Fantasy football: Mock draft recap for 10-team PPR H2H points league (2024)

It’s the dead of summer and we have a ways to go until fantasy football draft season. For now, it’s a good time to do a ton of research as we have plenty of info going into training camps in August. That’s when we can start to refine the players we like and get a better sense of what type of team we’ll be drafting in season-long for 2024-25.

The idea here is for us to simply auto draft a team using Fantasy Pros mock draft simulator wizard. If you’re not familiar with this engine, you can check it out for yourself here. It’s pretty simple. We plug in the settings we want and then go to the simulator. If you want, you can take the time to draft your own team. It gives you a good sense of where players will go at each pick. The issue I have with the engine is I can’t see the entire player pool before making a selection, similar to a mock draft engine on Yahoo or ESPN. Toward the back-end of drafts, you should be looking for sleepers and not necessarily the best pick available according to rankings.

So what we did was randomized which pick we have and it landed on No. 10, which we like considering you get the two picks back-to-back. I added an extra WR slot because most leagues I participate in use either a third wideout slot or multiple FLEX positions. It also makes more sense if you’re employing ZeroRB as a draft strategy. In leagues with fewer WR or FLEX spots, ZeroRB shouldn’t be as prevalent. Anyway, let’s look at the team it pumped out and go over the picks.

Fantasy football mock draft sim: 10-team PPR H2H Points

Wide Receivers with the first two picks

I really like what the engine pumped out in terms of positional selection. We had the 10th overall pick and the B2B picks at the end of the first. With those two picks, we were able to add two top WRs in Jets’ Garrett Wilson and Rams’ Puka Nacua. Both have very high ceilings in terms of finish in PPR formats and both are in very good situations. New York gets QB Aaron Rodgers back from a torn Achilles. It’s unclear if Rodgers will be the same MVP-level QB after the injury. What is very clear is he’ll still be the best QB the Jets have had, well, perhaps in the franchises history.

Nacua is coming off winning Offensive Rookie of the Year, finishing 4th in the NFL in receiving yards and 9th in receptions with 105. Nacua has very clearly supplanted prior top WR Cooper Kupp in the Rams offense going into 2024-25. The 2023 fifth-round pick should be a PPR stud, though I wonder if he’s available at pick Nos. 10 or 11 in most drafts. Nacua should go a bit earlier, but if he’s available at this range, it’s a no-brainer.

QB way too early

Eagles QB Jalen Hurts in the third round was a reach. I’d rather wait on QBs like Anthony Richardson, CJ Stroud, Jordan Love and Joe Burrow in the later-half of the top-10 at QB. Even Kyler Murray, Tua Tagovailoa, Caleb Williams and Justin Herbert are appealing late-round QBs for fantasy this season.

This isn’t to say Hurts won’t be a great fantasy QB. But a lot his value was tied to rushing the ball. He had 15 rushing TDs last season and all of those scores came from within the 5-yard line. Hurts also had fewer designed carries and the Eagles have a new OC in Kellen Moore. Expect the offense to feature more passing while Hurts is preserved on the ground more. If his rushing stats, specifically TDs, regresses, he won’t be as valuable a fantasy QB as he is a real-life QB. We also saw him throw a career-high 15 INTs last season. If that’s the type of QB Hurts is going to be with fewer rushes, that could spell bust in fantasy.

Not so good in the middle rounds

The next three picks to me are all awful. Those being Bucs WR Mike Evans, Vikings RB Aaron Jones and Browns WR Amari Cooper. I have concerns with all three players, especially Cooper. Evans is fine but is another year older and at some point we’re going to see regression. I don’t think Evans will lead the NFL in receiving TDs again. Both Evans and QB Baker Mayfield got paid this offseason. Some WRs who went after Evans include DJ Moore, DeVonta Smith (stack with Hurts), Stefon Diggs and Malik Nabers. Those wideouts feel like they have better upside than Evans.

For Jones, he’s just old and in what should be a pretty bad offense depending on how the QB situation shakes out. Jones is going to hit 30 years this season in December. He only played in 11 games last season for the Packers due to injuries. Jones just isn’t a lead back anymore and is better suited as a 1B option and third-down back. So for Jones to be this team’s RB1 isn’t ideal.

Cooper worries me because the play of QB Deshaun Watson was so awful last season. Between Watson, Joe Flacco, PJ Walker and Dorian Thompson-Robinson, Cooper was able to go for 1,250 receiving yards and five TDs. Almost 400 yads and three TDs of that production were in Weeks 14 and 15. So for most of the season, Cooper was pretty underwhelming. And that was with a revitalized Flacco under center for the most part. If Watson is bad again, I don’t want anything to do with the Browns’ passing game. And again, Rashee Rice, Tank Dell, George Pickens and Tee Higgins are a few WRs who went after Cooper.

Stacking RB the rest of the way

With four serviceable wide receivers in Wilson, Nacua, Evans and Cooper, the sim decided to stack up on potential sleepers are running back, which is a good ZeroRB strategy. In more of the middle rounds, we took RBs D’Andre Swift, Brian Robinson Jr,, Tyjae Spears and Chuba Hubbard. All are decent ZeroRB targets late in drafts. Robinson is behind veteran Austin Ekeler, who appeared to regress big time last season with the Chargers. If that continues, Robinson should see work as a change-of-pace back and we know he’s a decent receiver.

Swift, Spears and Hubbard are all good upside picks. Swift was signed by the Bears in what should be a balanced offense. Chicago’s offense could surprise a lot of folks this season and Swift signed a three-year, $24 million deal in free agency. So there’s no reason the Bears won’t get their money’s worth out of Swift.

Spears is one of the best upside backup RBs for fantasy football. He’s going in the 10-12 rounds range and could end up being the Titans’ RB1 this season. If nothing else, Spears is a good PPR option given he was a top-15 RB in receptions at the position this past season. Even with Tony Pollard as the lead back, Spears will have weeks and he’s an injury away from being a top-20 back overall.

The Panthers used a second-round pick on Texas RB Jonathan Brooks, who should split work with Hubbard in the backfield. There’s also Miles Sanders but from what we saw last season, he’s pretty much washed. Brooks is going a few rounds ahead of Hubbard but that shouldn’t be the case, so there’s value there. Carolina spent a lot of money shoring up the interior with guards Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis.

Tight end never really matters

I find myself almost always waiting to draft a tight end in season-long redraft formats. In this sim, we get Evan Engram and George Kittle. I would have preferred to wait on players like Jake Ferguson and David Njoku after Kittle in the later rounds. Engram somehow finished top-5 in receptions last season. So in PPR, he was one of the top tight ends. I don’t see that happening again. The Jags added WR Brian Thomas in the draft and signed WR Gabriel Davis. At some point QB Trevor Lawrence will have to learn to throw the ball down field. Engram’s previous career high in receptions was 73, so expect regression back to something closer to that number.

For Kittle, he’s a good late-round TE target. If he can stay healthy, we know he’ll get the ball in a very good 49ers offense. Kittle could lose some targets to Logan Thomas and rookie WR Ricky Pearsall. But on this team, Kittle is the TE2 anyway and wouldn’t be needed to start outside of Engram’s bye week or if an injury or regression pops up.

Late-round fliers

Chandler is a handcuff for Jones, which makes a lot of sense. It would have been nice to add RB Khalil Herbert as a handcuff to Swift. If your league has more bench spots (which is likely does), that would be the way to go. Packers WR Romeo Doubs is a great value pick for me. He led Green Bay in targets last season. Doubs had eight TDs and may be reliant on getting into the end zone a bit. But if Love takes another step forward, Doubs should start and is a good PPR possession receiver. If you’re expecting me to go over the Steelers D/ST and Brandon Aubrey picks, well, sorry (shrugs).

Final Thoughts

This is a team you can work with but it lacks upside overall, especially in a 10-team format. If Wilson, Nacua and Hurts were to hit ceilings and nothing else goes wrong, the team could succeed. It also could be a complete disaster if Hurts regresses on the ground and Nacua has a sophom*ore slump. More upside would have been nice and the RB depth is lacking. Same deal. If anything were to happen at RB, this team could be a mess and in need of streamers and great waiver-wire pickups early in the season.