What 5 Years of Winners Tell Us

The Weirdest Number Is Sitting in the Middle of the Draft

The number below really caught my eye. Take the 10 players who appeared on the highest percentage of ESPN championship rosters in each season from 2022 through 2025. That gives us 40 player-seasons.

Everyone else came from the first 60 picks, after pick 100 or went undrafted. Since 2023, there has not been a single player with an ADP from 61 through 100 among ESPN’s 10 most common championship players.

The year-to-year split makes it even more interesting. In 2022, nine of the top 10 were drafted inside the first 60 picks and Hurts was the only exception at 63.4. From 2023 through 2025, 10 of the 30 top-10 championship players were drafted after pick 100 or went undrafted. The middle produced zero.

Expanding the sample size does not make that last point disappear. From 2023 through 2025, only three of the 60 players who finished inside the top 20 in championship-roster share had an ADP from 61 to 100. Thirty-one came from the top 60. Another 26 came after pick 100 or went undrafted.

That leaves 57 of those 60 players, or 95%, coming from either the first 60 picks or the pick-101-plus/undrafted group. A normal draft board is not split that way. The championship list however has been.

There is probably some roster churn baked into this too. Early picks tend to stick because managers paid for them. Late breakouts get added by active teams. A seventh-round pick who turns into nothing more than a bench option is much easier to cut. That does not explain why a gap is this large but it is a good reason not to pretend Rounds 6 through 9 themselves are cursed.

What it does tell us is that those picks are a bad place to settle for a player whose best case is simply being usable. A sixth-round pick still costs enough that a low-upside season can hurt. The goal should be to find someone who can move into a much higher tier than the one he was drafted in.

First Lesson: There Is No One Way to Build a League-Winning Roster

Let’s start with the five players who appeared on the most championship rosters each year. In 2021, the group was four wide receivers and a tight end. A year later it was two running backs, a quarterback, a tight end and a wide receiver. The next three seasons mixed the positions again.

That alone makes it hard to sell one draft strategy as the answer. A league can be won behind a first-round running back, an elite wide receiver, a cheap quarterback or a rookie tight end. The position changes. The common thread is that somebody on the roster gave back a lot more than the price paid for him.

Four of those five players were drafted inside the top 17. Late-round league winners are more fun to talk about, yet the No. 1 championship player has usually been somebody managers paid for.

That’s easy to lose sight of once sleeper season takes over August. The draft is not just about finding the one player everybody missed. Hitting on an expensive pick still gives a roster a huge head start.

Waiting on Quarterback Has Become a Real Championship Trend

There is always a point in a draft where the quarterback run starts and it feels like everyone else knows something. The last three championship seasons are a good reason not to panic.

We took the three quarterbacks with the highest championship-roster shares in each ESPN season. The median ADP of that group has moved from 31.6 in 2022 to 98.5 in 2023, 109.7 in 2024 and 125.1 in 2025.

Look at the names. C.J. Stroud had an ADP of 169.0 in 2023. Jayden Daniels was 109.7 and Baker Mayfield 164.2 in 2024. Drake Maye was 125.1 and Matthew Stafford 159.9 in 2025.

That does not kill the case for picking an elite quarterback. Patrick Mahomes was the No. 2 championship-roster player in 2022, Josh Allen made the top 10 in 2023 and Lamar Jackson was No. 3 overall in 2024. The point is that the penalty for waiting has gotten smaller because late quarterbacks keep turning into real difference-makers.

FantasyPros’ 2025 My Playbook data makes the same point from a different angle. Brock Purdy teams won championships at a 14.27% rate and Drake Maye teams at 12.72%. Josh Allen helped plenty of teams reach the playoffs but his teams won titles just 7.21% of the time after a disappointing fantasy postseason.

I’ve waited on quarterback for years and this is another reason I don’t see much reason to stop. That does not mean passing on an elite option if the price is right. If anything, don’t chase the position just because the room starts taking quarterbacks.

The Waiver Wire Matters but It Does Not Replace the Draft

There are seasons where the waiver wire really does decide titles. 2023 was the best example in this sample. ESPN found that five of its top 13 championship-roster players were effectively undrafted: Kyren Williams, Puka Nacua, Brandon Aubrey, Zamir White and Trey McBride.

That is an absurd amount of title-winning production that was available after draft day. White takes it even further. He was rostered in only 0.5% of ESPN leagues entering Week 15, then took over for an injured Josh Jacobs and finished on 16.6% of championship rosters.

Then 2024 gave us another version. Bucky Irving went at ADP 167.5 and finished fourth in championship-roster share. Jonnu Smith was undrafted and finished 14th. Michael Carter was rostered in fewer than 2% of ESPN leagues on New Year’s Day, then ended up on 13.4% of champions after injuries opened the Arizona backfield.

Michael Wilson did it late in 2025. He went undrafted, then scored 86.7 fantasy points from Weeks 14 through 17 as his role grew. He finished ninth in ESPN championship-roster share at 17.4%.

2022 keeps the waiver point in check. The top five championship players were Christian McCaffrey, Patrick Mahomes, Austin Ekeler, Travis Kelce and A.J. Brown. Every one of them had an ADP of 36 or better. The first undrafted player on that list was Jerick McKinnon at No. 19.

So yes, leagues can be won on waivers. They just aren’t always. Waivers give you another chance to find the value your draft missed. Some years that chance is massive. Other years the teams with healthy stars simply keep rolling.

Championship Data Is Really Telling Us Two Stories at Once

Championship-roster share rewards two different things. A player can dominate for four months or he can catch fire right when the fantasy playoffs start. Sometimes the late pickup who barely mattered in October ends up deciding December.

Amon-Ra St. Brown is the clearest 2021 example. He entered Week 13 as the WR62, then finished as the top-scoring wide receiver over the standard Weeks 15-17 playoff stretch. FantasyPros found him on 23% of championship rosters.

CeeDee Lamb’s 2023 run was different because he was already a star. Then he scored 119.5 PPR points from Weeks 15 through 18 and at least 35 in each of the final two weeks. His 30.6% championship-roster share is the highest single-season mark in our 2022-2025 ESPN sample.

Jahmyr Gibbs followed with 126.1 points across the four 2024 fantasy playoff weeks. He was the only player to score at least 25 in all four and finished on 29% of ESPN champions. His role also grew after David Montgomery suffered an MCL sprain in Week 15.

Then came 2025. Puka Nacua dropped 46.5 in Week 16. Bijan Robinson scored at least 29 in each of the final three fantasy playoff weeks. Both finished near the top of the championship list.

Trevor Lawrence is the counterexample. He was the No. 2 overall fantasy scorer across the four playoff weeks, yet he appeared on only 10.7% of ESPN championship rosters. In one-quarterback leagues he simply was not being started enough for all those points to matter.

That’s the catch. A league winner is not just a player who scores a lot. He has to be on your roster, in your lineup and producing at the exact time the season is being decided.

Amon-Ra St. Brown Is the Five-Year Outlier

One player kept showing up no matter what the rest of the season looked like.

Amon-Ra was No. 18 on ESPN’s championship-roster list in 2022, No. 2 in 2023, No. 8 in 2024 and No. 17 in 2025. Josh Allen and Mike Evans also made the top 50 in all four seasons but Amon-Ra is the only player who stayed inside the top 20 every year.

Go back one more year and it gets better. FantasyPros had him No. 1 on championship rosters in 2021 at 23% after he entered the season around pick 211.

The price obviously changed. By 2025 his ESPN ADP was 11.3. The result did not. He kept giving fantasy teams a combination of weekly volume, availability and enough big games to stay alive deep into December.

That is a useful reminder when a reliable player starts to feel boring in August. Upside matters but a player who repeatedly earns elite volume in a good offense can be a league-winning piece even after the discount disappears.

Good Offenses Keep Producing League Winners

Some offenses kept putting multiple players onto these lists. Across the 200 ESPN player-seasons from 2022 through 2025, Cincinnati and Detroit each produced 11 top-50 appearances at quarterback, running back, wide receiver or tight end. Dallas, Arizona, Tampa Bay and San Francisco were next with nine.

The best examples came in bunches. Dallas put CeeDee Lamb, Brandon Aubrey, its defense and Dak Prescott inside the top 20 in 2023. Tampa Bay had Bucky Irving, Mike Evans and Baker Mayfield there in 2024. Detroit had Amon-Ra St. Brown, Sam LaPorta and Jahmyr Gibbs in 2023.

That is not evidence that forcing a stack wins leagues. It is a reminder that a good NFL offense can support more than one fantasy value at the same time. There is a difference between forcing a stack and breaking a close call toward a player in an offense you trust.

What the Championship Percentages Do Not Prove

This is the part where it is easy to get carried away.

ESPN’s championship-roster percentages tell us which players were common among winners. They do not tell us that drafting a certain position in Round 1 caused those teams to win. They also cannot tell us whether Zero RB beat Hero RB, whether stacking increased title odds or which draft slot was best.

To answer those questions properly, we would need complete draft and transaction histories for both champions and non-champions across a large representative sample. Anything less turns an interesting pattern into a claim the data cannot actually support.

FantasyPros’ My Playbook data shows why the denominator matters. ESPN had Josh Allen on 16.3% of championship rosters in 2025. FantasyPros, asking a different question, found that teams with Allen won their leagues 7.21% of the time. Both can be true because the first number starts with champions and the second starts with Allen teams.

So the findings worth trusting most are the ones we can actually see repeating: where the most common championship players were drafted, how quarterback cost changed, which players kept returning and how often late role changes mattered.

What Five Years of League Winners Tell Us About the 2026 Draft

Five years of winners do not hand us a perfect draft strategy. They do however make a few mistakes much easier to avoid.

1. Do not get cute with the first two rounds. Four of the last five championship-roster leaders were top-17 picks. A premium player who hits can still be the biggest edge in the league.
2. Use the middle rounds to chase a tier jump. The almost complete absence of ADP 61-100 players from the very top of the championship lists is hard to ignore. Floor is useful but those picks still need real upside.
3. Do not panic during the quarterback run. The median ADP of the top three championship QBs has pushed past pick 100 in each of the last two seasons. Waiting is not only smart, its becoming the norm.
4. Keep taking swings after the draft. Kyren Williams, Puka Nacua, Trey McBride, Michael Carter and Michael Wilson all became title pieces after their prices had already disappeared. Roles change too fast to stop looking.
5. Draft for December upside, then manage for what actually happens. No August ranking can predict every injury or late-season role change. The best rosters leave enough flexibility to act when those openings show up.

There is one more thing worth saying about the first round. It does not have to be perfect. ESPN’s 2024 data had six of the 10 first-round ADP players inside the top 24 in championship-roster share but Breece Hall, CeeDee Lamb, Tyreek Hill and Christian McCaffrey all finished 60th or worse. In 2025 FantasyPros still found teams that won with Justin Jefferson and Saquon Barkley despite championship rates of only 3.54% and 4.66%.

A bad early pick makes the season tougher. It does not end it. Hit where you can, keep chasing players whose value can change and stay active on the waiver wire when the NFL gives you another chance.