Fantasy Football 2025: Expert Draft Strategies For New Superflex Players
Matthew Freedman provides expert advice and draft strategies for new superflex fantasy football players, focusing on quarterbacks.
Matthew Freedman provides expert advice and draft strategies for new superflex fantasy football players.
There's a lot that's great about fantasy football.
The most obvious is that it's about football, which we all know and love.
Also, it gives us the opportunity to lord our dominance, intelligence, and sports acumen over our families, friends, work colleagues, and random acquaintances. Beautiful.
But maybe what I love most about fantasy football is that it's a game unto itself. It has its own unique sets of rules, structures, and assumptions, all of which combine to make fantasy—while grounded in reality—still different from the game played on the field by professional NFL athletes.
Let me give you an example.
Premium
Go FantasyLife+
Your league is unique. Your advice should be too. Get personalized tools, rankings, and projections tailored to your fantasy football league settings.
The Importance of QBs in Fantasy Football
In reality, the QB might be the most important and impactful player in all of professional sports.
In fantasy, though, or at least in most traditional fantasy leagues, where teams are limited to just one QB in their starting lineups, the position is relatively diminished.
For some people, this discrepancy between positional value in reality and fantasy is a feature, not a bug. It creates the opportunity for some managers to employ different and nonobvious strategies, such as the late-round approach.
But some gamers don't like that a position so significant in the NFL is so inconsequential in fantasy, and I empathize with them: It does feel a little weird that QBs have won all but one MVP since 2007, but in many fantasy leagues can be viably drafted in roughly the same range as kickers and defenses.
For people who feel this way, superflex leagues are perfect.
In superflex, fantasy managers have the option (but not the obligation) to start a QB in the flex—and given the high number of fantasy points QBs can score, this means that most teams choose to avail themselves of this option.
And that makes QBs the most valuable players in the superflex format, and they're drafted as such.
If you look at our Fantasy Life season-long consensus rankings, we have Josh Allen at No. 25 as the No. 1 QB on the board. But in our superflex rankings, he's the top player overall.
In superflex—as in the NFL—QBs reign supreme.
The Three Styles of Superflex QB Drafters
So let's say that you've never played superflex before, but you're intrigued by the format and you want to get into a league.
The biggest question you probably have is this: How should I approach the QB position?
My answer is simple: It depends.
It depends on the league you're in, and I think it probably depends on the type of drafting style(s) you feel comfortable with.
In general, I believe there are three main types of QB drafters in superflex.
- Bullies
- Beggars
- Boxers
Here are my thoughts on these three archetypes.
The Bullies
In superflex, QB bullies want to be as strong as possible at the position.
In Round 1, they want to take a QB.
In Round 2, they probably want to double down at the position.
And if there's a QB available in Round 3 whom they think should've gone in Round 2 … they might just take him—even though they don't need him—in the hopes of using him as leverage to extort a leaguemate in the trade market.
And if that doesn't work out, then at least they have a strong No. 3 QB for the bye weeks or in case one of their starting QBs gets injured.
Superflex bullies view the format through the lens of scarcity: They see QBs as rare resources—sort of the way some fantasy managers view workhorse RBs in traditional leagues, or the way Peter Overzet sees Bitcoin—and they desire to be robustly insulated at the position.
As a result, they heavily invest their premium draft capital into the position, especially if they believe that a QB has fallen too far down the board.
And even if bullies already have three QBs on the roster, they might go so far as to add a No. 4 QB late in the draft if they like the player and think he has the upside to break out and finish the season as a fantasy starter.
To the bully, gluttony is a virtue, not a sin. In the bully's mind, it's impossible for a fantasy manager to stockpile or hoard too many QBs.
Too much is not enough.
The Beggars
The beggar might be thought of as the exact opposite of the bully.
Whereas the bully wants to invest a lot of premium draft capital into QB, the superflex beggar wants to invest none of it into the position.
The bully wants to be indubitably and ostentatiously rich at QB. The beggar, though, is comfortable with and entertains the possibility of being poor at the position.
Why?
Because the beggar might be thought of as the QB version of a Zero RB practitioner: A late-round QB extremist whose zealotry is highlighted all the more by the format's positional leverage.
The beggar fundamentally believes that functional (and perhaps league-winning) QBs can be found later in the draft, after the top-12 QBs have all been selected, and the beggar also believes that enough superflex managers chase QBs early in the draft to create excess value at the non-QB positions.
In other words, the beggar is a speculator. A gambler. A maverick. A wildcatter. A contrarian.
A strategist who zigs when too many managers zag with their premium draft capital.
The bully wants to be rich by buying a bunch of gold bars. The beggar—while accepting the possibility of destitution—wants to win antifragile riches by prospecting for gold in the ground.
If the bully is the manager who drafts two QBs in Rounds 1-2, the beggar is the one who selects four QBs after Round 10 and then hopes that two of them turn into respectable starters.
Bullies attempt to take their fantasy fates into their own hands by attacking the QB position directly. The beggars instead pray to the pigskin gods and then look to get a little lucky at the QB position either late in the draft or on the waiver wire.
The Boxers
The boxer might be thought of as the middleground where bullies and beggars meet.
Whereas both bullies and beggars might be thought of as extremists occupying opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, the boxer is a straight-up opportunist.
The boxer doesn't have a big-picture plan upon entering the ring. Instead, the boxer bobs and weaves and then punches when opponents present an opening.
The boxer is balanced.
If an elite QB slides past ADP, the boxer will strike. If not, the boxer will look to get some hits in later.
Boxers tend to let opponents beat themselves with the mistakes they make.
The boxer doesn't care so much about when mistakes are made. It could be Round 1. It could be Round 10. What the boxer cares about is capitalizing with a precision blow whenever opponents erringly leave themselves open.
Boxers win by regularly getting QBs at a discount.
They're value seekers. Hunters.
Arbitragers.
The bullies and beggars believe in winning their way.
The boxer believes in winning any way necessary.
The Process
Since superflex is essentially all about QBs, it makes sense (at least to me) to think deeply about what kind of QB drafter you want to be or what kind of style suits you best.
If you're the type of drafter who has success in traditional leagues by attacking the QB position relatively early with guys like Allen and Lamar Jackson, then I imagine that kind of bully-ball approach could also serve you well in superflex.
If, though, you're a late-round operator who regularly is able to find breakout QBs in the double-digit rounds (e.g., Patrick Mahomes in 2018, Jayden Daniels in 2024), then the beggarly strategy could be for you.
And if you're the ADP-conscious investor who loves reading Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway disclosures and simply wants to put your leaguemates in a box by assembling a top-to-bottom portfolio of discounted players, then you can probably do that with QBs in superflex leagues—or at least those in which the mania for the position isn't entirely at the zenith.
I recently wrote a guide for first-time dynasty players, and some of my advice there is replicated here: Know yourself and know your league.
The Players
After the NFL Draft, I released an updated version of my Freedman's favorites for 2025 fantasy drafts, and in that piece I highlighted some QBs I generally like.
In this space here, I want to place three of the QBs noted in that piece into the "bully, beggar, boxer" context.
Jayden Daniels (Commanders)
I think of Jayden Daniels as the perfect QB for bullies because he belongs in the top tier of QBs, but he still might be discounted given that he has the potential to finish as the No. 1 overall player at the position.
Tyler Shough (Saints)
It doesn't get any more beggarly than Tyler Shough—but the rookie has sufficient draft capital (Round 2), his athleticism gives him some scrambling upside (4.63-second 40-yard dash), his pass catchers aren't bad (WRs Chris Olave, Rashid Shaheed, Brandin Cooks, TE Juwan Johnson, and RB Alvin Kamara), he should benefit from working with wunderkind offensive HC Kellen Moore, and he's the frontrunner in New Orleans to start Week 1. Shough could provide considerable value given his ADP places him well outside the QB2 ranks.
J.J. McCarthy (Vikings)
I tend to be a blend between beggar and boxer—and the boxer in me wants J.J. McCarthy in all formats. He has HC Kevin O'Connell, WRs Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, TE T.J. Hockenson, and RB Aaron Jones at his disposal. Given his draft pedigree (No. 10 pick), athleticism (6.82-second three-cone drill), college production (72.3% completion rate, 9.8 AY/A in final season), and winning makeup (CFB and HS national champion), McCarthy could provide QB1-ish production at a low-end QB2 pricetag.
Premium
Go FantasyLife+
Your league is unique. Your advice should be too. Get personalized tools, rankings, and projections tailored to your fantasy football league settings.
