I believe that the best redraft leagues involve keepers. Having these mini-advantages brings the best parts of each league (dynasty and redraft) together to form one beautiful version of fantasy football. It allows you to get attached to certain players and brings that sense of roster continuity that you love with dynasty. And of course, you aren’t tied to those players if they are utterly trash. Like I said, best of both worlds!
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The downside to keeper leagues is the additional need for deeper strategy. Drafts do become a bit trickier, the waiver wire becomes far more important, and each trade has an extra layer of consideration. I have made many mistakes in my main keeper league, and my goal today is to share some of the insights I’ve gained throughout the years. Hopefully, these four keeper league tips will help you navigate through your season and find yourself in the championship matchup.
4 Keeper League Tips to Help Start Your Season Right
1. When Deciding Between Keepers, it’s all About the ADP Delta
The reason I love keepers in drafts is the drastic discount you get on key fantasy players. It’s important to note that every league is different, and some leagues have different rules about where you can keep players. However, in most leagues, you can keep a player in the same position (or around the same position) where you drafted them the previous year. This means guys like Brock Bowers, Brian Thomas Jr., and Bucky Irving are all going to be kept in the middle to late rounds. As you could imagine, this is a massive advantage when compared to their typical ADP.
It’s this gap between the keeper spot and the player’s redraft ADP, or what I call the ADP Delta, that should dictate who you should keep for the following season.
Usually, deciding on your keepers is relatively easy. But there will be times when you are stuck between two players who are both seemingly good options. Here is where you want to take a look at two factors: player skill and ADP Delta.
Of course, we want to keep good players, but you also want to consider the value of keeping Josh Allen at ADP vs. keeping someone like Chase Brown eight rounds after ADP. If you opt to keep the later round player, you now have a chance to get both Josh Allen and Chase Brown in this example, whereas keeping Allen means you aren’t maximizing your advantage.
2. Don’t Let Your Keeper Dictate Your Draft Strategy
This is a note primarily for myself because, frankly, I always forget.
While your draft does begin with a player already on your roster, you shouldn’t let that player warp your approach to the draft. If you start your draft keeping JSN in the 9th round and Ladd McConkey in the 10th, don’t feel like you need to open the draft with running back/running back. I say this because while you are setting yourself up by locking in supposed great players at a discount, fantasy football is chaotic. Even keeper leagues aren’t safe from the madness that comes from injuries, coaching changes, and even the unforeseen step backwards in skill. Assuming that your keepers are infallible is one way to inadvertently hurt your team.
It’s also important to note that there’s no reason to reach for players to “fill out your team”. There have been times when I took a player far above ADP because I felt like I needed to make sure I filled out roster spots since I had covered the others with a keeper. Try not to fall into this trap and stay flexible in your drafts.
3. Every Player’s ADP is Pushed Up in Keeper Drafts
My most recent discovery, something I should have noticed years ago, is that keeper league drafts do not have the same ADP as regular drafts.
Regardless of league size and how many keepers are allowed, players are removed from the pool before the draft starts. This means that some players have to be taken earlier, because a round of draft picks has effectively been taken already. For example, if you sit in a 12-team league, where each team can have two keepers, and if everyone keeps two players, that means there are 24 players already drafted. That is two rounds of the draft already completed. If you have been grinding mock drafts in the offseason and really like a player in the 5th round, you will need to mentally prepare yourself for taking that player in the 3rd round.
Admittedly, this fact did catch me off guard last year when I saw someone take Alvin Kamara in the 3rd round, when in mocks I had routinely seen him go in the 5th (like my example above!). It wasn’t until I looked at the board again that I realized I hadn’t accounted for the fact that a bunch of players who would be at that spot were already drafted, pushing Kamara up a ton. Don’t let this surprise you in your drafts this season, as it will likely throw you off your game if it does.
4. Be Careful Keeping “Onesie” Positions
The tight end and quarterback positions are tough to juggle in a keeper league. Quarterbacks who are not in the top echelon of players are usually pretty easy to replace every week. Keeping someone like Geno Smith doesn’t make sense when you can draft Jared Goff or Matthew Stafford all around the same area. The same thought process can be applied to tight ends (and to a much lesser extent, kickers and defenses). There’s no need to waste your keeper slot by hanging onto someone you can grab later in the draft.
There is also a risk in keeping one of those second-tier players because you simply don’t know how the draft will go when the day arrives. If you keep Sam LaPorta, and suddenly Trey McBride or George Kittle fall on your lap below ADP, what would you do? It’s a much less common scenario, but something to keep in mind when you keep a position that doesn’t necessarily need backups on your roster.
Bonus Tip: Grab Lottery Tickets off the Waiver Wire at the End of the Year
At the end of your fantasy season, whether your team is set to join the playoffs or not, you should be taking a look at the waiver wire to see if any players can potentially ascend in the next year. It’s one of the ways to get an absolute steal at a potential breakout, because those waiver wire adds are typically kept in the later double-digit rounds. This strategy does require some bravery, as you never know if those late breakouts can carry over into the next year. Sometimes you hit, and you can get Chase Brown after his stellar end of 2023 before his breakout in 2024. Other times, you get tricked into keeping Trey Lance. It’s all a gamble, but in this game, we need to take chances to give us the best odds to win. After all, we can always drop a bad keeper.
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