Should you ignore the ADP/Rankings?

The fantasy community takes “rankings” way too seriously.
If you look at online social platforms such as Twitter or Reddit come August, you’ll see a lot of people voicing their opinions on other people’s drafts. The opinions are always based on the drafter’s deviations from consensus rankings. If you had a top-3 pick last year and selected someone like Jonathan Taylor, the masses would have thought you were terrible at fantasy football.
Imagine taking Cooper Kupp anywhere within the top 3 rounds. During your draft, your leaguemates would have destroyed you with insults!
This is despite the fact that Kupp ended as the 2nd highest PPG scorer last year.

Below are the Top-12 2021 rankings going into last season. You’ll see that, in the end, only five of these players were even within the top-5 of their position.
Nowhere on this list do you see the likes of Cooper Kupp, Deebo Samuel, Najee Harris, or J’Marr Chase.

THE FANTASY GROUP-THINK ECHO CHAMBER

The group-think player rankings are very problematic, and very little consideration is put into where these consensus rankings come from. The reality is that the thought process is very formulaic:

Ranking = How well a player did last year + (plus or minus) a slot or two depending on environment change.

This is an extremely flawed formula for so many reasons. It will come up with rationalizations such as these for 2022:
Assumption: Austin Ekeler was the 3rd highest PPG scorer last season. Obviously, he should be a top 5 selection.
Flaw: Let’s just ignore the fact that the Chargers drafted a rookie RB, and that Ekeler has had some injuries issues in the past.

Assumption: Javonte Williams wasn’t even a Top 12 scorer last year, so at best he’s a late 1st or early 2nd round pick.
Flaw: Sure, to begin with, Melvin Gordon will continue to share carries. However, Gordon is also 29 years old (a ripe age for injury) and the Bronco offense will be vastly improved now that they have an elite QB. Maybe taking him in the early/mid-first shouldn’t be overlooked.

I won’t even begin with the flaws around the fact that Derrick Henry’s current ADPs is #2.
The Titans lost their only good WR (think: Constantly stacked box) and Henry suffered his first major injury last year. Sure, maybe he’s still worthy of a 1st round pick, but probably not #2!

CREATE YOUR OWN RANKING FORMULA

Instead of following the masses, be daring and create your own formula for ranking players you should draft.

For example, let’s flop the current formula, and instead create a greater emphasis on “Environmental Change”. This would create a new formula of:

Ranking = Player’s environment change + consideration of how a player performed did last year.

Maybe you can add even further sophistication to a formula:

Ranking = Player’s environment change + consideration of how a player performed did last year + injury history/player age

Want to know why people missed on Cooper Kupp last year?
Not enough emphasis was placed on the fact that the Rams were replacing an inept quarterback with a fairly elite one. What further clouded the situation is that many people didn’t realize Stafford was a fairly elite QB, because his prior environment was also terrible. So you had an overlooked QB, who was brought down by a bad team, moving to a vastly improved environment who had a receiver just waiting for someone capable of throwing him the ball.

BUT DON’T COMPLETELY IGNORE ADP

There is value to be had from ADP rankings. Going back to the Cooper Kupp example from last year: He still wouldn’t have been a good 1st round pick, simply because his ADP was around the high 40s. This means you could have taken Kupp in the 2-3rd round (early enough to assure to got him), and utilized your first-rounder for someone else.

However, if you were high on Jonathan Taylor last year and had a Top-3 pick, you could have utilized ADP to know that there’d be no way to wait on him.

NEXT STEPS

This year, try to ignore the masses. Come up with your own ranking formulas, and strategies to get the players that will do best this year (not last year), and optimize where you should take them.

Below are a few resources to find current ADP rankings:

• Fantasy Football Calculator

• Fantasy Pros “Consensus Experts”

• Fantasy Data

• MyFantasyLeague ADP (Most accurate after June)

2021 ADP Rankings

source: Fantasy Data