Dynasty Rankings – Rookies

Last Updated: April 28th at 11:12am ET

 

These are my rankings are for Dynasty League rookie drafts. My full Dynasty rankings will be updated on this page soon.

 

Rookie Evaluation Philosophy:

• The most important thing to know about a rookie is where they were drafted.
  • In addition to draft position, we’re looking for additional information that is not fully baked into draft position.
    • At WR for example, I tend not to put a lot of stock into 40 times, raw production stats, level of competition, and other variables that don’t appear to be very predictive once draft position is accounted for.
    • This also means that I don’t study film. While traditional scouting is highly valuable, it remains the primary focus of the NFL draft selection process. Therefore simply using draft position mostly captures what could be gained through my own film analysis.
      • I do find that film and scouting reports can be invaluable for helping to understand the type of player I’m analyzing, but I rely on the NFL draft as my starting point for evaluating talent level.
    • Conversely, I tend to be interested in information that may seem at first glance to be less important to success than what draftniks typically focus on.
      •  eg. career market share of yards; whether a player declared early; whether a player will begin their NFL career at 21; kick and punt return efficiency.
      • …because I’m looking for information that we can add to draft position and improve our hit rate, rather than simply predict draft position in the first place.
      • In other words, I’m looking for information that the NFL is, to some degree, ignoring.
• Situation and landing spot matters a lot more for RBs than WRs. Anyone who talked themselves out of A.J. Brown because there weren’t enough targets in Tennessee or Juju Smith-Schuster and Chris Godwin because they were “blocked” by a superstar WR, or thought that Courtland Sutton and D.J. Chark were doomed by bad QB play knows what I mean.
• RB talent still matters, and I particularly like to see pass catching ability, youth, agility, and weight adjusted speed.
• Rookie TEs tend to take a long time to develop into productive fantasy assets, and very few TEs ever return difference making production. And roster spots–especially in shallow leagues–tend to better spent on the other skill positions. As a result I’m usually only interested in premium TE rookie prospects.

ETR Dynasty Rankings - Rookies