One of the most important preseason fantasy tools is also one of the most difficult to understand.
In the early days of FF4W, I didn't do preseason fantasy rankings. It wasn't because I was hesitant to put myself out there. Each summer I was sharing dozens of "bold" predictions, highlighting which guys were most likely to be huge bargains or busts, and why. Converting that into rankings would be easy enough. The hard part was making the rankings easily actionable.
We've all seen these lists. This year they usually start with Jahmyr Gibbs or Bijan Robinson. Wide receivers mix in with other RBs until around #20, when Trey McBride or Brock Bowers shows up. Then Josh Allen kicks off the quarterbacks a few picks later. And on down the line until most of the starters are done. By that point, some backups already have appeared -- usually glorified RB handcuffs who have just enough stand-alone value to be more appealing than, say, most teams' #3 WRs.
But what exactly do these rankings mean? That's what was holding me back.
For example, let's take the four guys with current ADPs between overall-51 and overall-54. From "best" to "worst," there's Tyler Warren (TE4 ADP), Drake Maye (QB3), Terry McLaurin (WR24), and David Montgomery (RB23). Four players, four positions. If these were rankings, how would the rankings' creator explain why they put these players in this specific order? And how would people viewing these rankings actually use them?
There is no industry standard for why someone with one ADP is "better" or "worse" than someone with another ADP. In the above example, is Warren in front because managers prefer his ceiling to Maye's, McLaurin's, and Montgomery's? Or is his floor higher? Or in a general sense, is he perceived to be more positionally dominant than the other three?
What happens if you've already drafted McBride? That's pretty easy in leagues where managers draft one starting tight end. But what happens if you've already drafted A.J. Brown? For some (many?) managers, that would shift Maye's value. Either we'd embrace the Maye-Brown stack, or we'd steer clear because we wouldn't want to put that many eggs in one basket.
And at least for me, preferences for high floors and high ceilings shift throughout the draft. Early on, a high floor matters almost as much as a high ceiling. In the later rounds, I'm increasingly investing in lottery tickets. No rankings that I've seen ever account for this. The current 156-158 ADPs are (in order) Malik Willis, Brian Robinson Jr., and Chig Okonkwo. How many managers want or need Willis (QB23) more than Robinson (RB50), who presumably is one Bijan Robinson injury away from weekly startability? And how many managers believe Okonkwo (TE21) is more valuable than Denzel Boston, whose overall ADP is six spots worse . . . or Tank Bigsby, whose ADP is 11 spots worse?
We also silently agree that no two players can be ranked the same. Why? Maybe because that would be way too confusing. We want something structured and actionable, not clumps of overlapping values. Except sometimes I don't want to put Player A directly above Player B, because that would be arbitrary. If I can't explain "why" one is more valuable than the other, then shouldn't I put them on the same line? Otherwise I'm misleading people into thinking I have a preference, and misleading rankings are worse than no rankings at all.
What if we take the auction-draft model (a price for each player) and apply it to rankings? Then we could visualize and quantify the value gaps between players. For example, there might be a gap of (random numbers here) "2" between a WR4 and WR5. The gaps between WRs 20, 21, and 22 might be only "1." WRs 45 thru 48 might be "0," where the ranker clearly is advising managers that waiting on the WR48 might be more sensible if we can get better value with someone else.
What would be most useful to me as a manager are rankings (1) where the reasoning behind each player's placement is intuitively understood, (2) which can be customized at the outset to reflect managers' overall preferences regarding ceilings vs. floors, etc., (3) that shift depending on which players we draft, and (4) that quantify the gaps between each player's value, where those quantities also shift depending on the players we draft.
Eventually I decided to start doing rankings for readers. But as confusing as rankings are (to me), implementing my ideas could make things far more confusing. The industry isn't demanding changes, so what's the point of overhauling the system?
So I started with something basic, with the goal of testing it, soliciting feedback, and improving it. A decade and thousands of rankings subscriptions/donations later, my rankings are a little closer to the "actionable" document I eventually want to create. The most dynamic parts of it are still only ideas. But I want to build something that makes us better drafters: more thoughtful about our strategies, more confident in our decisions, and more satisfied with our results. At the same time, I don't want to make changes simply for the sake of making changes. That's why I've move slowly.
After 2,000+ blog posts, this is the first time I'm asking this question: What would your ideal rankings spreadsheet look like? Should they be customizable at the outset, and if so, which criteria matter most? Would they adjust in real time, or would you want something that's static once the draft starts? Would value gaps between players be useful or distracting? Or anything else that would be on your wish list.
If you've subscribed to my rankings, feel free to specify which features you like best and what might be added or improved. And if you've never subscribed and want to see something first, I'll send you a screenshot of the first few picks so you can see how it's all formatted, and you can decide if it might help you.
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