Which of these players are the better value in fantasy football?

I know we like for the experts to just do our work for us and tell us which players you should draft on your fantasy team and in which order. You can always find rankings, ADP lists, and other tools to help you win your championship. There are articles telling you about sleepers, fades, and the latest injuries and they will all help. However, there are some big misses.

Sometimes you can find players that have very similar projections but the ADP is not worth the price, depending on your personal league scoring.

QUARTERBACKS

The above shows Fantasy Pros’ expected production for two quarterbacks. I like their projections because it is a consensus of 6 different sites. The reason I mentioned your league scoring rules is that if you have something very basic (1 point for every 25 yards passing, 1 point for every 10 rushing yards, and 6 points for any touchdown) the expected points are almost identical. Fantasy Pros uses 4 pts per passing TD and takes away for fumbles, interceptions, and a few others that make a huge difference as you can see. For this exercise, we will use very basic scoring because math was never my expertise, and the fewer the numbers the better for all of us.

Looking at the table, if all things were equal you just pick your favorite player right? They aren’t equal though. Player A has an ADP of 45 and Player B has an ADP of 85. Player A is Justin Fields and Player B is Dak Prescott. If your 10-team league uses basic scoring you can wait 4 rounds and get the same production out of your quarterback. Let’s try a couple more.

WIDE RECEIVERS

Two wide receivers with almost exactly the same projected totals are going four rounds apart. The Player A is Allen Lazard with an ADP of 132. Player B is Zay Jones with an ADP of 177. Last year Jones scored 116 fantasy points and Lazard 114. Last year Lazard was rostered on 53 percent of the teams and Jones only 30 percent.

RUNNING BACKS

The point totals are for PPR. If you are in a standard league then these numbers won’t work for you because player A will come out ahead by 15 points. Player A is Dalvin Cook, and Player B is Antonio Gibson. In a PPR League, you can afford to wait 2 rounds and get equal production from your RB3.

I hope what you take from this is just because a player has a higher ranking or the ADP is higher he isn’t necessarily the right player for you.

If you really want to crush your league, and you wouldn't be reading this if you didn’t, then it takes work. Find a site that will project all the relevant stats needed for you to do your own ranking like yards, receptions, TD, fumbles, etc., and export them into a spreadsheet. Come up with a formula from your league settings that will generate the points that will be earned in your specific league and have fun in the playoffs.