Draft season is upon us which can only mean one thing: you are in need of some rankings! Luckily for you, myself, and all the great talent here at Fantrax got you covered! Below you will find my non-PPR and PPR positional rankings for the 2018 Fantasy Football season. Continue to check back as I will be updating these almost daily, as we get more and more news from training camp and preseason games!
If all you want is the rankings you can scroll below, but I wanted to break it down a little bit more in-depth first. One of the first things you will notice is that I can be aggressive on players that I like. For instance, I am one of the highest rankers on Andrew Luck, and continue to slide him up my QB rankings. I said it a while back that I think he will be one of the biggest ADP risers, and now that we have seen him play, and play well, I expect soon more people will rank him similarly to where I have him. Luck is not the only Colt I like, as I have T.Y. Hilton as my WR8 in both standard and PPR drafts, putting me in a tie for the third highest ranker on Hilton, according to FantasyPros ADP.
The reason I love the Luck and Hilton combo is we have seen them be elite before, as Luck finished as the fourth best QB in 2016 (15 games played), while Hilton was the fifth best WR that season. The injury scare to Luck was causing both to be good values off the board early in draft season, but now I expect both to climb and you have to pay for that upside. However, I firmly believe that the Colts duo will be winning many people championships this year, and it reflects in my ranking. Other players I feel I am aggressive on are Amari Cooper, Marvin Jones, Kenny Stills, and Ricky-Seals Jones among others.
How to Use My Positional Rankings Most Effectively
Another useful tool with my positional rankings is I break them up into tiers. This is very useful, because if you are on the clock and debating between a RB and a WR, you can look at the tier that each player is in. If the RB is the last player left in his tier, but there are four WRs still in that players tier, you can decide to take the RB before the dropoff in talent at the position and then snag one of those WRs with your next pick. Tiers are a very useful, but not always utilized, way of ensuring you land the most talent possible on draft day.
Using those tiers I think you can build a successful roster in your draft. Now, every draft is different, but here is what you should do with these rankings before selecting your team. First, move some players around as you see fit. While I do consider myself a pretty good ranker, we are obviously not going to agree on every player. If you like say, Chris Hogan, more than I do (most people do) then you can slide him up your personal ranks. Use mine as more of a guideline, rather than an end-all-be-all.
After you adjust them to fit your personal preferences, you need to go over each position and identify the tier that you would be comfortable having a starter at each position. For example, if you are comfortable with a tier four or five QB as your starter, you know you can wait on the position. Meanwhile, if you take a look at my RB tiers and decide you need to have your second RB come within the first four tiers, that helps you determine when you will have to select your RB2. If the players in those tier have a round four or five ADP, well you know come round four or five you will be selecting a running back, and that allows you the luxury of addressing WR with two of your first three picks. Too many people think using rankings means just selecting the highest player available, but I think you can make them so much more than that.
Yes, you need to be flexible in strategy and make decisions on the fly as anything can happen in a draft. But it never hurts to be prepared and have a well thought out strategy heading into your draft. That is where going over these positional rankings and tiers comes into play and helps you draw out a league-winning plan. Do not be the guy who prints out these rankings the morning of your draft and just selects the highest ranked player with no rhyme or reason! Be the guy who reads all the work here at FantraxHQ and shows up to the draft with a plan in place to dominate the draft!
Follow me on Twitter, @MichaelFFlorio.
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ADP – Average Draft Position