Drafting directly off rankings without any context is dangerous. It’s important we understand a variety of factors, including tiers, what our opponents will do, team structure, and how the rankings work.
Below is a list of FAQs we hope will help subscribers using our rankings. If you have further questions, don’t hesitate to ping a team member on Discord.
How do our rankings work?
Our rankings are a direct function of our season-long projections. For each team, we project play volume, pass share, sack rate, scramble rate, and more. For each player, we project a passing attempts market share, rushing attempts share, and target share. We have multiple algorithms designed to project player efficiency (and we manually adjust these inputs in spots where we think the algorithm can’t perfectly project efficiency, such as when a player changes teams). From there, we also bake in a ceiling case for each player (e.g. what is Christian McCaffrey‘s ceiling target share?) and estimate the odds of each player hitting that ceiling. Lastly, we bake in ADP and positional scarcity for every drafting platform, and that organizes the players into rankings.
Are Silva’s rankings incorporated into our Top-300s?
Silva’s rankings are not directly weighted in our rankings, but we do factor in his feedback – and the feedback of everyone else on our team – when creating our projections. Silva’s personal Top-150 rankings will be out in May.
How often do our rankings update?
Our rankings are constantly updating every time we adjust our projections. We update immediately for news. It typically takes 5-10 minutes for our projections changes to sync to the rankings on site. Site-specific ADP is updated once per day, usually in the morning.
Do our rankings bake in positional scarcity?
We do bake in positional scarcity into our rankings, and we do this individually for each site. That is important since WR scarcity on Underdog is different than WR scarcity on FFPC.
Do our rankings bake in ADP?
Yes – ADP is pretty good at predicting how players are going to do and the wisdom of the crowds results in a relatively efficient market (and one that gets more efficient every year as we get better and better at fantasy). We don’t want to ignore what everyone else is thinking, so we bake ADP into our rankings. The one exception is when there is a big trade or FA signing when ADP becomes less relevant for the players affected. In those scenarios, we will temporarily not bake in ADP only for the players who are affected by the news.
How should I use the rankings if I am drafting 150 teams?
This is partially personal preference, but most drafters building a portfolio like to diversify who they’re drafting. Using Underdog as an example: There are going to be some players we have ranked two rounds ahead of ADP. Conversely, there will be players we’re multiple rounds below market on. If you’re building a portfolio, this does not mean you have to take the first player in every draft and never pick the latter player.
The market has predictive power and you open yourself up to immense risk if you’re exclusively picking the same 30-40 players in every draft. Exactly how you manage your exposures is up to you, but diversification is recommended if you’re drafting a large number of teams. This is particularly true early in the draft – just because we rank Amon-Ra St. Brown over Justin Jefferson (at the moment) doesn’t mean you should do that in every draft. That would result in you drafting 0% Jefferson. It’s reasonable to just follow ADP at the top of the draft. Check out John Daigle’s tiers for a better picture of which players we think are in the same ballpark as each other.
How should I use the rankings if I’m drafting one team?
If you’re drafting one team, you can follow our rankings to a T, but you certainly don’t have to. At the end of the day, it’s your team, and you should pick the players that you want. We invest a lot of time and energy into getting our rankings as efficient as possible, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to bat 1.000.
How closely should I follow the rankings late in drafts?
Late in drafts, you may be hurting at one position and need to load up on that position, even if our rankings say there is a higher-rated player available at another position. Furthermore, it should be noted that minute projections changes can result in huge swings for players ranked 200th or lower. We do our best on our projections, but if the difference between a 7.5% and an 8% target share is 15 spots in the rankings, it’s fair to not adhere perfectly to the rankings.
Also note that in large-field Best Ball tournaments, there is value in having players on your roster that don’t get drafted in every league. You’ll get leverage on the field.
“I never draft Player Y and I am worried about being underexposed.”
This is the opposite of the previous question. If you’re worried about missing out on a breakout season from Player Y, feel free to start drafting that player regardless of the rankings! We will take stands on certain players and feel confident that we will beat the market in the long term on those stands, but that doesn’t mean we’re getting to get every single one right. If you are worried about being underexposed to a certain guy, start drafting him! It’s also important to consider roster construction here; if we rank a running back low but he’s an ideal fit for a Zero RB build (i.e. he fills a certain role on your team), that might be a good place to get exposure to that player, even if you want to be underweight overall.
“I keep drafting Player X and I am worried about being overexposed.”
As discussed above, diversification is a tried and true strategy among many fantasy sharps. If you feel like you are drafting a certain player too often and worried about what would happen if he busts – stop drafting that player! Similar to how roster construction matters if you’re never drafting a certain player (as outlined in the previous question), that’s something to consider here too.
“I am always drafting this position early in the draft. What should I do?”
Generally, this is by design as we believe there is a structural edge on many formats. For example, it’s well-chronicled that RBs have gone too early on many platforms historically. However, these are still your teams, and if you are uncomfortable with your draft capital allocation in a certain position, go ahead and manually adjust your draft strategy.
Note: The one exception to this would be the QB position, as individual draft rooms can vary wildly in how they draft QBs, especially in Superflex. You don’t want to get completely left in the dust at quarterback, so you will have to go with the flow on when your draft room is picking QBs.
“What if I’m drafting in Best Ball Mania [or any other tournament]?”
We use ADP for those contests to try to help, but it’s worth factoring in tournament-specific factors too since our projections flow through to all rankings sets, so we can’t lower a certain player in BBM rankings specifically without also lowering him in general Underdog rankings, all FFPC rankings, etc. You still need to factor in the context of the tournament settings when drafting. For example, you may want to scroll down further in the late rounds for low-owned players in BBM, or maybe you mentally lower players who rise massively throughout the offseason because early drafters got them at a far cheaper price.
How do the rankings work for rookies and FAs?
After the NFL Draft, the rankings for rookies work the same as they would for any other player. Pre-draft, we basically fudge their ranking to get them where we want. For free agents, we are still projecting targets and carries like we do for every player, but it’s a much more feel-based process where we are likely to project a certain workload in order to get them ranked where we want.
