Shake's Fantasy Rankings

With the Stampede Blue Shakedown, and New Era Scouting fantasy football league drafts complete I can release my rankings to help anyone drafting in the last week and a half before the opener. Rankings are based off of Pro Football Prospectus' player projections (adjusted in a few places I thought were out of whack) and I recommend using the scarcity and variation study and opportunity cost drafting strategy outlined by Brian Burke at Advanced NFL Stats.

Based on the scoring used in the New Era Scouting league (most recent draft similar but not identical scoring to the Stampede Blue leagues).

Ranking after the jump.

QBs (broken into a new tier when there is a 5pt drop in projected season total to the next player or 10 point drop from the start of the tier)

• 1. P Manning
• 2. Brady
• 3 Brees
  4McNabb
• 5 Garrard
  6 Romo
  7 Roethlisb
• 8 Rodgers
  9 Jackson
  10 Rivers
  11 Palmer
• 12 Favre
  13 Garcia
  14 Hasselbeck
  15 Anderson
  16 Cutler
  17 Schaub
  18 Bulger
• 19 Delhomme
  20 E Manning
• 21 Croyle
  
• 22 Kitna
  23 Alex Smith
  24 Pennington
  
• 25 Campbell
  26 Russel
  27 Warner
  28 O'Sullivan
  29 Ryan
  30 Young
• 31 Edwards

Massive Drop-off

• 32 Orton
  33 Boller
  

RBs (tiered same as before)

• 1 Tomlinson
  
• 2 Westbrook
  
• 3 Peterson
  
• 4 Jackson
  
• 5 Lynch
• 6 Addai
  7 Grant
  8 Graham
  9 Jones-Drew
  10 Maroney
  
• 11 L Johnson
  12 Jacobs
  13 Portis
  14 McFadden
• 15 Gore
  16 MBIII
  17 R Brown
  18 Lewis
  19 Mendenhall
  
• 20 F Taylor
  21 McGahee
  22 Chris Johns
  23 Parker
  
• 24 James
  25 Bush
  26 S Young
  27 T Jones
  28 DeAnglo W
  
• 29 L White
  30 C Taylor
  
• 31 J Stewart
  32 K Smith
  
• 33 J Jones
  34 Forte
  
• 35 C Brown
  36 F Jones
  

Big Drop-Off

• 37 R Johnson
  38 Norwood
  39 Turner
  
• 40 Fargas
  41 Bradshaw
  42 A Green
• 43 P Thomas
  

Big Drop-Off

• 44 Ray Rice
  
• 45 R Williams
  
• 46 Deuce M
  47 Foster

WRs (Same tiering)

• 1 R Moss
• 2 Owens
  
• 3 Wayne
  4 A Johnson
  
• 5 Burress
  6 Holmes
  7 Colston
• 8 Edwards
  9 Fitzgerald
  10 C Johns (CIN)
• 11 A Gonzalez
  12 Galloway
  
• 13 S. Smith
  14 Jennings
  
• 15 Evans
  16 Berrian
  17 Driver
  18 Welker
  19 White
  20 Harrison
  21 Houshmanzadeh
  22 Holt
  23 R Williams (DET)
• 24 Marshall
  25 Porter
  26 Boldin
  
• 27 Chambers
  
• 28 B Johnson
  
• 29 S Moss
  30 Bowe
  31 C Johns (DET)
  32 Coles
  33 Ginn
  34 Cotchery
  
• 35 Gage
  36 Stallworth
  37 V Jackson
  38 Toomer
  39 Hackett
  
• 40 Burleson
  41 Bruce
  42 Ward
  43 J Jones
  
• 44 Clayton (BAL)
  45 Mason
  46 L Robinson
  
• 47 Crayton
  48 Bennet
  49 R. Williams (TEN)
  50 Rice
  51 Randle El
  
• 52 Walker
  53 Booker
  54 Patten
  55 Wilford
  
• 56 Gaffney
  57 Hagan
  58 Curry
  
• 59 D Williams
  60 Muhammad
  61 Meachem
  62 McCareins
  63 S Smith (NY)
  64 C Taylor
  65 Bryant
  
• 66 Branch
  67 Hester
  68 Hardy
  
• 69 D Jackson
  

TEs

• 1 Gates
  
• 2 Witten
  3 Winslow

Big Drop-Off

• 4 Gonzalez
  
• 5 Clark
  

Big Drop-Off

• 6 Cooley
  
• 7 Daniels
  8 Shockey
  9 H Miller
  
• 10 McMichael
  11 Heap
  12 Watson
  13 V Davis
  
• 14 D Lee
  15 Crumpler
  16 Olsen
  17 Z Miller
  18 Scheffler
  19 Carlson
  
• 20 Shiancoe
  21 Keller
  22 Lewis
  23 LJ Smith
  24 Des Clark
  
• 25 Utecht
  26 A Smith
  27 Scaife
  28 King
  
• 29 Fasano
  30 Royal
  31 Boss
  
• 32 Graham
  33 Pope
  34 Walker
  
• 35 F Davis
  

D/K

• There really isn't a ton a variance. The value just slowly drops at a pretty consistent rate. I never take a D or Kicker before the 2nd to last round in a draft with no IDPs.

With the projected point totals I got from PFP's projections adapted to the league scoring let me use the strategy Brian Burke talked about in the link above. In each player row in my spreadsheet I have columns that list the dropoff 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 14 players down at each position. I estimate the number of players at that position that will be taken at that position before my next pick and look to that column. The player with the biggest dropoff in that column has the best value.

If you want a copy of the spreadsheet I used for the NES draft e-mail me and I'll hook you up (click my name at the top to get to my profile which has my e-mail). And no you can't have the spreadsheet with the PFP projections now. It has my 18 to 88 league rankings and even if I deleted them it would be very quick to rebuild that formula from the projections and league scoring.

As a final note, the projections from Football Outsiders which I used have been far better at predicting declines than calling breakouts. They are the circling vultures on the guys they don't project highly, but their breakout players are hit and miss.

Hopefully this will help a few of you in your late drafts. Good Luck.