Tom Strachan | Wed, Apr 3rd 2024, 6:55am EDT

6 Fantasy Football Best Ball Draft Targets (2024)

With the arrival of April, it’s almost time for Best Ball Season to get well and truly underway when the draft has wrapped up. Until then, we can make do with the early contests that are still open. It’s an excellent time to dive in for your first drafts or check your exposures and see what adjustments you want to make before the contests close.

These six best ball targets are players you should be drafting in April.

Drake London (WR – ATL) (ADP 23.2)

No player has gotten more of an upgrade to their circumstances this offseason than London, who goes from Desmond Ridder completing 16 passes per game in a run-first Arthur Smith offense to Kirk Cousins, who completed 27.0 passes per game in 2023, 1.9 more than any other quarterback. Cousins has also been the fourth most accurate quarterback over the last decade and has continuously been a strong option for his wide receivers, helping Stefon Diggs, Adam Thielen & Justin Jefferson all be reliable fantasy assets.

The Falcons’ defense also looks potentially set for a backward step with a lack of top-end talent at most positions outside of Jessie Bates & A.J. Terrell. A bad defense can be great news for fantasy football, as it’ll push the offense into more pass-heavy scripts and keep the ball heading toward London, who could see double as many as the 4.27 receptions per game he’s averaged since joining the Falcons.

Josh Jacobs (RB – GB) (36.2)

Jacobs may never get back to the outlier numbers of 2022, where he ran for 1653 yards and 12 touchdowns, but if he’s ever going to, it might just be in 2024. The Packers jettisoned Aaron Jones in favor of the younger Jacobs and brought back AJ Dillon on the type of contract that might not guarantee him a roster spot in September.

Jacobs is a stat compiler rather than an elite talent, often churning in the kinds of weeks where you struggle to find highlights, but the boxscores do plenty for your fantasy team as he gets there on volume and by not coming off the field. Jacobs has avoided any significant injuries in his career (*touches wood*) and, having recently turned 26, should still have enough left in the tank to be fantasy-relevant as a near-every-down workhorse running back.

The Packers are an ascending offense and when draft lobbies get busier in June and July, don’t be surprised if Jacobs’ ADP is pushed into the second round. Until then, he’s a firm target.

Rhamondre Stevenson (RB – NE) (77.5)

It’s possible that the Patriots end up drafting Jayden Daniels at the 1.03 in this month’s draft and Stevenson’s pass-catching upside is limited going forward, but it’s also possible that the Patriots choose Drake Maye or J.J. McCarthy, or even decide to roll with Jacoby Brissett and push the rebuild a further year down the line.

Either way, Stevenson’s fortunes don’t currently look overly capped. The Patriots opted not to bring Ezekiel Elliott back after he set career-lows in success rate in 2023 (451%) and failed to break a single rush longer than 17 yards on 184 attempts. Antonio Gibson was brought in during free agency, but Gibson hasn’t looked explosive or impressive in any area of the game for several years now.

Stevenson was slow to get going in 2023, dropping from 61 rushing yards per game in 2022 to 51 in the Patriots’ anemic offense and seeing his receptions per game drop from 4.1 to 3.1. However, it seemed he was just getting going when he got injured after finishing as the RB2, RB20, and RB7 before missing the rest of the season. Stevenson could be the victim of a lousy offense again in 2024, but the seventh round is too low for that kind of concern.

Joshua Palmer (WR – LAC) (152.4)

The Chargers are beginning their soft rebuild by removing Justin Herbert‘s offensive weapons and starting fresh, potentially with a highly drafted wide receiver to lead the way. Palmer remains a good bet to be the Chargers’ primary slot receiver, though, after playing 34% of snaps there in 2023, mainly when Keenan Allen wasn’t used there.

Now, with Allen on the Bears, it frees up those important easy-completion routes for another player. Over Palmer’s three-year career, he’s played 43 games, and in the 11 without Allen, his receiving yards jumped by 27 per game, PPR points jumped from 7.28 to 12.55, and his targets leaped from 4.16 to 7.64.

Palmer outworked Quentin Johnston in nearly every stat imaginable, including targets per game (5.7 vs. 3.9), route participation (84% vs. 66%), yards per route (1.8 vs. 0.9), and, most importantly, PPR points per game (10.6 vs. 5.6). This Chargers offense might not be as pass-heavy as we’d want, but Herbert can be efficient and take the chain-moving passes to a player like Palmer, who is too cheap at pick 152.

Raheem Mostert (RB – MIA) (93.4)

Touchdowns are one of the least sticky stats year on year, and betting on consistent touchdown scoring is an easy way to run into trouble in fantasy football. That said, though, Mostert scored 21 touchdowns in 2023, tied with Christian McCaffrey as the only running backs to score more than 15.

Now McCaffrey is a top-five pick without fail, while Mostert languishes in the early eighth round of drafts. Mostert clearly lacks the ceiling outcomes of McCaffrey and, by all means, doesn’t deserve to be a first-round pick, but the distance between the two shouldn’t be as substantial.

Mostert has signed a new contract with Miami reaffirming his position as part of their plans for 2024, and despite being 31 years old, he still runs well.

Devon Achane is being consistently drafted in the second round. While his ceiling is as high, if not higher than any other player at the position on a weekly basis, his weight and small frame caused him to miss time in 2023, playing 40% or more snaps in seven games and managing only ten appearances.

Mostert might not return value to the tune of RB3 overall as he did in 2023, but he deserves to be picked as high as the sixth round.

Joe Burrow (QB – CIN) (73.5)

Absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder, but it’s had the opposite effect on Burrow’s ADP, seeing him drop from pick 45 in 2023 to 73rd currently. Burrow’s missed time was frustrating, and his lackluster struggles through early season injuries were even more challenging to swallow for fantasy managers.

Still, there seems no reason to think Burrow’s thumb injury will be a negative long-term, and the Bengals thus far have retained Tee Higgins alongside Ja’Marr Chase and improved their tight end position, upgrading from Irv Smith Jr. to Mike Gesicki. The labeling of Burrow as injury-prone is a little ahead of things at this point, and for a player on one of the most potent offenses in the league, we should be looking to gain exposure to him.

Stacking the Bengals’ top trio currently requires picks 4, 44, and 35, which in total works out cheaper than the Houston Texans’ trio of Nico Collins (15), Tank Dell (29), and CJ Stroud (59). Recency bias favors the younger offense we’ve seen perform most recently, but the Bengals are primed for a bounce back against an easy schedule in 2024.

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