matt770 Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 Over the past few years I've been trying various drafting tools and techniques. The tools I have used include FF magazines (as a beginner) and the player rankings here on the Huddle and other sites. One technique I dabbled in last year was value based drafting, which I found fascinating but I don't know that I could rely on it over my own intuition. But I was just checking ADP on one of the popular mock draft sites (guess which one?) and I got to thinking: guys doing mock drafts in June must be pretty serious, right? And their picks would reflect whatever source(s) they use to rank players, whether it be this site, other sites, message boards, or whatever. So in effect, those ADP rankings are a pretty nice cross section of all the opinion out there, sort of a consensus of each players' value. I bring this up because I have been burned in the past by "experts" who were high on certain players and turned out to be way off. I now know better than to rely on any site's rankings over my own common sense and judgement, but with FF being far from an exact science, I just can't get away from the idea that ADP would have to be the most safe and sane method of starting a cheat sheet (and of course tweak based on your own preferences and judgement). Assuming of course the data is from a reliable source ("serious" knowledgable players doing mock drafts) and a large data sample (preferably hundreds of mocks). I would be interested in hearing opinions on this, and if anyone has actually used ADP as their primary source of player rankings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMD Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 There are several problems inherent in averaged draft positions. For one, unless it is the exact same scoring and positional rules, that changes things. Another is that they cannot take into account what is currently happening. Worst of all, it merely shows you what the average is - so you can build an average team I guess. The more drafts considered, the more it washes away what players should be higher and lower. It can lead you to relying on a player being available in your draft at "X" but then missing him because he was wanted "more than average". They are interesting and they have a place in research, but they are nothing more than a very general guideline to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peepinmofo Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 I just use the most recent huddle rankings at the time of my draft. If they dont have rankings for whatever reason, i just look at the mocks to get an idea of who goes where. Of course, if I have my sights set on someone in particular, then I just use my best judgement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Country Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 ADP is a tool that can be useful to sort of baseline your own rankings against. But, as DMD alluded to, unless you are able to limit your ADP to results for drafts that were based on the exact same (or extremely close to it) league structure - number of teams, positional limits, roster size, scoring, keeper/nonkeeper, etc. - the usefulness of the ADP is severely limited. I do like to use rhino's spreadsheet when it comes out (hope it is out again this year) to take the projected stats from many people much more knowledgeable than I, apply my leagues scoring and structure to them to come up with a good ranking baseline. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaP'N GRuNGe Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 It may be a bit too simplistic for those that look at things like VBD, ADP, etc, but I prefer the method of picking players that score the most points. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bronco Billy Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 (edited) About the only thing I use ADP for is predicting where players will go during a draft. It gives a popular indicator of which players have greater/lesser value in others' minds - and let's face it, a lot of FF owners are using help in establishing values in their drafts. The key to drafting a good team, IMNSHO is: 1) figuring out which players are likely to significantly outperform/underperform generalized perceptions & projections, 2) not overpaying too much for the outperformers while letting the underperformers drop - even if they have big names, and 3) finding solid value after the first 4 rounds. Edited June 26, 2007 by Bronco Billy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pancake Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 For many years now I have using My Fantasy: Draft Tracker. It has a function of separating out drafts into 2 week increments so you can see the average player positions during certain time frames. (i.e. the last two weeks before regular season week 1 is different than the first two weeks in June). It also has a function to show just RB, or just QB, or just WR. The most informative way to use this tool is to take the most current time period and then sort by position. For instance RB. If you are in a 12 team league and know that history shows that approx. 18 RBs are taken in the first two rounds of your draft then you can see on the Draft Tracker sorted by RBs which RBs will likely be taken in the first two rounds. Remember I said "Likely". I can say with certaintly that the draft tracker is about 90% correct with the first 10 players taken in each position (QB, RB, WR) as it relates to the first 10 players taken in your draft at those respective positions. For instance, 9 out of the first 10 RBs taken in your league will be the same RBs as the top 10 RBs in the Draft Traker, but not the same order. Then it falls apart pretty quickly after that and by the 20th player taken in a given position as compared to your draft there is about 5 players difference (meaning that there will be 5 players on the Draft Tracker's top 20 of a postion that were not taken yet in your draft). It just gets worse after that. You can use this method to plan out the first 4 rounds of your draft by knowing the approx QBs, RBs, and WRs that will be available to you in rounds 1 through 4 as long as you know approx. how many of a particular postion is taken by the end of each round of your draft. I have 10 years worth of drafts saved and I look at the last 3 years and get a range of how many QBs, RBs, WRs, TEs, K, and DEFs, are taken by the end of each round of each draft which gives me a baseline knowledge of how my current years draft will go down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Egret Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 It may be a bit too simplistic for those that look at things like VBD, ADP, etc, but I prefer the method of picking players that score the most points. I generally try that too. I've always been a fan of tiering players. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Holy Roller Posted June 26, 2007 Share Posted June 26, 2007 I just ask myself, "What Would Puddy Do?" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaP'N GRuNGe Posted June 26, 2007 Share Posted June 26, 2007 I just ask myself, "What Would Puddy Do?" And then do the opposite? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shelby Montana Posted June 26, 2007 Share Posted June 26, 2007 I have never been a fan of VBD and I don't want to get started on it. (memories of previous posts on other site's msg bds coming back). In the simplest sense, it makes sense to not overpay for something. That is a pretty solid way of thinking. But if you use VBD, and you find yourself with a guy who is available two rounds after he is "supposed" to be picked, you have to ask yourself, "Why is this guy available?" I always use a stock market anology: You want to buy a stock at $20 a share. But it's falling to $16 a share. Great deal, right? Your getting good "value", right? But why is the stock falling? Bad general market? Maybe but most likely it is a foreshadowing of bad things to come. Same thing applies to a player. If someone is available two rounds after his ADP, either he was way overrated or people think his negatives will impact his production more. And while I generally don't favor "following the crowd", sometimes there is a majority of opinion for a very good reason. I guess ADP and VBD have their place but I would not ever base a whole draft on the thing. And to think, some "guys" have based a whole web site on it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturphy Posted June 26, 2007 Share Posted June 26, 2007 Excel sheet draft board for me. Had it a while now. I have an ADP column and a week or so before I begin drafting, I put ADP data in. I like it as a tool to show me who people are over and undervaluing. I have way too many columns of data really, but it does help me zero in on guys I like for the season. From the Huddle I include the Ease of Schedule and Dorey Rule info. More columns than necessary on draft day, so I hide most of them at draft time. I really enjoy using The Advanced Draft Sheet that DMD put up. It really works great: http://thehuddle.com/classics/04_draft_sheet.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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