Fantasy Football Mock Draft: 12 Teams, Half-PPR, Late Pick (2024)

We are now well into Fantasy Football Mock Draft season. Last week I used the FantasyPros Draft Wizard to put together a team starting with the 11th pick in a 12-team PPR league. I’ll play it through again later in the draft this week, starting with the 12th pick, but with a half-PPR league instead.

It was easy to change my scoring system and selection in this fantasy football mock draft because the free Draft Wizard allows you to create a custom mock draft with the same score, roster size and number of teams as your league. Even better, you can instantly draft against a computer algorithm that uses a mix of ADP and Consensus rankings from FantasyPros experts – no more fantasy football mock drafts where everyone is eliminated after the first few rounds!

The roster settings for this fantasy football mock draft were 1 QB, 2 RBs, 3 WRs, 1 TE, 1 Flex, 1 DST and 1 K, plus six backup spots. I’ll break down my picks round by round below, but you can check out the full fantasy football mock draft Here.

Fantasy football mock draft

1.12: Puka Nacua (WR – LAR)

As I mentioned in my last mock, my preferred strategy when making late first-round picks in 12-team leagues this year is to draft a receiver and a running back. Puka was my favorite receiver available late in the round in this draft, so he was a no-brainer to start. His recent knee injury is a little concerning, especially since he struggled with injuries in college, but that’s not enough to pass him over here. After all, Nacua finished as a WR4 as a rookie in half-PPR. There’s reason to expect a slight drop-off with the return of Cooper Kupp (more on him later), but Puka should still be able to live up to his WR8 draft price.

2.01: Saquon Barkley (RB – PHI)

Barkley was the obvious choice to anchor my team alongside Nacua. While he’s not quite the dynamic playmaker he was in his early years in the league, Barkley is still an above-average runner, ranking 13th in NextGenStats’ Rush Yards Over Expected (RYOE) per run in 2023. While Barkley only finished as the RB11 in points per game last season, his move from New York to Philadelphia is just about the biggest upgrade possible. With guaranteed volume behind an elite offensive line, Barkley should easily finish as the RB1.

3.12: Cooper Kupp (WR – LAR)

Of course, pairing Kupp with Nacua is an interesting choice, and deciding to do so was probably the hardest decision I made in this entire mock. But even with Puka dominating the headlines in 2023, Kupp still had plenty of work to do (if healthy). The 2021 WR1 averaged a 28% target share in his 12 healthy games (including playoffs). That would put him just outside the top 10 for the season… and right behind Nacua at 29%. While pairing the two Rams together does reduce the overall potential of this roster for the entire season, sometimes simply picking the best players is the right move, and Kupp has the best profile of all the remaining receivers on the board.

4.01: DK Metcalf (WR – SEA)

Metcalf immediately helps solve the upside problem created by the selection of Kupp. Although he hasn’t been as productive in recent years, DK has a top-10 finish to his name and is still the Seahawks’ best receiver. If Seattle’s offense takes a step forward under a new coaching staff, Metcalf could once again be considered as a WR1. If not, he’s still a very good WR3 player.

5.12: James Conner (RB – ARI)

Conner is criminally underrated as one of the NFL’s best pure rushers. He finished the 2023 season ranked fourth in RYOE per attempt and fourth in PFF rush grade, but never seems to enter the discussion of the league’s best RBs. From a fantasy perspective, Conner isn’t a particularly good receiver, but that matters less in a half-PPR league. The 29-year-old veteran is slipping down draft boards due to the excitement surrounding rookie Trey Benson, but he should still have another year of solid RB2 production left in the tank.

6.01: Kyler Murray (QB – ARI)

This is suddenly a very NFC West-heavy draft, with five of my first six picks coming from the same division. But again, it was simply about selecting the best player available, as Kyler one of the best quarterback values earlier this season. With his obvious potential as a dual player and a brand new weapon in Marvin Harrison Jr., Murray is the last quarterback in the draft who poses a real threat to the top three at the position.

7.12: Diontae Johnson (WR – CAR)

The thing about Diontae Johnson is simple: He creates space for himself. ESPN’s Recipient tracking metrics rank him as by far the best separator in the entire league since his 2019 draft. This ability should make him Bryce Young’s new best friend, as the 2023 first-round pick was absolutely desperate for free receivers in his rookie year. Johnson will never be a touchdown or big-play machine, but as this offense’s best weapon, he should easily get over 100 targets.

8.01: Javonte Williams (RB – DEN)

Eight rounds into the draft, Javonte Williams is the first AFC player taken on this roster. Unlike Murray and Johnson, Williams isn’t necessarily one of my favorite players drafted this year. But as the selection went, he was by far the best running back left. The Broncos may have a surplus of backs in their backfield, but Williams most likely won’t be the odd man out. Worst case scenario, he should see about 50% of the snaps in Sean Payton’s very running back-friendly offense. Best case scenario, he might finally live up to the hype he had earlier in his career with a breakout season.

9.12: David Njoku (TE – CLE)

Selecting Njoku here is a bit of a stretch, but picks like that are sometimes necessary when drafting on the spot. When my next picks came up, the best tight ends available were guys like Luke Musgrave and Dallas Goedert, who are clearly a step below Njoku. Even looking at last year’s performance shows that Njoku is at the bottom of a step as a tight end. He averaged 10.0 half-PPR points per game in 2023, the seventh-highest number among TEs. Cole Kmet, the TE8, averaged just 8.5. Njoku will compete with new addition Jerry Jeudy for second place on the Browns in targets, which should allow him to be a solid TE1.

10.01: Ladd McConkey (WR – LAC)

Ladd McConkey’s 2024 outlook is full of questions. Is he as good as his stellar route-per-route numbers at Georgia suggest, or is the fact that he rarely played all of his snaps a red flag? Will Jim Harbaugh and Greg Roman stick with a run-heavy offense, with Justin Herbert at quarterback and Gus Edwards as the top running back? Will McConkey show enough as a rookie to overtake the uninspiring veterans ahead of him in the rankings and assert himself as the Chargers’ WR1? If all of those factors work out for McConkey, he could easily finish the season as a weekly WR2 option — that’s the kind of potential I want in a backup player.

11.12: Khalil Herbert (RB – CHI)

Speaking of backups with potential, Khalil Herbert is an interesting player for 2024. At the very least, he’s a handcuff and will lead the Bears’ backfield if D’Andre Swift is out. But there’s a sneaky chance Herbert will play a bigger role than widely expected, even if Swift is healthy. Herbert has always been well above average in terms of run efficiency (.29 RYOE per attempt last year), while Swift … hasn’t managed that (0.29 yards below Attempt compared to last year’s expectations.) Could Swift follow the Miles Sanders trend of running backs leaving the Eagles for a big contract and immediately losing their job? Herbert is worth trying to find out.

12.01: Michael Wilson (WR – ARI)

I considered Patriots rookie receiver Ja’Lynn Polk for this pick, but ultimately decided to form a mini-Cardinals stack by pairing Wilson with Murray. Wilson, a third-round pick in the 2023 draft, showed some talent as a rookie and had some big games after Kyler returned from injury. However, the arrival of MHJ and the emergence of Trey McBride means he’ll likely be a distant third on this team in terms of targets. Wilson still has some upside, though. As promising as Harrison Jr. is, there’s always the chance he needs some time to adjust to the NFL (or gets injured). Or, as I already suspect with this roster, maybe Kyler re-establishes himself as a top-tier quarterback and provides enough production for all three. Regardless, Wilson is a decent flyer at this stage of the draft.

13.12: Bucky Irving (RB – TB)

Unlike Herbert, Irving is a pure handcuff pick. Rachaad White was inefficient on the floor, but I still don’t expect the fourth-round rookie to significantly reduce his workload. However, Irving would be the obvious candidate to fill a very fantasy-friendly role if White misses time. That’s enough to make him worth a late 13th-round pick.

14.01: Matthew Stafford (QB – LAR)

I hate selecting a second quarterback, especially this late in the draft. But Stafford missed his ADP by several rounds, so I couldn’t pass up the chance to pair him with his two top receivers. He probably won’t survive the first week of waivers on this roster. But pairing Stafford with Kupp and Nacua could be a league-deciding move if he can find his 2021 magic again.

3:12 p.m.: Chicago Bears Summer Time

As always, I plan to stream defense early in the season, so with that in mind, I’m excited to pick the Bears, who finished strong last season and, more importantly, have a good matchup against the Titans in Week 1.

16:01: Jake Moody (K – SF)

There’s no point in drafting a kicker before the final round, as the top options are nearly impossible to predict on a yearly basis and are barely better than the bad options anyway. Moody is locked in as a top option for a good offense, so he’s as good a pick as any.