The 2025 season hasn’t even wrapped up yet, but at Campus2Canton, we’re always looking forward to supplemental drafts. For the uninitiated, supplemental drafts are drafts in college fantasy football leagues that include incoming freshmen and players not rostered at the end of each season. Each format has small tweaks and nuances, but these guidelines should generally work in all formats.
1. Trade up, not down.
In most draft types, trading down and accumulating assets makes sense, giving you more shots to hit on players or assets you can later leverage. However, what makes supplemental drafts different is the rapid decline in hit rates. Outside the very top of the draft, it becomes more difficult to nail your selection, while the high-end assets are the players with the most likely hit rates and by a wide margin.
Assuming the top three selections are equivalent to ~100 (top value), the chart above shows how quickly the decline in pick value happens. Historically, in Campus2Canton drafts, the player hit rate is <50% across all positions in the draft’s first two rounds. However, hit rates are closer to 75% at the top end.
For example, in the 2024 drafts, Jeremiah Smith, DJ Lagway, Cam Coleman, Dylan Raiola, and Ryan Williams were hits. However, Micah Hudson was a clear miss. Five of six is pretty good! That’s mostly where the “good” stopped, though. Julian Sayin, Quinton Martin, David Eziomume, and Mylan Graham all missed and had an ADP in the 6 to 18 selections. However, TJ Moore, Ryan Wingo, and Bryant Wesco did provide value in these rounds. Three of seven…and we’re barely into the second half of round two.
Let’s go back further. The 2023 supplemental drafts were a borderline catastrophe. The top selections all disappointed relative to expectations. Dante Moore, Malachi Nelson, and Jackson Arnold are all off to new schools. Nico Iamaleava had a down season, and Arch Manning is on the back of milk cartons. It only worsens as we continue with Brandon Inniss, Cedric Baxter, Zachariah Branch, and Johntay Cook. Arguably, the best selection here was Carnell Tate. In the last two drafts, in true freshman order, the top three have had 4 / 6 hits, and the second half of the first has 4 / 12. Second-round freshmen have hit at a 15% clip in the meantime.
After round two, freshmen become harder to identify, and fewer are chosen. I excluded CFF-only assets in this analysis mostly because few even go this high in drafts, and the ones who do are often standouts, hitting at a higher rate than freshmen.
How To: Implementing this strategy means getting uncomfortable. Drafters have to be willing to trade multiple high-end picks to get into elite territory. Packing late 1sts and early 2nds to draft top-five, especially in this class, will make a massive difference in adding to your Campus2Canton rosters.
2. Draft quarterbacks. Early and often.
Don’t listen to the haters; quarterbacks are the priority position in supplemental drafts. I wrote this article back in 2021, and everything remains true. Quarterbacks hit at a 12% higher rate than any other position drafts, but more importantly, they retain value.
Most quarterbacks don’t start year one, at least to begin the season. Those with rare talent (Caleb Williams, Dylan Raiola, DJ Lagway) can win out eventually, and when they even flash some potential, it wheels up. However, those quarterbacks who don’t play are given the benefit of the doubt based on recruiting pedigree. Unlike wide receivers and the Year 1 Zero Theory, quarterbacks have no minimum threshold to hit in their first season. Even quarterbacks who struggle but have pedigree are given more leeway (see Moore, Dante). There are countless examples as most are not expected to come in and start immediately. Therefore, you don’t usually lose value in the first year post-draft. Just maintaining value is great, considering the <50% hit rates among freshmen.
Additionally, if a quarterback hits, this will be the cheapest they will be, likely indefinitely. With some positions, a first-year struggle could make them cheaper to acquire in years two and three. With quarterbacks, there are few buy-low opportunities because not only do they maintain value (see above), but even with small gains, they become hard to acquire. An example is three-star LaNorris Sellers, who threw four passes in 2023, yet in 2024, he entered the season as a top-ten pick.
Finally, and this is obvious, but they’re the most important piece for both college and NFL teams. The vast majority of leagues are super-flex or start 2QB at the NFL level, and with only 32 potential starting jobs, it’s critical to secure this position.
How to: Draft quarterbacks, folks!
3. Late-round picks are interchangeable.
The chart above explains this clearly. After the first handful of rounds, the difference in the draft round is essentially non-existent. This is a shorter section, but it’s a borderline cheat code because of how little difference there is between the last ~60-80 picks in every supplemental draft. Below is the assigned round value based on a calculation that combines hit rate, startup average draft position, and a proprietary value formula that Campus2Canton is cooking up.
The big takeaway here is that drafters are going by their own rankings once we reach the non-consensus part of the draft, and given the way college fantasy operates, it’s easy to envision a player going in round eight or nine in one draft and rounds 13 or 14 in another. Based on the chart above, round 10 is 28% more valuable than a pick in round 15 but only six points different in raw pick value (of 100).
How to: If these late-round picks are interchangeable, use these potential pick swaps to add value in trades. Swapping an 8th and a 15th in supplemental drafts may seem steep, but the value difference is minimal and your leaguemates likely don’t see it that way.
4. Understand the shortcomings of legacy recruiting services.
This is not to denigrate the great work that sites like 247Sports and On3 do, but it’s meant to highlight how their goals don’t necessarily align with ours. Projecting players for collegiate relevance and how well they’re going to perform overlaps with our goal, but it doesn’t quite meet the criteria we desire, i.e., projecting fantasy relevance and a path to the NFL.
Oh, right, this is the place to plug the phenomenal work that the recruiting team for Campsu2Canton does, including the current 2025 rankings. In general, I put our work up there against anyone, but the big difference between what we do and what the legacy services do is the fantasy implications.
Each year, there are a handful of players that we diverge on versus consensus, especially at the running back position. For example, Emmanuel Henderson, a consensus top running back, was profiled as a quality collegiate player but a tweener for fantasy purposes. Our rankings were significantly lower and if you were drafting him relative rankings, it’s a wasted selection. This largely applies to undersized running backs more than most positions, as most services rank them highly. In supplemental drafts, it’s important to prioritize fantasy-relevant talent.
How to: Use Campus2Canton recruiting rankings! But in actuality, just make sure you are informed and know where to diverge from consensus recruiting ranks.
