Overthinking Football's Draft Ranker
When we started this blog a few years ago, we made a pact: we were never going to publish draft ranks. As those who do so can tell you, making your own ranks is painstakingly difficult. Sifting through hundreds of players, researching new league entrants, continuously updating throughout the offseason—it’s not easy—and all to look back on draft day and realize you forgot to include that season’s diamond in the rough on your big board.
Well, that was a few years ago. And while we are not publishing ranks in a way that you may be used to, we cannot exactly claim to be staying out of the draft prep business entirely. Instead, we have created a product that will allow everyone, not just those with the fortitude to comb through the Fantrax database, a chance to come up with their own draft rankings. After weeks of hard work, we ended up with ranker.overthinkingfootball.com.
The basic principle behind our strategy is that prioritizing your favorites from a list of hundreds is daunting, but choosing between two curated options is much simpler. Our app provides managers with a variety of head-to-head player matchups, and asks a basic question: “which player would you rather draft?” Following some magic behind the curtain, we can use these individual matchup answers to create a personalized 175-player draft ranking for any manager willing to play along, and, perhaps most excitingly, an accurate Community consensus ranking incorporating all of our participants’ responses. Either set of ranks can be uploaded directly to Fantrax's draft room to help you out on the big day. We certainly think our new approach will make the whole ranking process easier, and maybe even make it a little bit fun.
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So why do people need their own ranks? When it’s draft time and you are on the clock, having an established list of preferences can help you make a calm, informed decision. Having a sense of your own valuations relative to the Community—and the managers you are drafting against—is also indispensable. Sure, you may value Joao Cancelo as a first rounder, but if you know the Community and your league mates place him and other defenders lower on the draft board, you may be able to steal him in a later round. These small decisions all add up and are ultimately what make the difference between a good draft and a great draft.
As it stands, many of us rely on Fantrax’s built-in Average Draft Position (ADP) to approximate Community valuations and provide guideposts for our own assessments of players. And while ADP certainly offers some value, it has clear limitations. ADP is supposedly reflective of Community consensus, but much of the Community is not represented. Shocking as it may be to the most active DraftPL Twitter users, many people are not participating in the barrage of mock drafts during the preseason. If an impromptu Twitter poll tells us anything, it’s that a majority of individuals participate in zero or a handful of mock drafts ahead of the real deal. Meanwhile, some Community members find themselves all over the mock draft scene. According to our poll, 8.7% of users represent 57% of all mock drafts! These voices are given extra weight by an ADP metric that does not discern between the least and most active users, and overall “Community” input is drowned out.
ADP further creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. As much as we may not like to admit it, we are all influenced by the ADP rankings. We hesitate to reach too far down the list for that player we like, or think we must be doing something wrong by letting an ADP favorite fall too far. The ADP ranks, which quickly solidify based on the selections of those early to the mock-draft game, may be the deciding factor in too many individual decisions, leading to a lack of diverse opinions that can boost or tarnish a player’s draft stock.
In another problematic feature, ADP is simply not adaptive enough to account for changes of opinion or circumstances. Let’s imagine a hypothetical scenario where the other state-run Premier League club won the race for Erling Haaland’s signature this summer. At the time of the signing and following only 10 mock drafts, Callum Wilson was sitting at an ADP of 50 (this is a hypothetical, remember!), but clearly after the transfer coup, that number needs to drop dramatically — let’s say the optimal ADP for him after the signing was now 100. Even if everyone who drafted after the Haaland signing picked Wilson in his appropriate 100th position, it would take 990 drafts to get his ADP to drop to 100. Suffice to say, ADP does not budge easily.
The ever-present threat of autodrafters exacerbates both of these problems. The early drafts are impacted by autodrafters selecting the highest ranked players by ADP, which subsequently slows down how quickly a player can recalibrate during a major valuation change.
Our new ranking app, on the other hand, avoids these pitfalls. Given the “one or the other” structure of options presented to managers, individuals’ choices will be significantly less biased by groupthink. This will result in more accurate personal ranks. And after everyone has made their own personalized ranks? We will be combining them all together to create the very first Community Consensus Draft Ranking. While we know that not everyone in the Community will participate—you’ve read this far, you might as well play!—our consensus ranks will more accurately represent Community opinion. They will be less influenced by the few most active voices, allowing everyone a chance to contribute.
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So let’s get to the fun part: how do a bunch of individual matchups get us to a full draft ranking? First we present a pre-curated list of 1,000 matchups spread out across the top 175 draftable players with special emphasis given to the money-ranks: 1-30. Once you have worked through all 1,000 pre-set matchups, we will use that data to calculate your very own personalized rankings! Within 24 hours, you'll be able to access those ranks on the site. And don't worry, while 1,000 matchups may seem daunting, good friend of the blog @fantraxgjl cranked out all the matchups in 2 hours flat.
This first set of matchups is enough to tailor the player ranking to your specification, but it’s a snapshot in time. New transfers coming in? Major injury in the offseason? Our goal is to create a ranking that is as adaptive as the player valuation landscape. This is where the next phase in our ranker begins. For each subsequent matchup you vote on, your ranks will be updated in real-time using the tried-and-true Elo ranking system. As the offseason progresses towards draft day, more votes will result in a continuously updated personalized ranking. So come on in, get your personalized ranks, and then update them as your views evolve.
Once you are comfortable with your rankings, you can take the final step of uploading them to the Fantrax Draft Room. This will allow you to have your ranks (or the Community consensus ranks, if you prefer), right there with you on draft day. If you have to autodraft, or simply want a list of players tailored to your liking, adding your personalized ranks to the Fantrax system in place of the default ADP ordering will improve your drafting experience and, hopefully, outcome!
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Working on this project has been one of our favorites, and we really hope that you will be able to put it to good use this offseason as you prepare for the upcoming campaign. That being said, this has been one of the most difficult and time-consuming projects we have undertaken, and operating it comes not only with an administrative burden, but a financial hosting cost. If you like what we have done and enjoy using the ranking app, we ask that you consider donating any amount at our Buy Me A Coffee page to keep it, and our other work, going.
While everyone who completes 1,000 ranking matchups will receive their own personalized ranks, those who donate $5 or more will also get access to our Community consensus rankings, compiled using everyone’s matchups within the app. These Community consensus ranks will be distributed at intervals throughout the offseason, and you’ll be sure to have a recently updated version right before draft time. Those kind enough to donate $10 or more will get the Community ranks like the other donors, but will also get another gift: our very first Overthinking Football ranks, compiled using the app itself!
As always, thanks for reading, and thanks for your continued support. Now get to ranking!