Traditional drafters, beware.

There are a lot of draft strategies that will help you avoid an early beheading.

Draft Day Mistake 1: Drafting for upside

To win a traditional fantasy league, you need to finish first out of 10, 12 or 14 teams.  To overcome those long odds, you need to take big swings and big risks and hope that most of them pan out.

By contrast, in a guillotine league, you’re doing the exact opposite. You’re constructing a roster of safe, sure-fire contributors who won’t burden your team with dud games.

You’ve got to embrace this new way of thinking: Dud games end guillotine seasons. You want to draft a full roster of boring, consistent players.

Here are a few non-descript players who epitomize what I’m talking about:

Example 1: Jaguars TE Evan Engram

While everyone was smitten with Sam LaPorta, Travis Kelce, and Trey McBride, Jacksonville’s Evan Engram quietly put up a fantastic guillotine league season in 2023. He played all 17 games and posted double-digit fantasy points in 14 of them! This, despite not scoring until Week 13.  How’d Engram do it? Consistent volume. He topped five targets in every single game. He topped four catches in every game.

Example 2: Las Vegas WR Jakobi Meyers

Meyers quietly finished as WR24 but was even more valuable to guillotine league players due to his lack of dud games. He played in 16 of 17 games and scored double-digit fantasy points in 12 of the 16 games.

Example 3: Atlanta QB Kirk Cousins

While in Minnesota, Kirk Cousins scored a touchdown in a staggering 54 of his last 55 games, spanning two head coaches and three offensive coordinators. He finished as QB20 or better in 45 of his last 55 games.

This year, in particular, he carries more risk due to his Achilles injury, but these are the kinds of consistent, affordable players who keep you alive for months.

Draft Day Mistake 2: Rookies

One of the best tactics for winning a traditional league is to correctly identify rookies who’ll emerge throughout the season.  In a guillotine league, you don’t have the luxury of waiting.

Last year, some highly drafted rookies never panned out and got you cut quickly. Bryce Young, Zach Charbonnet, Michael Mayer, Jonathan Mingo, and Quentin Johnston were all drafted in the top 39 picks but were disastrous fantasy producers.

But even more insidious are the rookies who eventually became really good but took a long time to get there. By the time they were reliable producers, you were already cut.

Example 1, Detroit’s electrifying runner, Jahmyr Gibbs:

Overall, Gibbs played well, finishing 2023 as RB10. But make no mistake, Gibbs was a guillotine assassin for the first two months of his rookie season, and those who drafted him were unlikely to have survived his slow acclimation to the NFL.

Until Week 8 of 2023, Gibbs topped 9 fantasy points just two times. He topped 13 fantasy points just one time.  From Week 8 forward he was great, averaging 18 points per game.  But those November and December games didn’t matter if you were already chopped.

Example 2, 2023 first-rounder Dalton Kincaid:

Buffalo’s rookie tight end Dalton Kincaid was a solid contributor in the second half of the season, averaging a respectable 11 PPR fantasy points per game. But his September and October were brutal, as Kincaid failed to hit double-digit fantasy points in any game.

The best guillotine strategy for rookies, even for high-quality rookies, is to wait out their NFL acclimation period, and pounce on them mid-season when their owners get chopped. Let someone else invest in their acclimation period.

Draft Day Mistake 3: High-variance players

You’ll need to be hyper-aware of the scoring variance of every player you draft.  It’s okay to have one, maybe two, high-variance starters on your roster. Any more than that, and it’s a recipe for a chopping when those players fail in the same week.

What do high-variance players look like?

The biggest warning signs are touchdown-dependent players.

Example 1, King Henry, liege of touchdowns:

Over the past two seasons, with Tennessee, Henry has played 33 games, while scoring in 19 of them. In those 19 games, Henry averaged 22 fantasy points per game. Not bad. But Henry’s drought games are highly dangerous, averaging just 55 rushing yards, 16 receiving yards and just nine fantasy points per game.

Example 2, Gabe Davis, breaker of hearts, guillotine assassin:

Yes, wideouts can be touchdown-dependent, just like running backs.  Going back through his time in Buffalo, Davis scored 27 different games, and during those games, he averaged a healthy 13 fantasy points per game. But in his 39 non-scoring games, Davis averaged 4.4 fantasy points. 4.4 fantasy is points is how you get chopped.

Draft Day Mistake 4: Runners who don't catch

Adept pass-catching runners are chipping in 8-10 PPR points every week, just through the air. That produces a nearly dud-proof floor for those guys.  For all the frustration we endured with Bijan Robinson at the hands of Arthur Smith, Robinson only posted four dud games—entirely thanks to his average of 7 PPR points per game.

Example 1, Devin Singletary, hands of steel:

Conversely, guys like Singletary, who average just 1.1 reception per game, are ripe for dud games. Singletary, despite dramatically leading the Texans in utilization, produced a whopping 10 dud games last year, with single-digit fantasy points.

Draft Day Mistake 5: Receivers playing behind superstars who swallow up targets

Example 1, DeVonta Smith, lost in the shadows:

With AJ Brown slurping up 145 and 158 targets in his two seasons in Philadelphia, it adds a lot of variance to DeVonta Smith's output, even though he's a very good player.  Smith sagged to single-digit fantasy points 11 times in those two seasons. In those games, he averaged 3 receptions while never topping five receptions.

Draft Day Mistake 6: The injured, infirmed, and imbecilic

In a traditional league, you've got the luxury of 14 regular season weeks to get your team playoff-ready. That means you can take a long-term approach to someone like Nick Chubb, T.J. Hockenson, Aaron Rodgers, Kirk Cousins, or Keaton Mitchell.

By contrast, that kind of long-term thinking will get you chopped in September in a guillotine league.  You simply cannot burn meaningful draft equity on someone who may not start the season or may be on a pitch count. You'll be dead by then.

And even at a steep discount, those players shouldn't be on your radar.

Remember, there's a strong likelihood that those players will come up on waivers multiple times before they're reliable fantasy contributors.  Love Nick Chubb? Think he'll bounce back at some point in 2024? Instead of drafting him, plan on saving some FAAB for later in the season, after he's already been chopped once or twice while he's ramping up in September and October.

As of this writing, the NFL has yet to mete out any punishment for Rashee "Earnhardt" Rice or Jordan "Busch" Addison. Even a modest suspension, say three weeks, would be potentially devastating for your chances of staying alive through September.

Is there lingering tumult with Brandon Aiyuk's trade request that could impact the start of his season? Could he be traded? And/or, will he be hyper-motivated to prove his worth for the next big contract?

Draft Day Mistake 7: Sloughing tight ends

Thanks to the emergence of young, talented tight ends like Dalton Kincaid, Trey McBride, and Sam LaPorta, 2024 has the deepest selection of tight ends we've seen in years. Because of that depth, in traditional leagues, the ADP for tight ends is cratering.

But there aren't eighteen good ones. In your 18-team guillotine league, you're at a colossal disadvantage if you wait too long for the position.

Having read the earlier parts of this draft kit, you already know that we're striving to avoid dud games. Bottom-tier tight ends are fraught with danger. Guys like Pat Freiermuth, Cole Kmet, Hunter Henry, Cade Otton, and Chigoziem Okonkwo repeatedly post two-catch twenty-yard games that end your season.

The Guide to Guillotine Leagues Fantasy Football