2024 Preseason Power Rankings

Why yes, these did take me longer than it took Brandon Aiyuk to be traded 18 different times this offseason, the Cowboys signing CeeDee Lamb, the Ja'Marr Chase hold in, and the entire preseason slate. Here we are though.

So all in all after a flawless set of preseason predictions and rankings last year, I am heeding the call to publish more 100% accurate forecasts for another fantasy football season. They said these necessary rankings wouldn't happen, but I am here to prove the doubters wrong. If you don't appreciate where you are ranked, please take it personally. Let's hop into it.

1. Flight Reacts

He said he'd quit if I didn't put him here, but he inspired an idea in the process. These are rankings in order of who is most likely to get the first overall pick this year. We all know that dynasty isn't about winning, it's about drafting. According to the experts, holding players over the age of 26 is basically a war crime punishable by death.

Unfortunately Cole, our esteemed 2022 champion, holds pole position for last place. In an unfair twist of luck last year pretty much everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. Kadarius Toney pulled a Kadarius Toney and played 10 snaps per game while being injured half the time. Leonard Fournette finally became too fat to play football. Nico Collins broke out the second Cole traded him. The lone positive from last year was watching Riddle go all in and be sabotaged by the players he sold him. Cole's team being bad is depriving us of what would have been an absolute heater of a rivalry with Sam W. near the top of the standings. We can collectively blame Sam for taking half a decade to piece together a competent roster yet again.

On the bright side for this year while being positioned to be last again, it is not like this team is devoid of talent. Dontayvion Wicks, everyone's favorite meaningless auto-addition to Cole's roster sparking a two month long chat war, is one of the the darlings of the offseason this year. Deshaun Watson is healthy again, which may not be a positive thing for fantasy and the Browns based on how he has played lately but at least he will have someone to start. Even though rostering them at their age is illegal, Nick Chubb and Derrick Henry should have some gas in the tank left. Keon Coleman is on the island of misfit toys Josh Allen has at receiver this year and could pan out to some fantasy production, and if not we will always have the fun rookie pressers he gave us this summer. On paper it should be better than a winless 2023 marred by bad luck at every possible turn. So the floor is not the basement and that in itself is progress.

It also helps lessen the blow of an expected bad season when he owns roughly 60% of the next draft. And as an added bonus, he gets to actively root against Riddle! Having won a title he is exempt from any tank commander title, but expectations are reset and the rebuild is officially underway. Congrats on being first, and now you can't quit! Yay! I sincerely look forward to when your team is good again, the league needs the shit talk and memes.

2. Team mwilson18

I will go on record and say right away that if, IF, everything goes right here this is still a playoff team. Having one starting quarterback with a collection of preseason heroes on the bench as your depth options is not exactly conducive to winning. Compared to the rest of the league Mike is running a quarterback situation that looks on par with the Browns history.

On top of that Najee Harris is about to be ceding a good share of snaps to Jaylen Warren, and probably somehow Darnell Washington during all 3 times the Steelers offense is at the goal line this season for no other reason than because Arthur Smith. Cooper Kupp, while great, is an ankle injury away from his foot falling clean off his body like he stepped on a landmine. Amari Cooper and Courtland Sutton are going to be praying their QBs can throw an accurate pass. A very good duo of Jonathon Taylor and Travis Etienne will be the very cool and stylish anchor for this team. So the anchor will look great as the boat sinks to the bottom of the sea!

In all seriousness the real issue here is mainly depth (no pun intended), the starters will score points but the primary contingency option for this team right now is the WR2 or 3 in a Greg Roman offense. I don't really think I am ready to trust the guy who is notorious for using a fullback over receivers and designing passing plays that have routes running head first into each other. Trading for picks and Jahan Dotson was the smart move, too much uncertainty at quarterback to keep chugging with Stafford on the backend of his career and Justin Fields hope dwindling as his sack total climbs higher by the snap.

Pretty sure I said something similar last year, but I'll double down. If I had to vote on one roster collapsing in on itself it is this one.

3. KShah10

Climbing up 2 spots from the start of last year we have the one and only KShah.

I don't think there is anyone who trades more than Kevin at this point, and honestly I respect the fact that he takes swings even if I disagree with them some (a lot) of the time. I guess the best way to offset trade luck is to just keep wheeling and dealing. Skyy Moore for a 4th, just to drop him? YOLO. Nico Collins for TJ Hockenson pre-breakout? YOLO. It is like the intrusive thought always wins, there is an idea and it must be followed through. The level of conviction it takes to really force yourself into deals for specific players is impressive.

Everyone loves to talk about the "Taco" in their league, but this legitimately might be the closest I've ever seen just based on how deliberately contrarian Kevin's moves feel. Then he comes out on top or even. Against all odds and doubt cast on how he was handling his roster, he now has a QB1, RB1, and a WR1 and they are all under the age of 25. Not to mention the fact he went from 1 starting QB to having 4 options in the span of a year, I don't care that the jury is out on if 3 of them are viable options when it is inarguably difficult to acquire QB talent in our league. Stacking two first rounders this year to top it all off.

I don't even know how we got to this point, it breaks my brain trying to think about how this roster recovered after moving Josh Jacobs, Jaylen Waddle, and a top 5 pick for basically no immediate return last offseason. I guess we are all the idiots clearly. Consensus opinion be damned he is going to march to the beat of his own drum over here. Rain man.

Despite the proclamation that he has officially packed it up and is set on contending this year, I am afraid to say, I do not see that happening. Even with a solid young core of players, it would take a colossal amount of luck to stack up against the top teams in our league and there are real depth issues here outside of quarterback.

He has already made playoffs twice before with worse rosters (double the amount of times Sam W. has for anyone keeping count) and when Chase Brown breaks out and becomes a true bellcow, Kyren gets even better, Ekeler is revived from the dead, and Nico Collins is prime Calvin Johnson then I'll continue to have the wires in my brain short circuit trying to wrap my head around it all.

4. We Stan DJM

It's not that Davis has a bad team. It is that it just got marginally better this year, and it feels in a similar place overall.

Just like last year and the year before that he still has a ton of good wideouts, on good teams, with good quarterbacks, but also surrounded by equally as good or better talent next to them. Not helping matters that Jordan Addison thinks he is Vin Diesel's sidekick in a Fast & Furious movie every summer. One positive is that Dimes finally has a receiver to throw to that isn't a UDFA or practice squad player, it only took 5 years for the Giants to help him out. Geno and the Seahawks escaped Pete Carroll's gum chewing and they may not be on the run-run-pass offense forever, remembering that they have one of the best 3 wide receiver sets in the league.

The problem just like it was last year and the year before that and the year before that, is running back. This is groundhog day. Davis is the Matt Stafford Lions. It has been two decades, or 7 years, since a consistently great runner has been on roster.

Now that he is done beating people to a pulp off the field an aging Kamara on a middle of the pack Saints team is the lone reliable option on this roster. Insert the obligatory AJ Dillon still sucks comment here, even though he is hurt. Dameon Pierce is a backup in an offense that is going to throw somewhere between 50 and 100 times a game. D'andre Swift is good, but we don't really know what this Bears offense looks like, what the snap splits look like, and if they will use him on the goal line. Besides every Bears player is prone to being a part of an all time Bears story line of this offense being bad. He could be the x-factor on this team if he ends up putting up a low end RB1 season. For now, roster purgatory until further notice.

5. MHJ's Team

This is the ranking you get for chasing Ohio State players two years running.

The league's currently crowned Tank Commander is entering year 3 of the rebuild. This is what a rebuild looks like when the manager isn't conning half of the league to expedite it, wild concept. The broad strokes of this season are as seen below:

Good news: As long as Anthony Richardson isn't kamikaze-ing throwing shoulder first into linebackers and safetys he should be racking up a ton of points on rushing alone! He has a good head coach and a ton of weapons to throw to too!

Bad news: Can he throw the ball? We don't know! Luckily Eli has his top option now too!

I will get the actual negatives out of the way first, Zamir White is a starter for this team right now and he, to put it plainly, sucks. It is never a bad time to rehash the fact he was 0th percentile in forcing missed tackles and creating yards for himself in college. Brian Robinson is Najee Harris without the name value (not a compliment). David Montgomery is the Lions running back nobody actually wants to see touch the ball, not even fantasy managers enjoy rostering him. Trevor Lawrence is riding the coat tails of his draft pedigree despite playing around a league average level, and is looking more like "don't worry Jacksonville, we have Peyton Manning at home" by the season. We are about a year away from him officially joining the Kirk Cousins tier.

All of that aside, Eli has real depth options. Tyjae is a Tony Pollard repeat showing of last season for 3 or 4 games away from being a bellcow. Trey Benson will inevitably get work once James Conner suffers his yearly ankle injury by week 5. The Dortchening is a potential flex play even in a crowded receiver room. So his bench went from dark depression to mild optimism.

The huge positives are that Buffalo has found their next slot target who is just supersized Cole Beasley in Dalton Kincaid who should have a monster season. Michael Pittman is a high end WR2 for now, but may end up a low end WR2 praying for Gardner Minshew back by the middle of the season. Then there are the two OSU guys.

Marv is undeniable, that much is true. He will be good and very likely great no matter what. I don't care that he hasn't taken a snap in the NFL yet. I'll go as far as he is the best receiver on Eli's team. Reports came out that people in the building were confused with the way JSN was used last year, welcome to the club Seattle so were we. There is almost no chance that JSN repeats the weird role where they pretended he was a part of the triple option, being a single lateral away from a negative average depth of target.

If the rest of this roster can maintain league average scoring, which could potentially be a tough task hence the ranking here, playoffs are likely in the cards as Eli would pass the tank commander badge to another poor soul. At the very least, next year should be the year we can start to have truly high expectations. Or we can keep saying that it is next year.

6. Call Me Mayebe

I really wanted to rank Henry lower just for the joke, but I'll try to be nice. Regardless of the fact he was indecisive if he wanted to compete or keep stacking picks last year he managed to trust Keegan's process. For that reason, this is where we start to talk about teams that should have high expectations.

This may be shocking news with their history, but the Packers have once again found a franchise quarterback. Turns out all of the notes and super genius planning by Keegan was just 4 years in the making, and Jordan Love is primed for takeoff now. Hall of fame level bagman Kirk Cousins is in great situation with 3 high end options to throw to and another 80 million guaranteed. Aaron Rodgers generously put his VP candidacy on hold and has been fully healed after copious amounts of dolphin sex noise therapy. He could've totally played on that achilles last year, but felt bad for the league. What a great guy. With the most important part being the big trade for team mascot and expert motivator Kenny "Clipboards" Pickett, Henry's QB room is in great shape.

Keegan's savvy forward thinking also left enough trade ammo and picks on roster for Henry to trade for Aiyuk and Mark Andrews, and then draft Tank Dell and Malik Nabers. Really just seeing Henry follow through on a well laid out plan.

Speaking on some of that group of players, we missed the opportunity for Henry to be forced into watching more Steelers football with the Aiyuk rumors. Now we get to hear the nerds scream regression is coming while Aiyuk turns his 6 targets a game into another 1,200 yard season. Henry slots in Pat Friermuth at TE and he locks up 50% (in other words 30 yards) of the Steelers passing game every week! On the topic of small numbers, all 140 pounds of Tank Dell will be great as long as Slowik hopefully never has him pretending to be a blocker on the goal line again, and he avoids getting the talent sapped out of him by Stefon Diggs monstars style. The Giants just unretired a number for Malik Nabers, which set the already high expectations even higher and we've hit peak offseason hype. There is a real and likely chance Nabers ends up better than Marvin Harrison Jr. which is an insane sentence to be typing.

The corpses of James Conner and Raheem Mostert are the stars of the running back room here. Henry is going to be mummifying their remains after this year. Which also makes Henry wanted in over 50 twitter spaces, and banned from logging onto KeepTradeCut entirely. He actually got a personal letter from the Sleeper CEO telling him to quit dynasty for rostering two RBs that old. We all know that Keegan would've never let this happen. Zach Charbonnet and Tank Bigsby are desperate plays for desperate measures, but also known as his running back depth.

I've knocked other people for poor running back depth, but when you are a lock to have at least two QB1s, two fringe WR1s, a true top tier TE1, and Malik Nabers waiting to just explode for likely 1,000 yards minimum this season as a rookie then I like your prospects. Not even mentioning all 4 games of Christian Watson and his newly balanced hamstrings we'll get this season!

All in all, Henry is just reaping the benefits of taking on a perfectly managed team. Shoutout to known fantasy guru Keegan.

7. Accidental Bears Fan

Well well well, I am forced to rank myself so here we are. It feels weird writing about my own team in something I try to write for everyone else. If someone else would like to write my section for this please just send me something and I may edit and replace this with whatever else someone wrote.

CMC is still the best player in fantasy when he is healthy, but he is going to be working against the Madden curse and the 1.01 curse this year. Which means it is backup running back time, yay! Aaron Jones is almost heading off to pasture, and will be spending what is likely his last good season in Minnesota taking handoffs from Sam Darnold in between interceptions thrown. Speak of the devil, I may be relying on Sam Darnold at some point this year as he looks to contend with the infamous Jameis 30 and 30 season. That isn't troublesome at all.

CeeDee is a top 2 receiver in football, but Jerry is so old he couldn't seem to remember that he had 1,700 yards last year when they were talking about a contract. Kyle Pitts crawled through a mile of crap like he was in Shawshank redemption to finally get to Kirk Cousins, and I have Brock Bowers waiting to follow in Kyle Pitts disappointing footsteps. Funny that none of that matters because at the end of the day I'll be starting the most boring option of the bunch in Jake Ferguson.

I won't delve too deep into my QB woes post-JJ McCarthy injury. The first QB drafted top 10 in the modern era (so like 60 years) to miss his entire rookie campaign from injury, real (and depressing) stat. Just following the incredible stretch of QB bad luck I've had since, ironically, Andrew Luck.

So in Caleb we trust. Mentally only one year away from just punting on QB and saying the superflex is for another tight end that won't meet my expectations.

I think the issue is that I look at my team and I think this is good, but not great outside of CMC and CeeDee. Which good is enough to get me to playoffs, but probably not enough to win.

8. Baker's Boys

Perennially one of my favorite rosters in the league. Sam is the Leo DiCaprio of fantasy, if you are a skill player and turn 27 you are either getting traded or replaced with one of his 18 first rounders he has every year. The way this roster is constructed is just think Keegan's (proxy manager Henry) team, but better. There is one obvious deficiency, but I don't think that it is sizable enough to take him out of contention, unless he gets ravaged by injuries as hard as last year.

Taking a moment of silence to start. Here lie the crocodile tears for trading Mark Andrews to keep reloading this roster with 1st rounders. It was sad for all of .2 seconds before you slotted Trey McBride in.

Josh Allen and CJ Stroud are two of the best QBs in the game right now. Always a good time to ponder about just how good Stroud would be if he had scored higher on his S2 test. While the reality is that Stroud probably ends up nearly statistically identical to Brock Purdy, he has swag. Which means he is a much better player or something like that and warrants being ranked 10 spots higher across every platform this year.

Josh Allen will score approximately 400 fantasy points because that is what he always does. That doesn't change the fact someone needs to swipe his ADHD meds and let his little squirrel brain go loose again now that Diggs isn't there to shout at him. I want to see him go from well constructed plays to absolute chaos for no good reason. If you extend slants long enough they turn into deep crossers, you just have to believe hard enough. Throw a hurdle in, that linebacker is just an obstacle on the way to 2nd down. Give the people the Russian roulette offense we crave.

Puka and Garrett Wilson are both set up to be high end WR1s. We may finally get the Garrett Wilson season we've been waiting for. Or we can keep talking about it and watch the Jets be the Jets and find a way to mess it up (which they will). Tee Higgins and Terry McLaurin are great WR2s. George Pickens if he can keep his sanity the entire season without going full Legarette Blount and punching someone on the Steelers in the face by week 6. Two first round rookie receivers. A total embarrassment of riches at receiver.

Formerly mentioned Trey McBride is a TE1, even if Marvin Harrison Jr. is amazing there is enough to go around in that offense because the Cardinals are built like a mid 2010s Big 12 team. Cole Kmet is eligible for the mascot slot in a year after we see the Bears refuse to use him again. The Raiders hate fun so now Michael Mayer and Brock Bowers get to compete for snaps and routes, which is a loss for everyone involved fantasy wise but we can all talk about how good they would be if they weren't stealing snaps and targets from each other.

The aforementioned running back hatred is where we see the lone deficiency on this roster. It is Pacheco carrying the torch, running like an angry child at recess. Then we have a collection of JAGs, luckily not the ones based in Jacksonville. Rhamondre is going to be stuck on an absolutely atrocious and unwatchable offense that won't be scoring a ton. JK Dobbins, the guy who has the same lower body as Joe Biden, shockingly can't stay healthy. Jerome Ford will get a chance to reprise his role as 75% of Nick Chubb for at least a little bit of this season before being banished back to the bench. For a team loaded with talent, almost zero of it is in the running back room.

To say that it is going to be an uphill battle to get some running back production this season would be an understatement. No exaggeration, this may be the worst running back room in the league and why he isn't ranked higher. Still obviously great to be in the contention tier, and is an RB1 away from a top 2 team.

9. The Meme Team

This team is only partially based in Jacksonville now, after Dan managed to jettison some of the former Jags by trading away (now Titan anyways) Calvin Ridley. Less Jacksonville is good for the soul, and likely his fantasy team.

He saw one season of Derek Carr being QB1 after the Burrow injury and said never again. Which is also what the Saints front office said, but then realized they are paying him 100 million dollars. Dan had the luxury of drafting two rookies in Jayden Daniels and Penix, and now rostering the greatest practice player/meaningless football player of all time in Joe Milton instead.

Burrow coming off his 5th serious injury, is looking to bounce back and be a contender for comeback player of the year for another year. Jayden Daniels fighting through a Kliff Kingsbury offense of screens and plays not designed to work will be hard, but maybe not as hard as having the self control to not get splattered by a linebacker on the field while ditching said poor plays to run. He runs just like Lamar, if Lamar purposefully left his feet every 5th run instead of avoiding contact. Penix will be exciting if he gets to see the field at all, while Kirk is healthy we only have to wait until he is 30 to see that happen. Even with all of that these are both more encouraging than the thought of Derek Carr's 15 points.

Other than that Tua is going to feed Tyreek enough to where he'll need ozempic by the end of the year. It may be enough production to convince Tyreek to live out his dream of being a full time twitch streamer. Saquon has a real offensive line to run behind for the first time in his career. Which feels unfair, but maybe he is conditioned enough to run into the back of a clogged line that he forgot how to play football and when he hears the pads knock he just has to find the nearest guard to run into. Or he'll put up 1,700+ yards from scrimmage and the Giants get to look dumb, which is the more likely of the two options here. James Cook is officially the lead back in Buffalo now and might not have a bad case of the Julio Jones Redzones this year and score more than twice. Or he becomes the Jerick McKinnon heir apparent and is a between the 20s only back for good. Dan is guaranteed 40-50 points a game from his 9ers stack too, just no telling who gets the majority of those points between Kittle and Deebo any given week.

This bench is Jamaal Williams waiting at the 1 yard line, Ty Chandler getting the early career Aaron Jones jail treatment from Aaron Jones himself, and then the weirdest collection of players that are going on their 3rd or 4th chance and may finally breakout. Between Rashid Shaheed, Javonte Williams, Jameson Williams, and Khalil Shakir one of these guys has to eventually become a full time meaningful player. Or they can all dud and we can say next year is the year again like they are part of Eli's rebuild.

The starters for this roster may be the best in the league if Jayden Daniels is a low end QB1. At its core this is a bestball roster dream. Which makes it hard to not rank Dan higher, but I will show some self control. There is going to be a week or two over 200+ from this team as long at this roster stays healthy this year.

10. Team AARP

Once a full fledged retirement home. Riddle has managed to dodge a rebuild weaving past the dementia filled roster through a little bit of luck, and more importantly one sided trades. Being gifted Rashee Rice, Josh Jacobs, Jahmyr Gibbs, and Rome Odunze turns out to be good for a roster that was on the brink of aging out.

Rashee Rice is avoiding a suspension this season even while he faces what seems like eight different felonies for giving us a sneak peek into what we can expect from Georgia football's offseason next year. Josh Jacobs and Gibbs are boring because they are both good players on good teams.

That young core mentioned above is mostly going to be starting for him, and he traded away Jared Goff after months of trying and failing to find the right price. None of the usual suspects wanted to overpay for him, so he had to settle for a fair deal with Jeb instead. Unlucky. As part of dealing with Jeb, you also get a copy of "The Wealth of Nations" to reinforce the fact you and Sam are fantasy economy terrorists.

Jalen Hurts is about 4 games away from the public turning on him harder than they did on Nick Sirriani. Good thing he doesn't need to be good at football to score fantasy points, because he has an insane share of the team's TDs every year thanks to the tush push. Have you heard that he can squat 600lbs by the way? Kyler is primed for what should be his best season of his career, and the Call of Duty and height jokes are almost fully dead now after they didn't just beat the dead horse, they nuked it five times over. We can focus on making jokes about him playing poorly if he sucks instead now that he has the best weapons of his career.

His bench is the non-appealing part of the Carolina backfield which is the fantasy equivalent of radioactive material and his former starting core of 30+ year olds that are likely looking into their broadcast careers after this season. We can all look down at our watches waiting for the Kelce decline, maybe this is the year. If he runs into injuries, especially at running back then things could potentially go off the rails elsewhere with this roster.

He was the runner up last year, and we failed to get him out to the draft trip with no trophy for him to collect. There is a good chance he is coming to collect it this year (otherwise I'm taking it home if you win). That being said I think this might be the team I am rooting the hardest against this year outside of the obvious league villain.

11. Air Raid Offense

The golden touch, the divine power of fantasy football, the juggernaut, the buzzsaw, the only guarantee any given football season. The only shock here is that he isn't first.

The person who averages just over 2 losses per season after 6 years, and just hit a full season's worth of losses. It does feel wrong to not have the golden child at the top of the rankings for the first time, but somehow we are 3 seasons removed from the his last championship. With that, Jeb has relinquished his public enemy number one status for the first time since the league started.

There isn't much to say that hasn't been said already in the past. He still has 15 WR1s on roster, and good or solid running backs, and the best quarterback on the planet. He drafted another two or three receivers that will become important or great players for their teams because of course they will. Rachaad White and Joe Mixon might not be good players in real life, but they are the only options on their team that aren't UDFAs or a complete prayer to pan out. Most importantly, they are on Jeb's team so just like how he dragged Raheem Mostert back from the dead to be relevant for a season they too will all score career highs in TDs, yards, receptions, or all of the above.

Mahomes will find a way to throw for 50 TDs again and he has already hedged the Greg Roman jail time for Justin Herbert and gets to enjoy the Jared Goff all dome games schedule this year. So basically while we all get to stop waiting for Jeb's downfall for a fleeting moment, he is primed to take back the mantle at the top and resume his fantasy birthright as the king of the league.

He may have the golden touch when it comes to almost everything, but Jeb must have made a deal where he forfeited his right to being able to roster a tight end. He has managed to banish every single tight end he has started the past couple of years into season ending injuries which is an impressive amount of bad luck truthfully. Good (or bad for the rest of us) thing tight end is the least impactful position in fantasy football, and that hasn't stopped him this far.

Throwing a touch of bad luck in the script was a nice touch, but you can't throw us off your trail of knowing the season front to back.

12. ¡Viva La Revolucion!*

Reluctantly, here we are. Asterisk boy. Scammy Sammy.

In some weirdly connected voodoo, Sam and Cole share fantasy points from the same source. As one wanes the other climbs.

It brings me little to no joy to announce that I have to put Sam at the top of these rankings as he climbs. The new league villain. The snake oil salesman who scammed his way to the top. Jeb made it hard to root against him at times when he was winning it all. Sam is the polar opposite, I can appreciate the fact he leans into making his team super hateable and does that really well.

After half a decade of toil at the bottom, he managed to con his way into this roster so bulletproof it would take a whole starting lineup worth of injuries to actually impact him. As it stands today, Sam is primed for a half a decade to make up for the first 5 years in the league. I don't need to rattle off the names of half the first round of redraft that are on his roster, we all know his team is good unfortunately.

We should all hope right now that the curse is still deeply rooted in the fiber of Sam's team. Deep down the bad luck is still there, just waiting.

With Sam's team being so loaded it also means that we must construct the iron curtain. Choke him out of trades people! We must force him back into drafting his guys like Bryan Edwards, Kendre Miller, and Bryce Young.

I look forward and pray on your downfall. Cole needs to call upon the curse of the beef once more.

I wish you all good luck, minus you Sam W. and Riddle, here is to another good year of fantasy football together.

P.S. Horns Down and Go Blue