Fantasy Football Draft Strategy: 2025 RotoWire Steak League Recap & Key Takeaways

Wednesday saw the completion of two concurrent fantasy football drafts in the annual RotoWire Steak League — two separate leagues (Los Angeles and Madison) of 14 teams that use half-point PPR and three IDPs built around a $200 budget. 

There's technically an overall winner between the two leagues, but that matters little in relation to the bragging rights, and the most consequential prize, an extravagant steak dinner paid for by league-mates who finished in the bottom half in total points Weeks 1-18 in each league.

It was a frustrating multi-hour draft where I thought I had a handful of bargains only to be price enforced appropriately in the waning moments, but overall I'm pleasantly content with my roster.

Here are the overall results from the Los Angeles Steak League:

As usual for this draft, just about every expectation I had entering the event went out the window within the first hour.

I had planned to get one of the top four quarterbacks this year, and I felt relatively confident there would be a bargain on at least Jayden Daniels or Jalen Hurts, the lower rungs of the top foursome, much in the way Jim Coventry got to benefit during the King's Classic 14-team auction, or how the top of the QB market broke down in the NFFC auction draft Jake Letarski and I livestreamed last week. (I also consulted our auction draft values and mock draft simulator.)

Of course, that plan never transpired. This is an incredibly sharp room, and many have been playing in this scoring system at minimum 15 years, so I probably shouldn't have been surprised to see the room recognize how valuable a reliable, consistent rushing quarterback tends to be in this format. In particular, I tried to chase after Hurts as the last QB of the tier off the board, which presumably should have meant there was less total money still interested in the position, but I waved the white flag after he exceeded Daniels' price.

I think what aided in the QB interest was that the money was relatively evenly spaced at the very top of the market. Last year, 15 players went for $40 or more, with only two in the $40-42 range. This year saw 19 players reach that $40 threshold with a whopping six sticking around the aforementioned range. 

There are likely two reasons for that. One, Ja'Marr Chase, the conventional No. 1 overall selection in redraft formats, only went for $51. That's by far the fewest dollars attributed to the highest-priced player in at least the last 10 years of this prestigious draft, and just perusing through the annals of RotoWire Steak League history that are publicly available, I'm comfortable making the assumption this could be one of the lowest marks ever.

This is exactly why every expert preaches nomination strategy when discussing auction drafts. Chase was nominated fifth overall and effectively set the stage for every player after. While you can make an argument Bijan Robinson or Jahmyr Gibbs could go ahead of Chase in some redraft formats, even the staunchest of fans wouldn't bid aggressively over the $51 set price, and it became a trickle-down effect through the rest of the draft.

The other reason is perhaps more opinion based, but I've made the argument that there are arguably 16 "first-round picks" this year just in terms of baseline projections and relative safety, and the smoothed out numbers at the top probably reflect the league's overall agreement with that statement.

In years past whenever there's been excess money available in the league it's typically funneled into the RB position, but that wasn't the case this year. Eighteen WRs went within $18-29, whereas there were just 12 RBs who fell in the same range. That feels like an appropriate reflection of an ADP range that I think falls off dramatically for WRs after Round 8 in redraft leagues, but it was interesting to note nevertheless.

Jeff's team in particular I think did a great job recognizing the market, capitalizing early on the tepid interest for Tyreek Hill and Alvin Kamara and snowballing that into a stars/scrubs build that still was able to spend $8 at quarterback and grab easily one of the biggest fantasy football ADP risers, Emeka Egbuka, at a comfortable, if not shockingly low, price.

As for the Madison Steak League, comparing and contrasting to its Los Angeles brethren is at least interesting, if not instructive.

Below are the 28 players with the highest dollar discrepancy between the two leagues.

Click the column header to sort by position.

Among this group, it was almost an even split, with 15 higher-priced players belonging to the Los Angeles league and 13 to Madison. 

What's notable, however, is for which players each league paid a premium. In auctions, it's fine to overpay for Tier 1 talent. What you want to avoid is overpaying for middle-tier talent. When it came to running backs, Madison did better than L.A. on this score. While Madison paid more for the likes of Saquon Barkley, Jahmyr Gibbs, Bijan Robinson, Christian McCaffrey and De'Von Achane, Los Angeles paid more for D'Andre Swift, Isiah Pacheco, Joe Mixon, David Montgomery and RJ Harvey. 

As for the aforementioned Ja'Marr Chase, he went for $60 in Madison, $9 more than Los Angeles. Perhaps this was indeed because of order of nomination — as mentioned, Chase was the fifth player nominated in Los Angeles; in Madison he was second. The market not yet set, Madison bid him up. 

The tight end market is also interesting. Madison had a massive gap between the top-3 tight ends — Brock Bowers, Trey McBride and George Kittle each went for at least $17 — and the rest of the pool, with Sam LaPorta ($11) the only other tight end higher than $10. Los Angeles, meanwhile, had a much more even distribution. Bowers was the only tight end to top $18 ($28), while Travis Kelce, Sam LaPorta, Mark Andrews and T.J. Hockenson went in the mid-$10s.

We should mention Travis Hunter. In the Steak League, Hunter is a wide receiver and any defensive stats will be credited to him. Madison apparently is much more optimistic about Hunter than Los Angeles. However, in L.A., Hunter was nominated fairly early, so perhaps participants were still guarding their dollars. 

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