I know what you're thinking. With the lockout madness casting a pall over football, what good are fantasy football rankings? Well, as long as you have drafts, you need rankings. And guess what? Thousands of fantasy football fans out there did not or could not wait for the lockout madness to be resolved. We've been drafting left, right, and center.
I've never published my own rankings before, so I thought I'd add a twist, you know, to distinguish my rankings from the millions of others out there. My twist is simple: these are aggressive rankings. To coin a baseball term, these are the rankings you would would use if you were out to hit a home run at all costs. All costs, of course, being the risk that you'll end up last or something. These rankings assume things like Jahvid Best is 100% recovered from his injury last fall, Chris Johnson returns to CJ2K form, and Run DMC was not just a one-year wonder. As far as I'm concerned, these will work equally well in the standard formats of both ESPN and Yahoo. Now I know you would have preferred a nice even number like 50 or 100 for the rankings, but it turns out that what I consider meaningful distinctions begin to disappear around the eighth round of a 10 team draft. Without further ado......
2011 Fantasy Football Home-Run Rankings (Adjusted 8/3)
- 1. Michael Vick
- 2. Arian Foster
- 3. Chris Johnson
- 4. Jamaal Charles
- 5. Darren McFadden
- 6. Adrian Peterson
- 7. Ray Rice
- 8. LeSean McCoy
- 9. Rashard Mendenhall
- 10. Maurice Jones-Drew
- 11. Matt Forte
- 12. Michael Turner
- 13. Aaron Rodgers
- 14. Tom Brady
- 15. Philip Rivers
- 16. Drew Brees
- 17. Peyton Manning
- 18. Andre Johnson
- 19. Calvin Johnson
- 20. Hakeem Nicks
- 21. Greg Jennings
- 22. Roddy White
- 23. Mike Wallace
- 24. Jahvid Best
- 25. Miles Austin
- 26. Vincent Jackson
- 27. Dwayne Bowe
- 28. Antonio Gates
- 29. Dallas Clark
- 30. Mike Williams
- 31. Wes Welker
- 32. Jason Witten
- 33. Larry Fitzgerald
- 34. Ryan Mathews
- 35. Shonn Greene
- 36. LeGarrette Blount
- 37.
- 38. Ahmad Bradshaw
- 39. Frank Gore
- 40. Peyton Hillis
- 41. Steven Jackson
- 42. Reggie Wayne
- 43. Dez Bryant
- 44. Marques Colston
- 45. Jeremy Maclin
- 46. DeSean Jackson
- 47. Brandon MarshallTony Romo
- 48. Stevie Johnson
- 49. DeAngelo Williams
- 50. Jonathan Stewart
- 51. Ryan Grant
- 52. Austin Collie
- 53. Mark Ingram
- 54. Mario Manningham
- 55. Matt Schaub
- 56. Knowshon Moreno
- 57. Sidney Rice
- 58. Owen Daniels
- 59. Kenny Britt
- 60. Santonio Holmes
- 61. Jermichael Finley
- 62. Ben Roethlisberger
- 63. Brandon Lloyd
- 64. Matthew Stafford
- 65. Fred Jackson
- 66. Percy Harvin
- 67. Jimmy Graham
- 68. Marshawn Lynch
- 69. Vernon Davis
- 70. Eli Manning
- 71. Josh Freeman
- 72. Anquan Boldin
- 73. Johnny Knox
- 74. Philadelphia Eagles
- 75. Green Bay
- 76. Pittsburgh
- 77. New York Jets
- 78. Chicago
- 79. Matt Ryan
- 80. Cedric Benson
- 81. Michael Crabtree
Now, in an amazing feat of mind-reading, I'm going to anticipate your comments and questions....and yes, for a fee, I can take a look at your portfolio too.
Are the rankings RB-heavy? - No. Well they are, but the prominence of RBs in the upper echelon is warranted by years of data showing that at their best, RBs will provided a competitive advantage in fantasy football compared to all other positions. The sole exception to this principle in these rankings is Michael Vick. To wit...
Do you really have Michael Vick #1 overall?! - Yes. Yes I do. On a per game basis, Vick was the highest scoring player in all of fantasy last year. In addition, his point differential against other QBs was greater than that of even Foster over other RBs. Andy Reid has had all off-season to tinker with the schemes and optimize them for Vick's talents and there are still all those toys out there; McCoy, Jackson, Maclin, and now a healthy Celek. Then there's my personal experience last year: I think all of the teams where I picked up Vick made the playoffs. You need to think about that in the context of just how many teams a fantasy football addict might have going at any given time. So yeah, I'm a believer.
Aren't those QBs higher than normal for you? - Yes, the QBs have lept up my draft boards in 2011. I have watched in horror, as the stud RBs have all but disappeared in the NFL. When I look at the latest 3 years worth of data, I have no choice but to adjust my ranking and drafting systems to reflect what the numbers (and my gut) have been telling me: the top QBs are now as important as the top RBs or WRs. Specifically, in the absence of the the reliable stud running backs, it is vital that you try to secure a top 6 QB in your drafts. This importance increases with the size of the league. In 12 team leagues it is my advice that every single one of the 7-12 slots nab any top 6 QB left on the board at your first pick....unless the 1-6 teams actually started off grabbing QBs, which should leave some elite RBs available for you. I know what you're thinking; in 10 team leagues why bother grabbing #6 if 1-5 are off the board already? The answer is simple; the distribution of talent in the NFL has nothing to do with the arbitrary size of fantasy football leagues. In other words, the top 6 are in a class by themselves in terms of the high level of their expected production, as well as the consistency and predictability we associate with that production. So the number 6 QB could be Brady or Rivers, which, most of us realize, could easily finish #1. Brady's done it, and Rivers led the league in yards in a bad year for his receiving corps. There is a significant drop-off after those 6.
Isn't Romo a little low here? Are you Cowboy hating? No. Romo is capable of a stellar year. The problem is that under the assumptions of these rankings, so are a number of other QB, none of whom have to face the Eagles twice this year.
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