Perfect Fantasy Football Draft: 4th in a 12-Team Yahoo Half-PPR League

Aug 18, 2022

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Drafting from the four-spot in 2022 Yahoo fantasy football leagues gives you an opportunity to take the best player available from the elite tier of options in the first round without having to be stuck on the turn throughout the draft. Whether you opt to take a running back who could finish first overall in scoring or a wide receiver who could lead the league in fantasy production, you’re in a position to set a great foundation for your team.

While you’ll remain in a quadrant of the draft with the other managers who selected those elite options, you’ll have first dibs in the back-end of the second round to add tight end Mark Andrews or double down on whichever position you began the draft with.

In this article, I will walk through a perfect draft with the fourth pick in a 12-team Yahoo half-PPR league. Each pick was optimized using projections and value-based rankings from the 4for4 Draft Hero tool. For those new to Draft Hero, be sure to explore this walkthrough of the app.

Draft Hero Settings

Roster Settings: 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 1 Flex (WR/RB/TE), 1 Kicker, 1 DEF, 6 bench spots
No restrictions on when to draft position players: Even though it’s often recommended to wait on drafting some positions, I’ll remove restrictions in case any surprise values present themselves. In the Draft Plan tab, K and DEF are not selected until the last two rounds.
No limit on positions: Although limiting less important positions to just one makes the draft a lot more challenging, allowing other teams to draft backup “onesies” more closely mirrors a typically home league draft.
Targets: Mike Williams, Rhamondre Stevenson, Chase Edmonds, Cole Kmet. Across 40+ drafts so far this year, these are my most rostered players. If I am able to land them, I will elaborate on each player.

Jump to Pick: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | Draft Recap

Round 1, Pick 4 (4) - WR Justin Jefferson, Vikings

As I mentioned in the introduction, I believe there is a clear-cut top four options in drafts at the moment, and the half-PPR scoring doesn’t affect that. With Jonathan Taylor, Cooper Kupp, and Christian McCaffrey off the board, I am happy to get stuck with Justin Jefferson, who is in as good of a position to lead the league in fantasy points as anybody else in the NFL.

Taking a wide receiver to kick things off will put us behind the eight ball with the running back position since a vast majority of RB1s will be selected by our next pick, but Jefferson offers our team enough upside to counterbalance that.

Suggested alternatives: Derrick Henry, Austin Ekeler, Najee Harris

My top alternative: Derrick Henry