5 Biggest Mistakes I Won’t Make Again: Fantasy Football Recap 2024
Fantasy Football Recap 2024 has taught me plenty of hard lessons—mistakes I won’t be repeating in fantasy football next season. From poor draft decisions to lineup mismanagement, we’ve all had those moments that left us shaking our heads.
This year, I’m reflecting on the top 5 mistakes I made in 2024 so you can avoid making them too.
5 Fantasy Football Mistakes to Avoid: 2024 Recap
Mistakes happen. Nobody in life is perfect and trust me nobody is perfect in fantasy football. I’ve made countless mistakes in my 20+ years of playing and will make many more.
The key is to minimize your mistakes and to not make the same mistake twice. Here are five mistakes that I will never make again – I hope. Let’s break down what went wrong and how to improve for 2025!
1. Never Draft a rookie WR within the first two rounds
Once upon a time, it used to take a rookie receiver a minimum of three years to get acclimated to the pro league and eventually produce elite numbers. Clearly, that is no longer the case. Wide receivers coming out of college are more prepared than ever to play and produce in the NFL.
In the last few years, we’ve been spoiled with elite rookie production from players such as Ja’Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson, and Puka Nacua.
This year, rookie receivers Brian Thomas Jr. of the Jacksonville Jaguars and New York Giants Malik Nabers finished the fantasy season (Weeks 1-17) as the WR4 and WR7 respectively.
All the receivers mentioned above had a preseason ADP of round 5 or higher during their rookie year. You didn’t need to take a big gamble to draft them. If they didn’t produce, it sucked but it didn’t derail your fantasy season.
Enter Marvin Harrison Jr. who was drafted by the Arizona Cardinals 4th overall in the 2024 NFL Draft. His ADP entering the season was a staggering WR9 and 15th overall.
In order for Harrison Jr. to meet or exceed his ADP, he would have had to produce at near-historic rookie receiver levels. I was advocating all offseason that Harrison Jr. was not worth his ADP or the risk.
Harrison Jr. had a very respectable rookie campaign finishing with 62 receptions, 885 yards, and eight touchdowns. He was the WR32 for the fantasy year which wasn’t even close to his offseason WR9 ranking.
You would have had to have drafted Harrison Jr. either at the end of round one or somewhere in round two. If you did, he hurt you substantially this season and there probably weren’t many championship fantasy teams that had Harrison Jr. on their roster. You can overcome a poor round-five pick or higher, but it is extremely difficult to overcome a miss in round one or two.
Entering the 2025 season, Tetairoa McMillan of the Arizona Wildcats seems to be the early favorite to be selected as the first receiver in the NFL Draft and subsequent fantasy football drafts.
I’ll let someone else overdraft him this upcoming season and to find out if he can be next year’s Brian Thomas Jr.
2. Draft Patrick Mahomes as a high-end QB1
Let me preface this by saying that I love Patrick Hamomes. If you love football, you love the way he plays and how he is a winner.
However, since Week 8 of the 2023 season, Mahomes has had five games of 20+ fantasy points and zero of 30+. In comparison during that same time span, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson have combined for 35 games of 20+ fantasy points and 10 games of 30+ points.
Am I being a bit unfair, comparing Mahomes to Allen and Jackson who are the QB1 and QB2 this year and co-front runners for the league MVP? Not at all, considering Mahomes’ ADP before the 2024 season began was QB2.
He did finish this fantasy season as a QB1 (QB10) but this was far from his ADP of QB2. His average points per game this year was 18.2. That is 7.1 points less compared to 2022 when he finished that season as the QB1 overall.
This season Mahomes had 3.4 air yards per attempt, which is the same as Cooper Rush and less than Gardiner Minshew; compared to 2022 when it was 4.2 air yards per attempt. His yards per attempt has gone down from 6.8 in 2022 to 8.1 this year. In 2022, he had 46 passes of 30+ yards compared to 22 this year. Simply put, Mahomes and the Chiefs don’t like to throw deep anymore and prefer a dink-and-dunk approach to the offense.
Odds are there weren’t too many championship teams with Mahomes as their quarterback.
Big things were expected from Mahomes entering the 2024 season but he failed to live up to expectations. The days of Mahomes being an elite fantasy QB1 seem to be over. Mahomes may be an elite NFL quarterback, but he is no longer an elite fantasy football quarterback.
3. Not drafting elite players who are holding out
This past offseason saw Cincinnati Bengals superstar receiver Ja’Marr Chase hold out for a reworked contract. He was still signed to his rookie contract that will pay him a total of just over 30 million dollars until the end of 2025.
The threat of Chase holding out affected his ADP and auction value. In my home auction league ($200 budget) Chase was drafted for $38. A player of Chase’s caliber would normally be drafted for $50 plus. Clearly, the threat of a hold out affected some managers who avoided Chase and subsequently suppressed his value.
Ultimately, Chase ended his holdout two weeks before the season began. Many fantasy managers who drafted before he ended his holdout enjoyed a nice discount on the eventual WR1 for the 2024 season.
4. Afraid to spend FAAB early on
Nowadays, most fantasy football leagues will incorporate a FAAB (free agent acquisition budget – usually $100) to acquire free agents during the season on the waiver wire.
In years past, my strategy has been to hold on to my FAAB for later on in the season and not to spend a lot of it early on. To let other managers spend their FAAB early on and to save the majority of mine for that one key player who will hopefully emerge as the season goes on and to be that one waiver wonder gem that all your league managers will be jealous of and talk about for years.
For the most part, I’ve been afraid to spend a lot of my FAAB early on. We’ve all been in a league where a manager has spent most of their FAAB in the first few weeks of the season hoping to land that waiver wire gem but ended up acquiring a one-week wonder.
In 2023 Kendrick Bourne scored 21.4 fantasy points during the first week of the season. In the same week, a rookie receiver who was taken in the 5th round out of BYU scored 16.9 fantasy points. His name? Puka Nacua. There was serious debate among the fantasy community over which receiver would be able to continue this production throughout the season and which one was a waiver wire fraud. Bourne was not startable and Nacua was literally a league winner and finished the season as the WR4.
This past season running back Jordan Mason scored 21.7 points in Week 1 without Christian McCaffrey playing and
running back Braelon Allen of the New York Jets scored 18.6 in Week 2. Managers spent a lot of their FAAB on both players. Only Mason panned out and from Weeks 1-7, he was the RB9.
Simply put, if there is a player that is on the waiver wire who performs well early in the season and one that I think is more than a one-week wonder, then I won’t hesitate to spend a lot of my FAAB on said player.
There is no point in hanging on to your FAAB hoping a player will materialize midway or late in the fantasy season.
5. I will not be afraid to draft a rookie tight end with elite prospect status
Full disclosure. During this past off-season, I was advocating to not draft Brock Bowers. I couldn’t argue against Bowers’ skill set that he demonstrated at the University of Georgia. He was and is a freak athlete who is basically a wide receiver at the tight end position.
I simply wasn’t going to go against history. Since 2000, only three rookie tight ends have had more than 800 receiving yards. In the past, it usually took rookie tight ends a few years of experience before they produced offensively.
However, in the past few years, it seems as though college programs are preparing the tight end position better for the pro game than they have done with the wide receiver position. They are more concerned and prepared for the receiving part of the position instead of the blocking part.
For example, Kyle Pitts in 2021 had 110 targets, 68 receptions for 1,026 receiving yards and one touchdown. Sam LaPorta last year had 120 targets, 86 receptions for 889 receiving yards and ten touchdowns.
Entering the 2024 season, Bowers’ ADP was TE11 and 90th overall. Looking back, there was no reason not to take a chance at Bowers considering the tight ends around that ADP were Dallas Goedert and Dalton Schultz.
Bowers had the best rookie season ever for a tight end with 153 targets, 112 receptions for 1,194 yards, and five touchdowns. That was good enough to finish as the TE2 only behind George Kittle.
when necessary. He will be a valuable backup at the next level.
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