Dynasty Fantasy Football Startup: DLF ADP vs Dynasty Rankings

Nick Chubb

Peter Howard Posted On July 11, 2023

This series explores rankings and ADP to find advantages for our dynasty leagues. This week, I want to look at how I tried to apply my rankings to an actual startup draft recently.

In this series we have, several times, run into the roadblock of: “What are rankings?” Are they startup draft orders? Value projections, trade values? Or maybe all three.

It’s my hope going through the first seven picks of my most recent startup might help with that.

I haven’t drafted perfectly, I’d change some things if I tried again, or if I could have known exactly what would happen after my picks. In other words, a typical draft. But that’s all part of the reality of trying to play dynasty. So, let’s look at it.

You can find links to profiles and our DLF Rankings here and current Superflex ADP here.

The Draft Board

While everyone enters a draft with a default set of assumptions or ideas, most, or most good players I know, try to adapt to the landscape of the league as they learn it. As we draft players, we see where positional runs are happening and make decisions about which direction we want to take, one pick at a time.

Here is the current draft board for reference.

The first thing I know about this draft is all these players are experienced, skilled, and have their approaches.

So, I expected them to know ADP and therefore that when they make a strong decision against it, it wasn’t a “mistake” but information about their ideas.

My initial thoughts:

I write down draft picks as they happen to get a sense of if I’m seeing what I think I am. I don’t know about you, but I can sometimes get lost during a draft, and it’s harder for me to understand and compare without a draft sheet. It also means I don’t miss players because of the site’s default ADP.

The first thing that became obvious is that everyone was guarded against letting young players go later. As much as ADP expects, quarterbacks were going thick and heavy, and the wide receiver position heavily empathized quickly. This has, we’ve seen, been a strong conflict between ADP and rankings here on DLF as well.

This is important because it encouraged me several times, I think, to make good decisions. But also, because it helped me make - what I think in hindsight - was a mistake.

1.02: Josh Allen, QB BUF

Picking Allen was an easy decision. If I have an early pick in a superflex draft, I am likely going to take a quarterback.

APD and rankings heavily suggest I don’t let them pass me by early in the draft. While Patrick Mahomes is the 1.01 in most leagues, and rankings, I’ve often had Allen as my first overall because, well, he’s scored more points.

So, this pick was easy.