Fantasy football draft values: Field's Favorites for 2024 - ESPN

I look forward to writing this piece every year, as it's my chance to highlight the players I'll be targeting frequently in my fantasy football drafts (and in my mock drafts, of which there have been close to 50 already this offseason).

The concept of Field's Favorites is not an exercise in highlighting the best overall players in fantasy football this season. My positional and top 160 rankings are available to check out for that content. It's also not my favorite players no one is talking about. We have a sleepers overview on ESPN.com and we'll talk about plenty of them on the «Fantasy Focus» podcast (Monday through Friday at 10 a.m. ET on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts).

This is a blend of it all: star players I happen to have a particular affinity for relative to where my colleagues rank them, established standouts going lower than expected right now based on ADP data, or players on the rise I am optimistic will make a leap this season.

Let's get to it.

If you've listened to «Fantasy Focus» this offseason, you likely have heard of my love for Richardson and how I'm bullish on him becoming the next superstar fantasy quarterback. There are some numbers to help build the case, as Richardson had four rushing touchdowns in just 12 quarters of play as a rookie and posted more than 20 fantasy points in each of his two full games played. But this is largely a projection, as Richardson had a small sample size of starts coming into the NFL and then missed the final 13 games of his rookie season due to a shoulder injury. His rushing ability — Richardson ran a 4.45-second 40 at 244 pounds during the 2023 NFL combine — gives him a pathway to put together a season similar to Jalen Hurts' first full season as a starter,