For me, football is my year-round obsession. Not a day goes by that I don’t consider the sport and the potential range of outcomes for the upcoming season. I think about this 365 days so you don’t have to. I’m obsessed, so you get to enjoy your normal life. And I’m far from cursed in mine, to be fair.

Here, I’ll lay out my blueprint for 2024 fantasy football drafts — a compilation of my thoughts about the game after charting hundreds of wide receiver routes, watching endless film and running through my projections for all 32 teams. I’ll get some major assists along the way from the great folks I’m lucky to consider colleagues here at Yahoo. I’ll point you to great work to read or listen to later and, hopefully, challenge the way you think.

If you’re just now jumping back into football, welcome. If you’ve been keeping up with content all year, thank you for your support and for keeping the lights on. But the journey is just beginning for all of us. So let’s delay no further and unveil a blueprint to build your most successful season yet.

Good luck.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story will continuously be updated throughout draft season with new content and new ideas — keep it locked here!

Big-picture thoughts for 2024
The more I've thought about fantasy football this year, the more I’m convinced it all starts at running back. How you approach the ever-evolving running back position will decide the rest of your team.

No pressure.

The first round of drafts has three industry consensus Tier 1 options and all three check the boxes we want for RB1 overall candidates.

I don’t see a huge gap between Hall and Robinson but Andy Behrens and Dalton Del Don recently engaged in a debate on who should hold the title for RB2 if you’re having trouble picking between those two fantastic backs.

Jahmyr Gibbs and Jonathan Taylor are Yahoo's other Round 1 RB picks, even though that’s not the consensus across the industry. Both of them profile as more early Round 2 picks to me, with one significant question mark in their profiles. For Gibbs, David Montgomery’s presence blocks him from a full workhorse role. In the case of Taylor, Anthony Richardson starting an entire season will put a cap on both his touchdown and target ceiling projections.

After that, there’s a cast of running backs with serious uncertainty in their outlooks going in Round 2 to 3. I’ll break down that group later on below, but you need to be prepared to take risks in this area. My antenna is raised at some of the wide receivers with Round 2-3 ADPs. Not that I think they’re bad individual bets, but they don’t have the resume typically associated with receivers that high. Wideouts have been pushed up in drafts this year because of the rising importance and depth of the position, and the lack of quality running back draft classes in recent years.

Once we enter the Round 4 to 7 range, we’re back in the typical running back dead zone. There’s a flawed mix of declining veterans, projected volume boosters and some uncertain youngsters. Unlike last year’s dead zone, which provided a few hits, this year’s has much more of the former two categories than the latter. That makes it a tricky place to pick players.