Everything You Need to Dominate Your 2018 Fantasy Football Draft
Sleepers, league winners, ADP player values, coaching impacts, gambling outlooks, and more!
Football season is finally here. College football kicks off this weekend, and the NFL returns next week. More importantly, fantasy football is here too. Labor Day weekend is the biggest fantasy football weekend in America, so let’s get ready for your draft!
If you’ve waited this long to prep, you probably don’t have much time. Welcome to your one-stop shop with everything you need to dominate: overvalued and undervalued players, sleepers, league winners, coaching impacts, gambling outlooks, and many other resources. I wrote 35,000 football words this month, and it’s all summarized here. Let’s get to it!
BONUS — I make a living doing this sports writing stuff so these articles normally all cost money, but it’s all FREE for you for one day. Enjoy!!
Fantasy Football Drafts are All about Value
It’s not just about getting good players in fantasy drafts — it’s getting good players at the right pick. I love Jarvis Landry this year, and I think he could finish as the #1 fantasy WR which would obviously make him “worth” a first-round pick. But why waste a first when I can just get him in the fourth or fifth?
Every year, friends ask for my rankings and then I see their teams and I’m like “Hey, where are the stars?” because they drafted straight off my list and took all my values too early. I like guys like Landry, Jordan Reed, and Andrew Luck specifically because they’re so cheap relative to their expected value and upside. If everyone agreed Luck and Reed were good and drafted them in the 4th, I’d be avoiding both guys like the plague. I have Aaron Rodgers as my #1 QB but don’t particularly want him, unless of course the entire league waits on quarterback and he’s there in the 5th or 6th. Value is relative and different in every draft.
10 Rounds, 10 Busts
Fantasy Football Calculator gives us a great tool that tracks Average Draft Position, so we can anticipate when players will be taken in drafts. Here’s one key player I would avoid in each of the first 10 rounds at their current ADP, led by Jay Ajayi and Amari Cooper:
Consensus Top 15 Picks to Avoid
There’s now so much research from so many fantasy experts that there’s a huge consensus at the top of the draft. I recently saw a writer for a huge fantasy site tell his followers that their draft position basically determines their first five picks because we already know who the top 50 or so players will be. That is CRAZY!! And it’s flat out wrong. Just because a bunch of early adopters agree on something doesn’t mean it’s true.
It’s the same 15 guys in every draft. Everyone agrees on the top four RBs. Everyone knows Antonio Brown will be the first WR taken and that he’ll go pick 5 to 7. We all know the next 4–6 RBs and 2–3 WRs that will go. All the experts can’t be wrong, could they? Ask those experts about ranking Mike Evans and Jordy Nelson as first-round picks last season. Ask them about Jay Ajayi and DeMarco Murray, the perfect RB pair at the end of Round 1. Oops?
You can’t win your fantasy league in Round 1 and 2 but you can definitely lose it. Guess how many championship teams last season took Evans, Nelson, Ajayi, or Murray in their top 15. Here are five guys to avoid early despite their consensus top-15 value:
Players with Rapidly Changing Draft Value
If value matters so much, it’s important to know what value each player has. Most players have had pretty firm ADP for months, but some players are rising or falling based on injury news, preseason performance, and other factors. Players you should’ve avoided a month ago become upside swings now, and values we liked in August might be too expensive now.
Here are 30 of the biggest recent risers and fallers in ADP:
10 Players that Will Win Fantasy Leagues in 2018
Another key in fantasy football is range of outcomes.
I listed DeAndre Hopkins in my top-15 players to avoid, but I like Hopkins. The problem is he’s being drafted at a spot where he has to match his high-end outcome (last year’s numbers) to be worth his draft pick. Compare that to Odell Beckham Jr. and Julio Jones. Both have established that their upper median outcome is as good as Hopkins’s best, and their high-end outcome is a top-3 player in fantasy.
That’s the difference in range of outcomes and player values. Some players have a smaller range of outcome, like Larry Fitzgerald or Drew Brees. We know what exactly what we’re getting with those guys. Others are wildcards, like Allen Robinson or Josh Gordon, who are being drafted around the same spot. But Gordon’s median outcome if he plays is top-20 WR with #1 WR upside. ARob may not be healthy and might not even be the go-to guy in a run-first offense. His high-end outcome is probably a fantasy WR2, about where he’s being drafted. Why take a player at his peak outcome when you can take one with an upside so much higher? You can’t have a team of all Josh Gordons. It’s far too volatile. But if you draft a team of Allen Robinsons, you’ve lost before you even started.
That brings us to the most important thing I wrote this fall. If you only have time to read one article, make it this one. To win fantasy, you need a couple guys to explode and way outperform expectations, so you need some guys with a wide range of outcomes and the highest of upsides. You need league winners. My #1 league winner last year was Todd Gurley. These are the 10 league winners that will help owners win championships this fall:
Yeah But Who Are Your Sleepers??
Everyone wants sleepers, and everyone has their own list of sleepers and values. Sleepers are about big swings. I want guys with a wide range of outcomes because it matters very little if my 9th round pick is a complete washout, but if he brings me top-25 value then he’s a league winner. I also like sleepers whose value becomes clear early. Sleepers are sleepers because the majority of drafters aren’t valuing them enough.
Our sleepers last year included Cam Newton, Zach Ertz, Desahaun Watson, Chris Hogan, and Jack Doyle, so this stuff works. Here are this year’s 25 best sleepers available at pick 75 or later:
What If I’m in a PPR League?
Good. Standard scoring is dead, though I prefer half-point PPR. I’ve got a few handy resources for PPR league players. We already talked about value above. Here are 5 key players rising in PPR drafts, and here are 5 that are falling, with analysis of what their change in draft value means for each player.
Most importantly, we need to know who’s going to catch passes for each team. I analyzed which player will lead each NFL team in receptions this fall and ranking the teams in order of certainty. If you had to bet your life on any one player leading his team in receptions this fall, who would you pick? Bet it wouldn’t be a Jaguar.
Here are the 32 guys that will lead their team in catches this fall:
What about the Rookies?
Maybe you feel pretty good about the veterans around the league but just haven’t had time to study up on any of these rookies. There are five or six key rookie RBs, most of whom have been covered above, along with a quintet of first-round quarterbacks who could each see time this fall.
Scouting the Five Key Rookie QBs
You probably don’t think the rookie quarterbacks matter because you won’t be rostering them on your fantasy team, but a rookie QB affects every other player on the roster, so it’s important to know what to expect. I did a deep dive analysis on Baker Mayfield, Lamar Jackson, Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen, and Josh Allen last spring — and that was the order I ranked them in:
2018 NFL Draft Fallout
The NFL draft is 200+ picks, so it’s more than just a few QBs and RBs. There are a number of intriguing rookie WRs who could be valuable this season, and improvements on the offensive line and elsewhere impact fantasy players too.
If you missed the NFL draft or just don’t remember because it was so long ago, here’s a quick recap of the impact the 2018 draft had for each team:
Gambling is Legal Now, Got Anything for That?
Do you think I’d have included it as a headline if I didn’t?
Worst-to-First Division Winner
Each year in the NFL, at least one bottom feeder flips their narrative, going from last in the division to first the next year. It’s happened 14 of the last 15 years. Two years ago, I correctly identified Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott turning the Cowboys around, and last year I picked Carson Wentz and the Eagles and they made it all the way to the finish line.
There’s no better value in Vegas than finding the right worst-to-first team. I ranked the nine possibilities and picked this year’s winner:
That helps you with a few teams, but you probably want to bet the over/unders for every team, right? I got you covered there, but you’ll have to check back in a day or two.
Player Props
But since this is a fantasy football article, you probably care about players’ numbers and stats. Vegas offers a litany of player props now, and if you’re good at projecting stats and ranking players, you can make a killing. Here are 20 player props with great odds ready to win you some money:
What Key Coaching Changes Will Matter?
This section is key because you’re not going to find much elsewhere. Many study talent and opportunity and project based on only a couple years of data, but they’re missing one of the steadiest data points: coaches. Many coaches have been in a similar post for years, so we have a litany of data, and some coaches are especially good (or bad) at producing fantasy numbers. Coaching changes may be the single most overlooked aspect of fantasy football.
An incredible 18 teams changed their offensive coordinator this fall. I didn’t have time to write about them all, but The Ringer Staff’s Danny Kelly wrote an excellent piece summarizing some key changes. The coaching changes last year were one of the big reasons I was so high on Todd Gurley and the Rams, and that obviously paid off. Coaches make a huge impact in the NFL.
Seven teams in particular have changes you should look out for:
- Worse outlook: Raiders, Seahawks
- Improved outlook: Colts, Giants
- Huge improvement: Bears, Titans, Browns
I wrote about what Todd Haley means for the Browns receivers in my 10 League Winners column above. I also wrote entire pieces breaking down the Bears and Titans offenses, both of which I expect to take a big step forward this year along with their teams. That could mean good things for both fantasy and gambling purposes, so take a look!
A Couple Other Football Pieces While You’re Here…
What Kneeling Really Means
10 Great Randy Moss Moments
My Writing Archives
Any other great football resources you want to share? Any questions or feedback? Leave them in the comment section below. Good luck on your fantasy drafts!!
Follow Brandon on Medium or @wheatonbrando for more sports, television, humor, and culture. Visit the rest of Brandon’s writing archives here.
