Fantasy Football 2024 most wanted: Five players I’m drafting everywhere because they’re absolute steals at ADP

The 2024 NFL season is still a few months away, but planning for your Fantasy Football teams starts now. At Fantasy Football Today, we’ve already done plenty of drafts over the past few months, with even more mock drafts taking place since the conclusion of the 2024 NFL Draft. We hit all different formats from Superflex to half PPR, and through it all I saw a lot of different trends in ADP (average draft position). So when I was invited to join the FFT last Monday, I knew it was time to discuss my “most wanted” list for the 2024 season. These are the five players I’m selecting across the board based on your current ADP:

Travis Kelce, TE, Chiefs

Drafting Kelce was like stealing across formats for several seasons leading up to the 2023 Fantasy drafts. In 2021 and 2022, you could get Kelce at times late in Round 2 or even Round 3 and he would give you a weekly positional advantage at TE. Finally, Fantasy managers recovered and Kelce came off the board in the middle to late first round of drafts last summer. Of course, he responded by returning to his least productive season in the last four years, but let’s unpack that a little. First, Kelce suffered an injury and played fewer snaps. After finishing with the fourth-most snaps played in 2022, he finished with just the 14th-most snaps in 2023 – 150 fewer snaps. Despite this, he finished with the second-most Fantasy points per game at tight end, behind Sam LaPorta. He’s also scored just five touchdowns, averaging 10.7 touchdowns per season over the last three. Nothing is more due to regression in Fantasy Football than touchdowns scored. Despite playing more than 200 fewer snaps than LaPorta, Kelce led the NFL in first-down receptions. He remains Patrick Mahomes’ preferred target on third downs and in the red zone, where his touchdowns will likely increase. I took Kelce with the final third-round pick in our FFT draft pick, which you can read about in this summer’s FFT Magazine. This felt like stealing.

Garrett Wilson, WR, Jets

Wilson is the last of the wide receivers I believe can return value in the first round, and therefore he is one of my priority picks in the 1/2 round. He benefits from playing in a Nathaniel Hackett offensive system that derives from the Mike McCarthy tree and thus relies on finding one-on-one matchups on any given snap. Wilson will see more of these favorable matchups in 2024 with a fully healthy Breece Hall and the addition of Mike Williams. We’ve seen Aaron Rodgers lean heavily on his top target in this system (Davante Adams) in the past. Wilson has accumulated the fourth-most targets of any wide receiver in 2023 and barely leaves the field (seventh-most snaps among all receivers). He has the best chance of breaking into the elite WR1 range of any player who can sometimes be present in the second round of their fantasy drafts.

Brock Purdy, QB, 49ers

All Purdy has done is produce in 2023, and yet he finds himself falling out of Fantasy drafts, sometimes outside the top 100 picks, as a borderline QB1. I can’t understand why. The 49ers only got better around him this offseason by adding a first-round wide receiver (Ricky Pearsall) to the mix. Purdy finished with the seventh-most fantasy points per game in 2023 and led the NFL with 40.5% of plays going for first downs or touchdowns. This wasn’t just the best in the NFL – it was more than four percentage points higher than the next best quarterbacks, and after that, the next 10 quarterbacks were separated by less than a percentage point.

Zack Moss, RB, Bengals

Moss surprised many in 2023 as one of the best waiver wire additions in Fantasy Football, but those who followed his ability to create yards after contact and force missed tackles saw it coming. He thrived in the Colts’ scheme and now has the opportunity to work a lot more with the Bengals. Joe Mixed played the fifth-highest snap percentage of all running backs in 2023. While second-year running back Chase Brown is talented, he has only surpassed 170 carries once in his college career. Moss is likely to lead this backfield and could have a larger workload than anticipated. Despite all this, he is falling off the board in rounds 9-10.

Jayden Daniels, QB, Commanders

This one is very simple for me. Daniels won the Heisman Trophy in 2023 by putting up some insane numbers. He was responsible for 50 combined touchdowns (passing and rushing), 90 plays of 20+ yards combined, and a 22-to-0 touchdown-to-interception ratio on all deep pass attempts (20+ yards) with a completion rate 67% in these launches. He’s the most exciting dual-threat QB to enter the fantasy football realm since Lamar Jackson, has more upside as a rusher than Anthony Richardson and yet is falling off the board outside of the top 100 overall picks. This is an easy value for me and for a player who I think is being drafted several rounds after where he should receive his upside.