directly stem from "pick the right players" aren't nearly as helpful to your team. Hitting in multiple rounds is much, much more important. While there are team-specific ways you can build your rosters based on their strengths and weaknesses, those go out the window when you consider that you can trade good players you have for similar players at other positions that you're more in need of. So, let's break down my two biggest strategies and tips for your rookie drafts this season.

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Strategy/Tip 1: Stop Being Afraid Of "Reaching"

I put "reaching" in quotes because it's just so bad for your teams to get yourself entrenched in thinking that going down a few picks is a reach in rookie drafts. For starters, let's look at consensus rankings ahead of the 2024 NFL season in rookie drafts.

2024 dynasty rookie rankings. Interesting in hindsight. pic.twitter.com/2qm23YjHIF

— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) March 19, 2025

I'm usually not a fan of having the 1.01 and often the 1.02, depending on who is at the top. This season, the consensus is that Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty and Arizona wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan will be the first and second players off the board in non-superflex leagues. Because these two players have occupied the top-2 spots thus far, most leagues will feature these two players off the board first and in their order.

FantasyPros top 23 dynasty non-SF rookies (for reference) pic.twitter.com/wrS6WssZtu

— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) March 19, 2025

So let's just compare these two. In 2024, the best pick for the 1.01 would have been Thomas. Instead, nearly everyone chose Arizona Cardinals WR Marvin Harrison Jr. It was insane to think Thomas was better than Harrison. Midway through the season, it was apparent that wasn't true. But let's dive into Harrison just a bit more.

He was seen as a generational WR prospect, following in the footsteps of his Hall of Famer father, one of the best receivers to play the game. There were supposedly hardly any weaknesses in his game, and he was such a complete and polished wideout that many predicted he'd immediately be one of the best wide receivers in the league. The 1.01 was insanely valuable, yet many fantasy managers hung on to it for dear life to ordain their new golden child.

"I've seen a lot of drops, a lot of leaking out of his routes, no suddenness to his in and out of cuts... I think he's got a long way to go... quite honestly I've just been disappointed."@Coach_JayGruden weighs in on Marvin Harrison Jr.'s rookie season 👀 pic.twitter.com/suE8QZAlOX

— Underdog (@UnderdogFantasy) December 26, 2024

He finished as the WR30 overall and just the WR42 in points per game. What happened? Well, the consensus was just wrong. Someone of his purported caliber just shouldn't have struggled that much. He wasn't a great contested catch specialist, had very lackluster speed, rarely won on his vertical-breaking routes, and took a backseat to tight end Trey McBride, who was quarterback Kyler Murray's favorite target. While Murray's play wasn't stellar, Harrison was easily outproduced by other rookie receivers playing with even worse quarterbacks.

Harrison's refusal to test at the combine, in hindsight, should have been a big red flag. But the hearts of many fantasy managers had been set on him being great, so people were blindsided. Picking Thomas with the first pick would have been regarded as completely insane. Yet after just one season, fantasy managers who chose Harrison likely wished they had chosen Thomas, or Nabers, or Ladd McConkey, or Jayden Daniels.

The argument "well, Harrison just needs time to develop" is invalid, because anyone with Harrison would gladly offer him and more (players or picks) for Thomas, Nabers, McConkey, and even Daniels in some cases. So "reaching" is not insane.

Strategy/Tip 2: Try To Learn From Previous Seasons' Misevaluations

Harrison is just one example in a long list of players who weren't evaluated well by consensus analysis. However, following the rankings will only lead you to repeatedly walk yourself into the same trap. It's still a widely held opinion that you're crazy for thinking players that are ranked highly aren't nearly as good as they're made out to be, and those that are ranked lower are bad to reach for.

Tetairoa McMillan screen pass against unblocked defenders vs NAU and Tre Harris screen pass against unblocked defenders vs LSU. Both hung out to dry against 2 defenders. One of many clips that show me Harris is just a better WR. pic.twitter.com/eOOoXAR3R7

— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) March 19, 2025

Thus, it is very important to challenge consensus wherever you can to fully evaluate its accuracy. What if it's wrong this year? Well, it's wrong every year, so the question shouldn't be "what if"; it should be "why." After hundreds of hours of pouring over the tape, I've dug into "why" McMillan is just not as good as people think he is.

Part of the analysis was doing what I did above- directly comparing plays that were as similar as possible, even those that were a higher degree of difficulty for the player I was comparing him to, and seeing the results. They often weren't close. Ole Miss wide receiver Tre Harris, who I have ranked comfortably above McMillan, shows in the above clip that he blows T-Mac out of the water in a variety of skills.

Elusiveness after the catch, acceleration, tackle-breaking, vision and awareness, and anticipation. Harris anticipates where his defenders are, even quickly adjusting to his blocker completely whiffing, then eludes two players, easily slips an arm-tackle attempt, and scores a touchdown. This was all against MUCH stiffer competition.

Tetairoa McMillan doesn't pace his routes very well. Is this supposed to be trickery? He has one speed when he runs his routes. Either this DB is a star (he's not) or this route just isn't good. Being 6'4" doesn't make this better. pic.twitter.com/T0CEGBPaoG

— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) March 19, 2025

We should also consider that some players have been touted as great route-runners when they're actually just terrible. One example was New England Patriots wide receiver Ja'Lynn Polk. While his stone hands coated with Vaseline might be a distraction from this, his routes are not sudden or paced well, and he struggles to separate from coverage.

The same is true for McMillan. When asked to run vertical-breaking routes that challenged defenders downfield, he wasn't an excellent separator. He doesn't pace his routes well, struggles to vary his speed, and doesn't have the speed to win deep. It's hard not to think he's a worse prospect than Harrison in every way.

Not sure what his deal is here. Starts giving up on his route before the play is over. QB is running for his life and TMac is already jogging. Terrible effort on a lackadaisical route. McMillan is the anti Malik Nabers. pic.twitter.com/DSSHVM2IWx

— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) March 19, 2025

A real killer of his value for me, as well, is the lack of effort or speed that shows up on tape sometimes. The above play has to be at least one of these things. If he's playing with maximum effort here, he doesn't have the speed to win consistently in the NFL. If he's showing poor effort, that's a major red flag, and nothing, not even poor quarterback play, excuses it.

While my point was broad, that you should try to learn from previous evaluation mistakes, the specific case of McMillan really highlights it. He has plenty of highlight plays, but the devil is often in the details because so did every other major bust in fantasy football history.

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