There are endless ways to approach your fantasy football drafts. This is why practicing and preparing EARLY is so important. ADPs change. Consensus changes. It’s of the utmost importance to prepare. We’re focusing on picks 4-6 in this piece.

Pick 4 is riding solo here because the entire trajectory of round 1 is altered based on who goes here.

As indicated in the above piece (go check it out!), there's a strong case for Puka Nacua, Christian McCaffrey, Ja'Marr Chase, or Jaxon Smith-Njigba at pick three. Whoever goes third eliminates one option from the pick four conversation, but the calculus barely changes. You cannot go wrong with any of the remaining three.

For the sake of this article, let’s say that Nacua goes 3rd overall (as I believe he should). CMC, JSN, and Chase would be the only players worth considering.

If you select CMC, your second round options would look something like this in a 10-team league:

There’s certainly a wealth of wide receiver options remaining, which makes implementing a Robust RB-esque strategy enticing. Read here for more info on how to best practice that strategy:

Pairing Christian McCaffrey with any of Chase Brown, Kenneth Walker, or Omarion Hampton would make your RB room one of the best in your league.

If you take one of those RBs, it’ll be crucial to prioritize WRs with your next few picks. I’d highly recommend waiting on tight end and quarterback if you start with two RBs. Justin Herbert and Isaiah Likely are great examples of late round QB and TE options with enticing ceilings.

If you choose Ja'Marr Chase or Jaxon Smith-Njigba with the fourth pick, take one of the three RBs listed above in round two, and preferably not Chase Brown if you already have Ja’Marr Chase. You don’t want all your eggs in one basket, especially with your early picks.

You can take a WR in the second round and give yourself one of the premier WR groups in your league. However, prioritizing RBs with top-15 ceilings is going to be important in the impending rounds, as well as in the later rounds.

Examples of RBs that meet this criteria in the next few rounds include:

Examples of RBs that meet this criteria in the later rounds include:

Sidenote: the available players will vary based on league size. Mock drafting with your league settings is incredibly important for this reason…and you can do this in the Mock Draft tool HERE.

In a mock draft for this article, I used the Robust RB strategy outlined above and was very pleased with how the team looked through five rounds. We have two clear-cut RB1s and three WRs with stellar weekly ceilings. If your team looks anything like this after five rounds, you should feel confident. Make sure to get some breakout candidates on your squad. I got you covered with some helpful material regarding those players:

Now, how to handle the 5th and 6th picks…

By the time fantasy drafts are in full gear, I have a strong conviction that the first four picks will be some iteration of Jahmyr Gibbs, Bijan Robinson, Puka Nacua, and Christian McCaffrey. If my conviction proves to be correct, Ja’Marr Chase and Jaxon Smith-Njigba are the only options to consider at five. The per-game averages and weekly ceilings at the WR position are too strong to pass up.

At picks five or six, I would select Ja'Marr Chase over JSN for a few reasons. First, Joe Burrow is healthy. When he’s the Bengals QB, Chase is one of the best fantasy WRs in history. Second, while JSN averaged over 21 PPR points per game last season, the Seahawks have a new offensive coordinator, Brian Fleury. Fleury has never called plays before, but reportedly runs a similar West Coast offense to Klint Kubiak. There will almost certainly be some growing pains for the Seattle offense. JSN replicating his unbelievable 2025 Offensive Player of the Year season in 2026 appears unlikely in year one with a new play-caller.

Since you’re starting your draft with a WR, I would encourage someone with either the fifth or sixth pick to select an RB in the second round. The top options available are likely going to be:

The options are strong in the second round, but won’t be nearly as strong in the third round. The options shown below are excellent RB2 options for your fantasy team, but not overly exciting RB1 options.

The fifth and sixth picks warrant heavy preparation and analysis of opportunity cost. Do you want Ja'Marr Chase and A.J. Brown in the first two rounds, but your RB1 is Javonte Williams? Or do you want Chase and Omarion Hampton in the first two rounds, with the flexibility to select either Travis Etienne or Devonta Smith in round three? It’s up to you!

I recommend waiting on QB and TE when drafting with the fifth or sixth picks, given how deep both positions are this year. Brock Bowers and Trey McBride could be available with your second pick, but taking another RB or WR is the more responsible choice given their importance and how substantial the tier drops of those positions are.

If you start your draft with one WR and one RB, you can draft the rest of your team in whatever fashion you’d like! This is how my team looked taking the best player available after starting with Chase and Hampton:

This team has two locked-in RB1s, as well as two locked-in WR1s. Then, in round five, I took Jameson Williams. His weekly ceiling is monumental, and he is someone I am targeting in all my drafts.

We will continue this series next week, covering how to draft from 7-9!