Players to Avoid in Every Round of Fantasy Football Drafts

Aug 27, 2023

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Depending on your league calendar, fantasy draft season is either right around the corner or staring you right in the face. That is, unless you’re equally as invested in best ball leagues, which means you are already deep in the thick of things. Through dozens and dozens of drafts to this point in the summer, there are a number of names I tend to avoid at their current average draft position (ADP) and instead prefer to only take them when I see them slipping into a more reasonable range of draft capital cost.

Below, I’m going to break down one option in each round that I would rather leave for my league mates to take. These are players that are price prohibitive because I prefer the options going around them, not necessarily names that I am going to avoid at all costs. Let’s dig into the exercise.

Round 2: RB Jonathan Taylor, Indianapolis Colts

Even if we ignore the woes between Jonathan Taylor and his team’s front office, he still possesses too many red flags for me to spend up from him as anywhere between the RB5-RB8. To begin with, Taylor may still be recovering from his high ankle sprain that limited him to 11 games and subsequently required surgery in January. Possibly because of his ankle and knee issues, his 2022 produced career-lows in yards per attempt (4.5), breakaway percentage (23.1%), and missed-plus-broken tackle percentage (13.0%).

Another piece of that puzzle may have been the Colts' offensive line ranking 22nd in adjusted line yards (4.32) after finishing 2021 ranked seventh (4.60). The issues don’t seem to have been solved over the offseason as the team looks to return all five starters for ‘22. There’s also a glaring lack of receiving upside, with dual-threat rookie Anthony Richardson now manning the helm from Week 1. Though running backs aren’t typically targeted extensively at the collegiate level, Florida running backs had a lowly 8.2% target share with Richardson in 2022, not to mention the amount of goal-line carries the athletic quarterback might siphon from his new NFL teammate.

9/3 Update: Things took a turn for the worse after this publication. Taylor was not traded and hit the PUP list, meaning he's forced to miss the first four games of the season. His ADP has since dropped to 3.12, and I believe he is a stay-away there, too. He should be going closer to Alvin Kamara, making him an avoid until at least the fifth round.