The Geek Talks Fantasy Draft with Keith on the DFS Army Daily Dispatch
Welcome to the 2016 Fantasy Football season. Obviously, this site is all about daily fantasy sports but I loves me some season long fantasy football as well. In daily fantasy football, I like to focus on value players when I draft my teams. The same can be said in season long leagues. The second factor I like to consider when drafting my season long team is the scarcity of resources. How replaceable is the player and how much depth is available that the position in question? Replaceability is one of the reasons sharp season long players generally wait until the later rounds of the draft to attack the QB, Defense, and Kicker positions. Defenses can be streamed, Kicker’s are unpredictable, and every QB in the league touches the football on virtually every offensive play and therefore can deliver at least some fantasy points. The talent drop-offs at RB, WR and TE are much more dramatic. A savvy drafter understands this and will draft a team with the depth to withstand the bye weeks and inevitable injuries.
Every season has its quirks. Looking at the player pool for this season there are some notable changes from pre vious seasons. One difference is the depth at the TE position. We had some breakout stars in 2015 that are poised to continue their dominance this season. Names like Reed, Barndige, Eifert and Walker all had huge 2015 seasons and should continue that trend. Add in a couple of sleepers in Ledarius Green and Coby Fleener and you have a position that has flipped from traditionally thin to very deep. This depth renders a player like Gronk as a reach at his current 1st round ADP. The QB position is also incredibly deep this year. Outside of Cam Newton, who is incredibly awesome and should post monster numbers, there isn’t a QB that’s really worth reaching for prior to the 5th or 6th rounds. The RB position in 2016 is actually quite tricky and in my opinion, will be the key to many drafts. Outside of a few lockdown studs, there are questions marks surrounding most of the position. Will Freeman be the bell cow for Atlanta? As a 1st rounder, it’s a risky move to grab him with the coaching staff calling for more of an RBBC with him and Coleman. Other teams have guys that may start but maybe not. Players like Langford, Rawls, Matt Jones and Ajayi could all wind up as top 10 scorers if they hit but they could all bust as well. None of those guys is a lock to start at this point and none of them have enough history to be considered reliable. Will Lacy bounce back? What about Shady McCoy. He bombed last season. Will he bounce back or get stuck in a dreaded RBBC with Karlos Williams?
As you think about these issues take a look at the chart below. The chart organizes players by their current consensus 1 point PPR Average Draft Position. Average Draft Position or ADP is the starting point from which we measure player value in a fantasy draft. The players are not arranged by my rankings per se. Instead, what I’m trying to do here is identify value against consensus ADP. If you draft based on value you will generally do really well in your fantasy leagues.
The following two charts are all you need to dominate your draft this season. The first is a detailed projection which uses expert consensus rankings and projections, with my personal weightings, to identify the best values in the draft. I will follow that up with my personal Draft Notes.
Click Here To View The Full Sheet in Docs
How to read this chart? To start, these projections are based on 1 point PPR scoring.
VOR – Value over replacement. This represents the difference between that player’s projection and the average projection for fantasy starting players of that same position. It basically measures a players studliness compared to other starting fantasy players.
Points – Total points projection for the player
VOR Rank – Rankings based on VOR
ECR – Expert Consensus Ranking
ADP – Average Draft Position – Sheet is sorted by ADP
ADP Diff – Difference between ADP and ECR
Position Rank – Ranking by position – Based on VOR
Dropoff – Dropoff in points to the next player in the same position
Using This Chart
What we have here is a combination of ECR, Projections and ADP. There are many keys to a successful fantasy draft but identifying value is certainly important. When drafting I’m looking at the dropoff column first and foremost. In fantasy football we generally try to identify tiers for each position group. Generally there is a decent size drop off between tiers as far as total points projections. In the ideal scenario, when drafting you are looking at the last player in a particular tier, where the dropoff to the next player in that position group is significant, then you should grab that player. The “dropoff” column quantifies this. If you are drafting and considering between two players, I’d lean towards the one with the bigger dropoff to the next player. Identifying large gaps between ADP and VOR Rank is another method to find value opportunities when drafting. Take a look at our Fantasy Football draft cheat sheet below!
This next chart includes my personal draft notes. Once again this is sorted based on ADP for 1 point PPR formats. The above chart was put together based on expert consensus rankings. Below I’m adding my personal touch. It isn’t enough to blindly follow projections and expert consensus rankings. In some situations a gut feel is helpful.
In case the chart below doesn’t show well in your browser you can check out the complete list HERE