Introducing Cornerstone Rankings

Ryan McDowell Posted On September 4, 2017

This has been an exciting off-season for us at Dynasty League Football! We’ve begun new podcasts, hired new writers, produced an unprecedented amount of content and introduced a multitude of new site features. We also have so much more in the works! With the college football season already underway and the NFL not far behind, we are proud to reveal our next new project – Cornerstone Rankings.

Two years ago, I wrote an off-season series I titled “Rookies and Sophomores and Devys, Oh My!” As you might expect, or remember, in this series, I ranked the players making up three consecutive draft classes. At that time, it included the rookie classes of 2014 and 2015, along with the potential 2016 draft class. A year later, I followed up with an expanded ranking of the top 75 players from 2015-2017. I have been asked when this year’s version of the article would be released, but we had something bigger in mind!

Our new Cornerstone Rankings will always offer a collective ranking of the top players from a trio of draft classes, making up the current group of rookies, second-year NFL players and draft eligible devy (college) players. This group of players will change early in the off-season as devys become rookies and sophomores become established NFL veterans.

While veterans like Julio Jones, Drew Brees and Rob Gronkowski can be title winners each year, a large number of dynasty players are building their respective teams around youth, making these players the “cornerstone” of their team. Sometimes those cornerstones can even be in the form future rookie draft picks, which is just one reason we’ve chosen to include draft eligible devy players in comparison to the young NFL stars. After all, we receive countless questions in regards to our followers wanting to know what future drafts picks are really worth each and every year.

I expect this set of rankings to have a variety of uses for our subscribers. First, and maybe most obviously, this can benefit those who play in devy leagues, offering some insight on the current value between young NFL players and those who hope to soon be playing on Sundays. You don’t have to be in a devy league to find some value in these ranks, though. Maybe you’re one of those rebuilding teams I mentioned earlier and you’ve loaded up on 2018 draft picks. Our Cornerstone Rankings will not only give you an idea of the players you might want to target next off-season, but also which current NFL players might be valued in that same tier. If you’re looking for trade possibilities and wanting to know how your young players are really valued against others around the same age? This should do it!

You might be wondering why we limited the ranks to only three draft classes. First, adding more current NFL players would push the relatively unproven devy players further down the ranks, somewhat defeating the purpose of identifying how we value top college players against current NFL players. Also, going deeper into the college ranks and including all underclassmen rather than just draft eligible players would clearly muddy the waters. Our Dynasty Scouts team does an excellent job of providing insight, analysis and deep rankings, but at the same time, we recognize the difficulty of projecting the future of current college freshmen and sophomores. Because of this, we’ve opted to stick with the three draft classes.

Finally, and this is potentially the best news of this entire project, I brought some friends along with me. I really enjoyed writing the Rookies and Sophomores and Devys series, but as with all of our sets of rankings, we want a variety of opinions. At DLF, we have never valued group think and instead are proud to offer multiple opinions, strategies and valuations of players and we are confident that we have something for every dynasty player. Along with my rankings, we’ll also have Curtis Patrick, Travis May, Bruce Matson, Kyle Holden and Rob Willette adding their own thoughts. Each of these writers are not only extremely talented writers and dynasty players, but also help make up our Dynasty Scouts team, meaning they are very plugged in to the latest happenings in the world of college football and devy dynasty leagues. In short, they’re more than qualified to add their insight into a rankings system that’s pretty complicated.

VIEW DYNASTY CORNERSTONE RANKINGS

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Ryan McDowell

Contributor at Dynasty League Football

In addition to his senior leadership role here at DLF, Ryan is also a husband, father of three and PE teacher. Ryan is the commissioner of multiple dynasty leagues, most notably the Kitchen Sink Dynasty Leagues. Here at DLF, Ryan’s focus is on identifying, monitoring and analyzing player value.