Over the years, I have gained a much greater appreciation for the art of mock drafting to test strategies that help you to crush your drafts. Mock drafts allow you to play around with different builds and get a sense of positional tiers available in each round. What happens if you go Zero RB or Hero RB this year? What does taking Brock Bowers in the first round do to your Flex depth? Who is available in Rounds 8-10 if you wait on QB?
But the trouble with mock drafts is that, on an individual basis, they can go sideways fast. We’ve all been there when:
- One manager drafts a kicker early, just to be funny.
- A manager stays active the entire draft, but painstakingly burns through their entire clock every pick.
- An autodrafter picks the player who recently tore his Achilles. In the 3rd round.
- A team autopicks four QBs because they are the best available.
The ADP Platform Comparison tool, available through the Ultimate Draft Kit (UDK), is an invaluable resource that affords you the benefit of mock drafting without spending hours on each platform, hoping to complete just a few regular mock drafts. By looking at ADP on your drafting site, you can mock a draft without ever having to enter the draft room. This tool also helps you identify steals and overvalued players on each platform, so you won’t get frazzled when you are on the clock.
Here’s how to use the ADP Platform Comparison tool, what information it can give you, and how it can help you in your draft!
Step 1: Access the ADP Platform Comparison tool
Go to www.thefantasyfootballers.com and log in to your UDK account. Click the “My UDK” tab, hover over “Research,” and click “ADP Platform Comparison.” This will open a page with player rankings sorted by “Average ADP” across all platforms included (Sleeper, ESPN, Yahoo, and Underdog).
Step 2: Choose the number of teams in your league
In the top-right corner of the player list is a drop-down for the number of teams in your league. The default is twelve teams, but these lists will update for leagues with 8 to 16 teams. Two reasons this is important:
- Draft position 2.01 differs in the overall draft by as many as eight spots when switching between an 8-team and 16-team league (2.01 in an 8-team league is overall pick #9; 2.01 in a 16-team league is overall pick #17). The disparity is even greater the later the round (8.01 in an 8-team league is overall pick #57; 8.01 in a 16-team league is overall pick #113).
- Positional scarcity will impact ADP in larger leagues. You’ll notice trends that push-up QBs and TEs, and even some RBs in these leagues. Knowing your league’s S.T.A.R. settings (scoring format, teams, active roster, rounds in draft) is one of Chris Cash’s key tips on How to Not Look Like a Fool at Your Draft.
Step 3a: Search for an individual player
If you are looking to compare ADP for one particular player, there is a nifty search bar at the top of the player list. Click in the search bar, start typing in his first or last name, and view the desired player from the resulting list below.
OR Step 3b: View the entire list
To gain a more general understanding of ADP, you can begin by reviewing the entire list or select a position at the top. Once you have your list, sort for your platform, and take note of the differences between each site’s ADP. You can also compare ADP to player pre-draft rankings on your draft site.
Case Study: For this example, I jumped into a mock draft for a 10-team Yahoo league. The first couple of rounds were fairly chalky, with personal player preferences causing a few surprises, but nothing too notable. What I did notice is that the players are ranked in your draft room, by default, based on Yahoo’s Expert Rankings. Kudos to Yahoo for also having a sortable ADP feature, but as we’ve all seen, drafts tend to loosely follow the rankings of the players in the draft room. And in this case, it’s their default Expert Rankings.
Most drafters will stick to within four to five players of the “recommended selection,” deviating only when they want to find the next best available player at a particular position. The ADP Platform Comparison tool makes it easy to find these deviations! Simply scroll through your player pre-draft rankings and compare them to the ADP in the Comparison tool, and you’ll start to see the differences. In the example above, I noticed that Derrick Henry had a pre-draft ranking of 11 but an ADP of 1.07. This tells me (and was proven accurate during my mock draft) that people still favor workhorse RBs in the early rounds of drafts. If I were hoping Henry might make it back to me in the next round, the data says he probably wouldn’t.
To further confirm this bias, additional research tells me that RBs Breece Hall, Chuba Hubbard, Joe Mixon, and James Conner have ADPs between two and five picks earlier than their rankings would suggest. Want to snag one of the flashy rookie RBs? You may have to jump a half to a full round earlier than their rankings! Omarion Hampton (ranking: 57, ADP: 52) and RJ Harvey (ranking: 66, ADP: 55) seem to be steamed up well above their prospective rankings. Meanwhile, proven RB2/RB3s such as Tony Pollard (ranking: 56, ADP: 68) and D’Andre Swift (ranking: 62, ADP: 70) are sliding almost a full round apiece.
I recommend you do the same exercise for other positions on any of the platforms available in the ADP Comparison tool. By doing this, you’ll be able to find the values in the draft, and you may be able to determine the strategy you want to pursue come draft night.
Step 4: Compare ADP across platforms
I mentioned earlier that Yahoo’s rankings in the draft room were sorted by Expert Rankings, but the truth is, every platform does the same thing. So, if we know that ADP loosely tracks pre-draft rankings – and we have ADP data for ESPN, Sleeper, and Yahoo (Underdog is a different beast because it’s a Best Ball format) – then we basically have rankings for each of these major platforms. Comparing ADP across platforms is akin to comparing rankings across these same platforms. As you look to develop your own player rankings, using an aggregate from people who are paid to do this is a great starting point!
Case Study: Using an example from above, RJ Harvey’s ADP varies by almost a round apiece across Sleeper (8.02), ESPN (7.05), and Yahoo (6.08). That puts him at an average of 7.04 as RB22. The Ballers rank him as RB28. I’m probably not going to get many shares of RJ Harvey in redraft this year, and now that I have this ADP Comparison tool, I won’t feel as much FOMO when someone takes him a round or two earlier than I would be comfortable taking him. Conversely, if I really want him in my Yahoo drafts, I’m likely going to have to jump nearly a round ahead of rankings to get him.
Additional Notes on the ADP Comparison Tool:
If you’re a spreadsheet guru, you’re going to love that you can export these ADP rankings as a CSV to open in Google Sheets or Excel. Click the “More” button at the top-right of the data set, and click “Download CSV.” You can also copy/paste the data or print directly from here, if you’d like to use this as one of your draft-day cheat sheets.
The ADP Comparison tool also includes Underdog rankings. Underdog is one of the most popular sites for Best Ball, which is a draft-only format where you don’t have to set starting lineups or make roster moves throughout the season. You draft and let the stats accumulate on their own. It’s important to note the differences between this format and your traditional redraft leagues, because ADP is heavily impacted by them. In Best Ball leagues, managers are typically aiming for upside, so more volatile players get a big ADP boost (since you don’t have to worry about them going off on your bench). You can use this data to help you prepare for your Best Ball leagues in exactly the same manner outlined above.
But it’s not a bad thing to have a few boom/bust players in your redraft leagues as well! Once you have filled some key positions with more consistent players, take a swing at some of the higher-drafted Best Ball guys to see if you can make the perfect combo. Rashee Rice is a great example of this, as his Underdog ADP is 3.02, whereas he’s 5.04, 5.04, and 6.01 on Sleeper, ESPN, and Yahoo, respectively. Take Rice in the 4th or 5th round, pair him with Puka Nacua (the third most consistent WR), and you could really do some damage in your league.
The Fantasy Footballers ADP Platform Comparison Tool is a great resource with many applications. Like all good sets of data, it can be sliced and diced to your preferences, and if you dig into the story the data is telling you, you can build the perfect strategy to dominate your drafts!
from Fantasy Footballers Podcast https://ift.tt/rADyTwY
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