The entire pre-draft fantasy industry revolves around rankings. A "fantasy football rankings" Google search brings up nearly 500,000 hits. Qualitative judgments? Yeah, they're fine. But what most managers want are easy-to-read rankings that can help them dominate their drafts.
But how many people think about what rankings actually mean? In other words, what criteria are ranking creators using to place Player G here and Player H there? If I'm not making sense, here's an example to help illustrate what I see as the biggest problem with rankings: the fact that no one knows how to decipher them.
No judgment on Matthew Berry's rankings, but let's look at his, which realistically a million or more people read, and possibly use: https://www.espn.com/fantasy/football/story/_/id/25759239/fantasy-football-2019-updated-ppr-rankings-matthew-berry. He's got Duke Johnson as an RB-50. A little conservative given Johnson's track record, though I understand why some people are concerned with whether he might be traded soon, and how that could impact his usage. But this isn't about Matthew's perceptiveness, so let's get to the crux of the issue. . . .
At RB-56 and -57 are Kareem Hunt and Jamaal Williams. We've got an historically high-floor Duke Johnson with a questionable 2019 role coming in at #50, and two bellcow-capable RBs with arguably lower floors--and much higher ceilings--coming about one round later on Matthew's draft board. While Hunt's suspended until Week 10, he's one Nick Chubb injury away from potentially dominating down the stretch. And while I've pushed Aaron Jones over Jamaal Williams for a couple years, an injury to Jones could catapult Williams into RB2+ territory. Meanwhile, Duke Johnson is unlikely to ever earn more than a dozen touches a game, placing his ceiling comfortably below those of Hunt and Williams.
Neither Matthew's rankings--nor, frankly, anyone else's--present the varied choices confronting us in draft rooms. They don't account for how we like to construct our team (for example, boom-bust vs. safer points). They ignore draft flow, feeding managers a "draft the next guy down" approach regardless of one's roster needs or the needs of one's opponents or a recent run on a position. They don't effectively quantify huge drops in talent from one positional tier to the next.
Rankings are commodities. They're ubiquitous. They're often assembled without a clear understanding of what they mean, or how to convey what they mean to readers. We accept them at face value, even though their value is highly suspect--not because the people assembling them are dumb, but because the rankings themselves are open to interpretation. At best, they're trite. At worst, when misunderstood and mis-applied, they're harmful.
This summer I've been working on what I hope is a more comprehensive approach to draft-room decision making. A screen shot is attached. This spreadsheet consists of my top-300 rankings, the more universal top-300 rankings based on average draft position, whose values have jumped and dropped the most this past week, RB handcuffs, teams' #1 wideouts, and two tiers of undervalued and overvalued players. Taken collectively, this information presents a fuller picture of players' comparative value, when to reach, when to draft high-upside vs. high-floor, etc.
Subscribers have received versions of this each week for the past three weeks. The next update will go out tonight or tomorrow morning. As most of your know, subscriptions are pay-what-you-want. Payments this year have ranged from $1 to $150. Regardless of what you want to contribute, everyone gets the same product. Sign-up info below.
I'll leave you with this: Fantasy drafting is an art and a science. But every set of rankings out there focuses solely on the science. There's no art to picking the next guy on the list. It's a one-dimensional solution to a three-dimensional problem. There is a better way.
Sign up for Pre-Draft Top 300 Rankings: http://www.fantasyfootballforwinners.com/
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_FF4W
But how many people think about what rankings actually mean? In other words, what criteria are ranking creators using to place Player G here and Player H there? If I'm not making sense, here's an example to help illustrate what I see as the biggest problem with rankings: the fact that no one knows how to decipher them.
No judgment on Matthew Berry's rankings, but let's look at his, which realistically a million or more people read, and possibly use: https://www.espn.com/fantasy/football/story/_/id/25759239/fantasy-football-2019-updated-ppr-rankings-matthew-berry. He's got Duke Johnson as an RB-50. A little conservative given Johnson's track record, though I understand why some people are concerned with whether he might be traded soon, and how that could impact his usage. But this isn't about Matthew's perceptiveness, so let's get to the crux of the issue. . . .
At RB-56 and -57 are Kareem Hunt and Jamaal Williams. We've got an historically high-floor Duke Johnson with a questionable 2019 role coming in at #50, and two bellcow-capable RBs with arguably lower floors--and much higher ceilings--coming about one round later on Matthew's draft board. While Hunt's suspended until Week 10, he's one Nick Chubb injury away from potentially dominating down the stretch. And while I've pushed Aaron Jones over Jamaal Williams for a couple years, an injury to Jones could catapult Williams into RB2+ territory. Meanwhile, Duke Johnson is unlikely to ever earn more than a dozen touches a game, placing his ceiling comfortably below those of Hunt and Williams.
Neither Matthew's rankings--nor, frankly, anyone else's--present the varied choices confronting us in draft rooms. They don't account for how we like to construct our team (for example, boom-bust vs. safer points). They ignore draft flow, feeding managers a "draft the next guy down" approach regardless of one's roster needs or the needs of one's opponents or a recent run on a position. They don't effectively quantify huge drops in talent from one positional tier to the next.
Rankings are commodities. They're ubiquitous. They're often assembled without a clear understanding of what they mean, or how to convey what they mean to readers. We accept them at face value, even though their value is highly suspect--not because the people assembling them are dumb, but because the rankings themselves are open to interpretation. At best, they're trite. At worst, when misunderstood and mis-applied, they're harmful.
This summer I've been working on what I hope is a more comprehensive approach to draft-room decision making. A screen shot is attached. This spreadsheet consists of my top-300 rankings, the more universal top-300 rankings based on average draft position, whose values have jumped and dropped the most this past week, RB handcuffs, teams' #1 wideouts, and two tiers of undervalued and overvalued players. Taken collectively, this information presents a fuller picture of players' comparative value, when to reach, when to draft high-upside vs. high-floor, etc.
Subscribers have received versions of this each week for the past three weeks. The next update will go out tonight or tomorrow morning. As most of your know, subscriptions are pay-what-you-want. Payments this year have ranged from $1 to $150. Regardless of what you want to contribute, everyone gets the same product. Sign-up info below.
I'll leave you with this: Fantasy drafting is an art and a science. But every set of rankings out there focuses solely on the science. There's no art to picking the next guy on the list. It's a one-dimensional solution to a three-dimensional problem. There is a better way.
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Sign up for Pre-Draft Top 300 Rankings: http://www.fantasyfootballforwinners.com/
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_FF4W