I ran 1M fantasy draft simulations against bots to test draft strategies — Elite WR-then-RB stacking (Rd 1 WR then 2-5 RBs)
Ran 1 million mock draft simulations to test whether the popular elite WR, then RB stacking strategy is as effective as they say.
Test Settings: 10-team PPR, snake draft, randomized 2020-2025 seasons. League mates are bots using various, standard drafting strategy. Agent is instructed to execute the strategy and report back league results. Results are simulated using real scores from those seasons. The results were compared to another 1M simulations using ADP-driven strategy.
Conclusion: situational. Across six years combined it looks like a real edge, but that's almost entirely one season doing the carrying.
TL;DR:
- Combined across all seasons: Top Seed 12.3% vs 11.1%, Top-4 Seed 45.1% vs 43.2%, Champion's basically a wash.
- 2024 does all the heavy lifting: Top-4 Seed hit 75.5% vs 38.5% that year alone. 2020, 2022, 2023, and 2025 actually trail baseline; 2021's a mixed bag.
- Edge is real picking slots 1-5, gone or negative from slot 6 on.
| Results | Elite WR-then RB Stacking | Basic ADP |
|---|---|---|
| Top Seed | 12.32% | 11.08% |
| Top-4 Seed | 45.06% | 43.21% |
| Champion | 11.01% | 10.78% |
| Worst Team (Bottom Seed) | 8.15% | 8.17% |
| Bottom-4 Seed | 35.30% | 36.35% |
| First-Round Playoff Exit | 40.28% | 39.86% |
| Points For (avg) | 1815.76 | 1808.57 |
By year, 2024 is really its own category:
| Season | Elite WR-then RB Stacking | Basic ADP |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 34.32% | 43.19% |
| 2021 | 43.41% | 40.75% |
| 2022 | 43.16% | 48.38% |
| 2023 | 36.01% | 45.89% |
| 2024 | 75.49% | 38.47% |
| 2025 | 37.88% | 42.57% |
Why 2024? Both builds draft plain ADP from round 6 on, so that year's late QB/TE gold (Bowers, Daniels, Burrow) landed on both sides equally — whatever's driving the gap has to be rounds 1-5. And 2024 just matched this build's shape perfectly: Chase actually was the WR1, and the big RB value (Henry, Achane, Kamara, Gibbs, Barkley) landed in rounds 2-4 instead of at 1.1. Other years, the right move was grabbing an elite RB right at pick 1 (Kamara, CMC, Bijan) — exactly what forcing a WR first takes off the table.
Full breakdown, draft-slot table, and contributor tables are on the blog.
Feel free to leave questions or comments on drafting strategies you want me to try to simulate.
Posted Aug 11, 2026, 10:36 PM UTC