Who will be the consensus first-round fantasy picks in 2021? If we knew the answer, we’d be rich. We’d simply draft as many of them as we could in our season-long leagues, bet the overs on all their props, trade for them in Dynasty and roster them every week in DFS until prices adjusted. Of course, we don’t know the answer.
But there are thoughtful ways to examine this question. Essentially we are looking for players who have realistic paths to hitting the top of their range this season. A median outcome from a player will not yield much profit on their current ADP.
In other words, there’s not a wide distribution of outcomes on players we know a lot about already, such as Zach Ertz, Keenan Allen or Mark Ingram. For a lot of reasons, their range of outcomes is smaller.
Instead, we are looking for players with wide ranges and high ceilings. They are often young running backs and wide receivers because in this league, older veterans at those positions are almost certainly in decline. We’re looking for players with a few “if” statements attached, but when those statements all come true we have actual first-round upside. I did this in last year’s version of this article and emerged with some gems.
On top of all that, we need to be aware of what kind of players can ascend to this rarefied first-round status. I harken back to a quote from @zjwhitman, who developed the now well-known SPARQ data: “Not all good athletes are good players. Most great players are great athletes. Few bad athletes are good players.” First-round fantasy picks are typically have very strong athletic profiles. They also typically have a lot of real-life NFL draft capital behind them.
We also know that it’s almost impossible for quarterbacks to be worth first-round fantasy picks due to positional depth. And it’s difficult for tight ends to sneak in there too due to a lowered raw production expectation.
With those thoughts in mind, here are players with a current third-round or later ADP on Underdog who have a realistic path to a first-round ADP in 2020.
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