We spend the summer months obsessing over the first few rounds of our upcoming fantasy football drafts.
Where do we want to pick in the first round? Where do we not want to pick in the first round? Which stars do we most want to draft?
The early rounds of your draft are undeniably important. But fantasy championships are often won in the middle rounds of drafts. The ability to find high-level production in the middle rounds can determine whether you cash a winner’s check or finish in the cellar.
Here are some of my goals when attacking Rounds 4-9 of my fantasy football drafts.
2026 Fantasy Football Middle-Round Draft Strategy
Build a Robust Roster
You need to do more than fill out your starting lineup in the middle rounds. This is the part of your draft where you build a roster that can withstand the harsh realities of the fantasy season.
Injuries will find you. They always do. Bye weeks will keep you from fielding your best possible lineup in the middle of the fantasy season.
Your goal should be to build a team that can better withstand injuries and byes than the other teams in your league.
As I mentioned in my Perfect Draft article, when I’m in the middle rounds of a draft, I’ll think about what my starting lineup would look like without my top running back, my top wide receiver, or both. Do I have a team that could survive that kind of a hit? It’s worth putting yourself through this thought exercise when you get to the seventh or eighth round.
In the first four rounds, you’ve laid a base at RB and WR. In the middle rounds, you need to fortify that base.
Don’t Scrimp on Wide Receivers
Fortification is especially important at wide receiver.
Some fantasy managers believe the WR position is deep. They are wrong. While there may indeed be many receivers who play a lot of snaps and run a lot of routes, there are not many receivers who consistently put up worthwhile fantasy numbers.
And at wide receiver, what you pay for is generally what you get.
Running backs occasionally emerge from the late-round ether to become high-level performers. It happens because they fall into opportunities due to injuries. That sort of thing rarely happens at wide receiver. When one receiver is injured, his vacated targets typically don’t go to just one or two other players. They’re scattered among several pass catchers. Late-round hits at the WR position are rare.
By the time your draft reaches the double-digit rounds, the supply of bankable veterans and high-upside youngsters at the WR position will have mostly dried up. You owe it to yourself to build a sturdy WR corps before the supply of credible wide receivers runs out.
Tackle the QB and TE positions
If you haven’t drafted a quarterback or tight end in the first four rounds of your draft, you’ll probably want to address those positions in the middle rounds.
And I sincerely hope you won’t draft a quarterback in the first four rounds. The talent pool is so deep that it’s not worth sacrificing the chance to draft a top-20 running back or receiver for the chance to take Josh Allen, the consensus QB1.
Allen has a late-third-round ADP. He’s being drafted just ahead of Ladd McConkey.
Brock Purdy has a late-eighth-round ADP. He’s being drafted just ahead of Michael Wilson.
I don’t know about you, but I would rather have a Brock Purdy/Ladd McConkey combo than a Josh Allen/Michael Wilson combo. I can start both Purdy and McConkey every week. Wilson probably isn’t an every-week starter on a good fantasy team.
The middle rounds are loaded with quality fantasy quarterbacks.
Justin Herbert has an ADP of QB9 and is going in the back half of the seventh round. Herbert was the QB10 last season despite playing behind a shabby, injury-riddled offensive line that allowed him to be sacked 54 times. His offensive line should be healthier and better, and the arrival of offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel could help unlock the sort of big passing numbers that Herbert produced in his first three seasons.
Trevor Lawrence has an ADP of QB10 and is coming off the board around the seventh-round/eighth-round turn. Over his last seven regular-season games, Lawrence averaged 265 passing yards, 2.6 TD passes, and 26.6 fantasy points per game. He also ran for nine touchdowns last season.
The aforementioned Brock Purdy has finished QB6, QB10, and QB5 in fantasy points per game among quarterbacks who made at least six starts.
The middle rounds, not the early rounds, are where you should do your QB shopping.
Likewise, there are some gems to be mined at tight end in the middle rounds.
Tucker Kraft has a sixth-round ADP. Kraft was TE2 in fantasy scoring when he tore his ACL midway through the 2025 season. He reportedly expects to be ready for Week 1 and should be a key contributor to the Green Bay passing game.
Harold Fannin is coming off the board around the sixth-round/seventh-round turn. He had 72 catches for 731 yards and six touchdowns as a rookie and has a chance to lead the Browns in targets this season.
The much-maligned Kyle Pitts is being drafted in the seventh round. Pitts had 88 catches for 928 yards and five touchdowns last season to finish TE2 in half-point PPR fantasy scoring. Kevin Stefanski is the Falcons’ new head coach, and the tight ends in Stefanski’s Cleveland offenses averaged 164.3 targets over the last three seasons.
Positional balance is overrated
Again, the goal is not merely to fill out your starting lineup in the middle rounds. Filling out your lineup is far less important than capitalizing on the draft values that will be presented to you.
It’s perfectly fine to come out of a draft with a surplus of wide receivers or running backs. Part of the fun of fantasy football is making trades, and fantasy managers tend to make far more trades than NFL general managers do.
There will always be managers in your league looking to acquire RBs and WRs. You can leverage your surplus at a position to strengthen your team at other positions.
But don’t acquire a surplus of talent at quarterback and tight end, the onesie positions. Since teams are only required to start only one QB and one TE per week, those positions are deep, and there are usually decent to good replacement QBs and TEs to be found on waivers. It’s hard to leverage surpluses at those positions.
Round-by-Round Targets
Here are my favorite draft targets in each of the middle rounds, based on ADP.
Fifth Round
Terry McLaurin, Jaylen Waddle, D’Andre Swift, Bucky Irving,
Sixth Round
Christian Watson, Tucker Kraft, Harold Fannin
Seventh Round
Jaylen Warren, Kyle Pitts, Parker Washington, Jordyn Tyson
Eighth Round
Alec Pierce, Kyle Monangai, Makai Lemon, George Kittle
Ninth Round
Brock Purdy, Blake Corum, Jordan Addison, Isaiah Likely
