Dynasty Fantasy Football: Mining the 2023 NFL Draft for value buys from Day 3 to target in your rookie drafts

The 2023 NFL Draft is over, and depending on your Dynasty Fantasy Football league settings, you may have only a few days — or hours left to go before your rookie drafts. The players drafted on Day 1 will be on everyone’s radar both in redraft and Dynasty leagues, but the draft is always about more than that — and Day 2 and Day 3 picks ultimately define the winning and losing franchises over time. That is also the case for your Dynasty Football rosters. It’s easy to draft Bijan Robinson in the first round of your rookie-only draft, but when you get to Rounds 3 and 4 is where you have the opportunity to really make a difference-making value pick that can shape your Dynasty roster for years to come. That’s what this piece today is all about.

I’ll dive into players from all four positions you can target later in your rookie-only Dynasty drafts. The rules are pretty simple: I will only feature players who were selected on Day 3 or signed as UDFAs — that means Rounds 4-7 plus the undrafted free agents. These are ultimately players I feel were drafted at big-time values, and you can do the same to help your Dynasty roster accrue value. The focus will be less on how the team that drafted them impacts their 2023 value — this isn’t a redraft piece.

Without further ado, let’s dive into these Dynasty gems from Day 3 (Rounds 4-7) you should target in your rookie-only drafts and also in deeper keeper leagues.

My favorite Day 3 draft pick from a Dynasty standpoint was Jones to the Bengals. After evaluating game film on hundreds of prospects this April, Jones stood out above the rest as the best wide receiver not getting a lot of consensus buzz. The drawback with Jones is his size (5-11, 175) and straight-line speed (4.43) but Jones’ game film speaks for itself. He had one of the most diverse release packages off the line of scrimmage of any wide receiver in this class. This specifically allowed him to stack defensive backs as a vertical receiver. Jones is incredibly strong at the catch point at all three levels — high-pointing on the vertical plane and making the difficult catches in traffic over the middle on the short and intermediate routes. He also has a natural feel for where to sit in zone and that helped him become his quarterback’s best friend despite not having much time to build a rapport with him — Jones spent time at Buffalo and Iowa before transferring to Purdue. 

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