Nothing can derail a fantasy football season quite like a bad draft.
I don't mean injuries and busts, necessarily. I mean entering your draft lobby and realizing that your favorite picks, the late-round gems you scrounged for, are listed as mid-round picks on your site's draft app.
Ugh.
While there's nothing you can do to make your host site change their rankings, you can at least prepare for your draft by doing mock drafts on your site and studying the rankings that your leaguemates assuredly will be seeing when building their fantasy football teams for the upcoming season.
For Yahoo drafters, I'll help give you some shortcuts. To do that, I'll be setting our customizable draft kit (there's an app for that, too) to Yahoo's default settings.
Fundamental Principles
1. Yahoo's default leagues now feature two wide receivers and a flex position. Gone are the days of the three-receiver lineup. This impacts position scarcity and opportunity cost when building lineups. Take note.
2. Yahoo's default leagues now reward half a point per reception. It's not a full point, but half a point can still impact the way that you should try to build your lineup. Our free draft kit can be set to 0.5 PPR.
3. Yahoo's positional value is in line with ours. The number of quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends inside Yahoo's top 125 is very close to how our projections value the different positions.
4. But the individual player rankings are generally very different. This means that no positions look to be inherently overvalued or undervalued but that there are players our algorithms rank differently.
5. You have just six bench spots in default leagues. This gives you one fewer spot than in ESPN default leagues, and that means fewer chances to cling to upside players.
Overvalued Yahoo Players According to Our Projections
If we set our draft kit to match Yahoo's default settings (in a 12-team league), these players stand out as the most overvalued.
| Player | Position | numberFire Rank | Yahoo Rank | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jameis Winston | QB | 264 | 113 | 151 |
| Patrick Mahomes | QB | 228 | 100 | 128 |
| Nelson Agholor | WR | 194 | 102 | 92 |
| Aaron Jones | RB | 164 | 77 | 87 |
| O.J. Howard | TE | 182 | 114 | 68 |
| Sony Michel | RB | 103 | 65 | 38 |
| David Njoku | TE | 160 | 122 | 38 |
| Tarik Cohen | RB | 121 | 88 | 33 |
| Kerryon Johnson | RB | 142 | 111 | 31 |
| C.J. Anderson | RB | 122 | 92 | 30 |
| Michael Crabtree | WR | 88 | 63 | 25 |
| Jimmy Garoppolo | QB | 93 | 68 | 25 |
| Trey Burton | TE | 123 | 98 | 25 |
| Zach Ertz | TE | 50 | 28 | 22 |
| Jared Goff | QB | 109 | 87 | 22 |
| George Kittle | TE | 129 | 110 | 19 |
| Robert Woods | WR | 74 | 56 | 18 |
| Royce Freeman | RB | 102 | 84 | 18 |
| Travis Kelce | TE | 38 | 23 | 15 |
| Cooper Kupp | WR | 96 | 81 | 15 |
| Bilal Powell | RB | 124 | 109 | 15 |
| Alshon Jeffery | WR | 46 | 32 | 14 |
| Evan Engram | TE | 67 | 53 | 14 |
| Josh Gordon | WR | 47 | 34 | 13 |
| JuJu Smith-Schuster | WR | 55 | 42 | 13 |
| Tevin Coleman | RB | 80 | 67 | 13 |
| Will Fuller | WR | 92 | 79 | 13 |
| Deshaun Watson | QB | 60 | 48 | 12 |
A good handful of quarterbacks make the list, namely Jameis Winston, who is suspended for three games, and Patrick Mahomes, who is taking over the reigns of the Kansas City Chiefs' offense.
Nelson Agholor should experience negative touchdown regression in 2018 and is overvalued in Yahoo draft lobbies.
Aaron Jones, suspended for two games, is the first Green Bay Packers running back listed in the Yahoo app. The algorithm disagrees and ranks him 164th overall. Meanwhile, the algorithm likes Ty Montgomery (114th overall) the most, and he's listed 149th on Yahoo. Jamaal Williams (116th in numberFire's rankings in a default Yahoo league) is found 125th in the draft app.
A select few tight ends are overvalued in this setup. While you can flex a tight end in a default Yahoo league now, you can still find better values than these options above.
Undervalued Yahoo Players According to Our Projections
Let's check the flipside. These quarterbacks and tight ends are at least 12 picks later than our algorithm ranks them.
| Player | Position | numberFire Rank | Yahoo Rank | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blake Bortles | QB | 119 | 164 | -45 |
| Drew Brees | QB | 29 | 60 | -31 |
| Andrew Luck | QB | 97 | 126 | -29 |
| Jack Doyle | TE | 99 | 123 | -24 |
| Marcus Mariota | QB | 104 | 127 | -23 |
| Ben Roethlisberger | QB | 82 | 104 | -22 |
| Tom Brady | QB | 28 | 44 | -16 |
| Aaron Rodgers | QB | 20 | 35 | -15 |
| Alex Smith | QB | 117 | 131 | -14 |
| Delanie Walker | TE | 72 | 85 | -13 |
There are some big-name options on this list, especially Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, and Drew Brees. While you don't need to spend an early-round pick on your passers in a standard Yahoo league, having Rodgers slip into the fourth round, for example, is a good value, based on our algorithm's projection.
Jack Doyle and Delanie Walker represent two significant value options at the tight end position in case you can't or don't want to stream the position. Doyle could last until the double-digit rounds if your leaguemates stick to the draft app rankings.
| Player | Position | numberFire Rank | Yahoo Rank | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Giovani Bernard | RB | 120 | 183 | -63 |
| Ty Montgomery | RB | 114 | 149 | -35 |
| Sammy Watkins | WR | 57 | 91 | -34 |
| Ted Ginn | WR | 115 | 142 | -27 |
| Marshawn Lynch | RB | 68 | 93 | -25 |
| Kelvin Benjamin | WR | 90 | 115 | -25 |
| Marqise Lee | WR | 94 | 119 | -25 |
| Lamar Miller | RB | 36 | 59 | -23 |
| Rex Burkhead | RB | 48 | 70 | -22 |
| Carlos Hyde | RB | 73 | 94 | -21 |
| Kenny Stills | WR | 108 | 129 | -21 |
| Duke Johnson | RB | 75 | 95 | -20 |
| Chris Hogan | WR | 56 | 75 | -19 |
| DeVante Parker | WR | 81 | 99 | -18 |
| Christian McCaffrey | RB | 13 | 30 | -17 |
| Rishard Matthews | WR | 101 | 118 | -17 |
| Derrick Henry | RB | 41 | 54 | -13 |
| Mark Ingram | RB | 42 | 55 | -13 |
| Isaiah Crowell | RB | 89 | 101 | -12 |
| Mohamed Sanu | WR | 125 | 137 | -12 |
Giovani Bernard is an afterthought in the Yahoo draft app, but he's a top-120 pick in our rankings. He finished as the RB29 in half-PPR formats in 2017 and is our RB40 this year but is the RB56 in Yahoo's draft app.
Veterans Ted Ginn Jr. and Marshawn Lynch offer up some significant value, and Sammy Watkins has to overcome joining a new team, but the discount offered on him in Yahoo leagues (WR39) helps.
Patriots Rex Burkhead and Chris Hogan are shaping up to be values in early-August drafts, due to injuries and suspensions for New England.
Hidden Gems
A few fantasy-relevant players are listed way down the list on Yahoo.
Among the receivers who fit the bill (listed outside the top 1,000 on Yahoo), there is Brandon Marshall (252nd in our rankings), Ryan Grant (253rd), Antonio Callaway (255th), Eric Decker (259th), Chester Rogers (277th), and Tyler Boyd (280th).
As for the running backs, there's Nyheim Hines (127th), Darren Sproles (225), and Kalen Ballage (276th).
It's so, so, so important to make sure that your rankings are customized to your league settings, and you have no reason not to have them by your side. Just head over to our draft kit and plug in your settings and then dominate your Yahoo fantasy football draft this season.