Fantasy Football Pick 12 Strategy: How to Draft From the 12th Spot in 2024

Landed the 12th overall pick in your 2024 fantasy football draft? It's not the disaster some people pretend it is. Here's how to approach your draft strategy from the 12 spot.

Jan 14, 2024; Detroit, Michigan, USA; Detroit Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs (26) celebrates after a touchdown during the first half of a 2024 NFC wild card game against the Los Angeles Rams at Ford Field. Mandatory Credit: David Reginek-USA TODAY Sports / David Reginek-USA TODAY Sports

Receiving the 12th pick in fantasy football drafts is typically met with groans. Being the last one in your league to make a selection in Round 1 can feel like it sets your team way back from the start. And honestly, picking at the top of Round 2 probably doesn't quite outweigh the disadvantage you get in the first round.

But let's also not overreact with doom and gloom here. There are so many variables in a fantasy football season that even if this draft position does put you at some slight disadvantage, you're still the one who is ultimately in control of your destiny.

The 12th pick also brings unique opportunities, and making back-to-back selections has benefits people tend to overlook when they lament the negatives of the situation.

To help you with the strategy of picking from the No. 12 spot in your 2024 fantasy football draft, let's walk through each phase of the draft to see how things can play out.

Click to jump ahead to a round:

1. Round 1/2: A Reactive Start
2. Round 3/4: Stay Flexible (Even if it Scares You)
3. Round 5/6: Take Control of Your Own Fate
4. Round 7/8: Positional Considerations
5. Later Rounds: Keeping the Same Principles in Mind

Round 1/2: A Reactive Start

One of the biggest potential benefits of picking 12th is when the teams picking ahead of you go off-script. Sometimes you'll find a mid-first-round talent falling into your lap at 12, or you find yourself with the option to grab two players with first-round value with those first two picks.

Looking at average draft position (ADP) data from FantasyPros, that situation can go a couple of different ways.

Starting things off, the chances of someone typically being drafted in the top eight falling to you are almost zero, so don't spend much time getting your hopes up. But if, for some outlandish reason, one of the top RBs (McCaffrey, Hall, Robinson) or WRs (Lamb, Hill, Jefferson, Chase, St. Brown) fall to you, you make that pick. It doesn't matter if you're lower than most people on one of them — there's a reason they're the clear-cut top eight players off the board this year.

But now some more realistic scenarios. The next tier of players in that range looks something like: Saquon Barkley, AJ Brown, Jonathan Taylor, Jahmyr Gibbs, Garrett Wilson. Puka Nacua's injury bumps him down a bit at WR and Kyren Williams is at the top of the next tier of running backs.

If you're number-savvy, you may have noticed something already, but let me spell it out: I mentioned a top tier of eight players, and the secondary tier has five names in it. That adds up to 13 players, which means you are guaranteed to have two of them available for your first two picks.

This is why I say we're being reactive here. You don't want to come into a draft in the 12-slot with a predetermined idea of what positions you're going after early. If you love running backs but your choices are AJ Brown, Garrett Wilson and Kyren Williams, you should probably go with the two WRs anyway. If you thought you might go Zero RB but it's Taylor and Gibbs on the board, you'll probably want to hold your nose with that RB-RB start.

You'll occasionally get some extra wiggle room here if someone ahead of you still loves Nacua or reached on Kyren Williams (or even Marvin Harrison Jr. if they're feeling really spicy), but in most drafts you will have exactly two of those top 13 players available to you.

Round 3/4: Stay Flexible (Even if it Scares You)

Watching 22 players go off the board between your picks is going to feel horrible — and the wait from Round 2 to Round 3 is probably the most painful of the draft when you started in the No. 12 spot. But be patient, and don't make any rash decisions until you're on the clock.

If the picks ahead of you dictated that you start your draft with two WRs or two RBs, it can be really easy to feel like you must address other positions here. But unless your league has no flex spots or other starting lineup quirks, don't get ahead of yourself. One of the biggest advantages to picking at the end of a round is scooping up any value picks who shouldn't be falling, and you don't want to take away your advantage by worrying too much about roster balance this early.

If you started with Saquon Barkley and Jonathan Taylor but Josh Jacobs is still on the board here? Pounce on the opportunity and worry about roster balance later.

Picks 36 and 37 have a bit of a similar dropoff to the tier gap that we saw at the Round 1-2 turns. Notice on the ADP table that 36 players have an ADP of 33.6 or better, and then there's a drop to 37.4. You can use that tier break to guide your picks. But there's certainly more wiggle room than we saw with our last picks.

Cooper Kupp, for example, is a reasonable pick at the top of the third round. And you don't need to go quarterback early. If Jalen Hurts has fallen to you at the end of Round 2, passing on him for a lower-ADP RB or WR (even someone outside the tier like Kupp) is totally fine.

Your third and fourth picks offer a ton of flexibility — take advantage of this. Draft your top two players almost regardless of position (the one exception being that you don't want to start with four straight running backs unless your league lets you start all four).

Round 5/6: Take Control of Your Own Fate

Let me take this opportunity to address one of drafters' biggest concerns when picking "at the turn" (the final pick of one round and the first of the next round): that a run will happen on a position you need during your 22-pick wait, and you'll miss out.

To start with, you're not going to win your league drafting with fear. Reaching on a tight end you don't necessarily like just because you might get stuck with a different tight end you don't like later is not going to give you a roster you love. Besides, one of the only ways to get truly burned by a run is to reach on a player.

If you ignore a run, you're almost guaranteed to get value at the position later in the draft. Tons of quarterbacks just went off the board? Well, that means there are far fewer quarterbacks likely to go between your next picks, increasing your chances of scooping up some value later in the draft. A run also means people are ignoring other positions — leaving extra value falling into your lap at other positions.

So what I'm saying is, if you don't have a tight end or quarterback at the Round 5/6 turn, don't feel like you suddenly need to fill those spots. Reaching on Jordan Love and David Njoku here is a worse result than missing out on a run at either position would be anyway.

We started the draft with a reactionary strategy, and we stayed flexible with our next two picks. Now we take the bull by the horns. Following ADP in any strict sense becomes less necessary the deeper we get into drafts, and these early-mid rounds tend to be filled with potential league winners every season. Because we're talking general draft strategy in this series I'll leave the "which ones are league winners" conversation for another article (try Michael Fabian's breakout running backs, for example), but this is your time to plant your flag.

Draft yourself your league winners. Be bold with these picks.

Round 7/8: Positional Considerations

By Round 7, the positional breakdown of your roster starts to matter a little bit more.

I take a more extreme approach than many, but I think it's fine for your first six picks to be running backs and wide receivers. That means one of them will have to start the season on your bench (assuming a typical 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 Flex starting lineup), but that's fine. Injuries and busts happen at such a high rate that the chances of your top five picks all remaining starters for you is somewhat low. And if they do you're in such a good spot that having a "wasted" sixth-round pick doesn't mean too much.

But even I start to focus on holes in my lineup by Rounds 7 and 8.

Those rounds become especially interesting when you're picking late in the round. You get to choose whether you're punting the quarterback and tight end positions or not.

At QB, the gap between Kyler Murray and Jordan Love (ADP 73.8 and 74.0) vs. Brock Purdy (93.4) is huge. If none of the top 10 quarterbacks have fallen to you, you now face a tough choice. Do you reach a bit to grab your starter? I say be bold — not many will be drafted until your next two picks (presumably only one other team is missing a starter), so the options available to you next round will be almost the same.

At tight end, there are a couple more options in this range. David Njoku (81.6) and Jake Ferguson (86.6) are pretty comparable options — they're starters, but they're not guys you feel great about being every-week staples in your lineup. If you're taking one now, you probably need to take a second later in the draft anyway. So it's totally reasonable to grab one of them right now. However, if you don't view someone like Dallas Goedert (TE12 at 108.2) or even Dalton Schultz (TE14 at 129.0) as a big step down from Njoku/Ferguson (I don't), then punting tight end can be viable too.

I wouldn't necessarily punt both positions in the same draft, however, because both do force you to pay some extra attention to the waiver wire if your picks don't pan out and having to try streaming both positions can be tricky.

Later Rounds: Keeping the Same Principles in Mind

The later rounds of fantasy football drafts are more about grabbing the players you like when they're available. As I mentioned earlier, the deeper into a draft we go the less ADP matters. Taking Rashid Shaheed at pick 160 instead of his ADP of 175.2 is not a reach. But can you imagine drafting someone 15 picks early with your first-round pick?

So you probably don't need as much guidance about specific rounds as the draft rolls on, but you will want to keep some of those core principles around drafting at the turn in mind: don't overreact to positional runs, do be on the lookout for value players falling into your lap.

Of course, this is also where you do have to finally round out your roster, making sure you're set at quarterback and tight end, and reacting to how your early rounds went with how you construct your bench. If three of your first four picks were wide receivers, you'll probably want some extra late-round lottery tickets at running back.

And then, to cap off your draft, select your defense and kicker last. It's not worth missing out on one of those potential late-round steals to get a slightly better defense that you probably end up having to drop as soon as they have a bad matchup anyway.

And if you need any more resources to prepare for your draft, we have you covered with the 2024 SI fantasy football draft kit.