Players to Avoid in Every Round of Your 2024 Fantasy Football Draft

Aug 25, 2024

Players to Avoid in Every Round of Your Fantasy Football Draft

Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports

There is no worse feeling in fantasy football than realizing your highly-touted early-round draft pick is a bust. The most annoying part is that you will find a way to convince yourself that they will somehow succeed even when all signs point otherwise. I experienced this myself with Tony Pollard last year. After taking him in the early second round with expectations that he could potentially be the overall RB1, Pollard failed to live up to his draft price in a massive way. Yet, I still deluded myself into putting him into my starting lineup week after week, as I always thought “this week will be when he finally puts it all together”. In this article, I will be going over some of the players to avoid drafting this year as they have the makings of potential dark clouds that cover your otherwise bright fantasy season. I’ll be focusing on players in the first 10 rounds of drafts according to our multi-site ADP tool, as any player going in the double-digit rounds is a lottery ticket of sorts.

Round 1: RB Jonathan Taylor, Colts

It’s difficult to poke holes with anyone going in the first round, but Taylor has the weakest armor of the lot. For one, he has regressed mightily from an efficiency standpoint in the last two seasons. After finishing top-3 in yards after contact per attempt and breakaway run percentage in 2021, Taylor has ranked outside the top 20 in both categories in each of the past two years. Although you could blame some of that on injuries, Taylor has a lot of miles on his legs dating back to his college career at Wisconsin and it would not surprise me if he continues to see a dip in efficient production. Additionally, I’m concerned that Taylor will lose out on high-value touches with Anthony Richardson back under center for the Colts.

Richardson is one of the best rushing quarterbacks in the league, and will certainly take away some goalline opportunities from Taylor. Additionally, mobile quarterbacks tend to check down far less than traditional pocket passers, which hurts Taylor’s floor as well. All in all, while Taylor could still produce for fantasy off sheer volume, I think he’ll have a hard time living up to his ADP of RB4.