What is up everybody? It’s time for your favorite article of the year: the one where I rank players and then tell you that the order doesn’t matter. It’s like ordering from McDonalds — you’ll never get what you order! But unlike that McMuffin in your tummy, I want to ease your pains and make you feel calmer about your fantasy football endeavor. So! Grab your favorite beverage — I’ll wait! — and meet me after the jump, where I’ll discuss my process and walk you through how I’m ranking players and drafting in 2021.
The Process
If you know Razzball, you know that ADP is a trap. Rankings are guidebooks; they’re not scripture sent from omniscient beings above. I encourage you to stop worrying about where players go and instead think about how much upside you’re able to acquire in the draft. Rankings start with snaps — gotta be on the field, right? — and then I studied the characteristics of players who had top finishes from 2018-2020. In short: touches. You want players who are on field a lot and who touch the ball a lot. Conveniently, Rudy Gamble is one of the few rankers who studies and provides snap projections. So, I calculated points per snap from Rudy’s projections to give an idea of explosiveness vs opportunity. Some players are extremely explosive and score a lot of points on few touches; other players score the majority of their points through sheer volume. Some do both.
After calculating points per snap, I took Rudy’s projections and calculated the numbers that I found to be descriptive of top fantasy performances: Yards per Touch and Touchdowns per Touch. A “touch” is defined as a rushing attempt or reception. You can obviate the worry about “rushing RBs” vs “receiving RBs” by using Yards per Touch, because you start to see yardage as a totality rather than discrete “rushing yards” and “receiving yards.” In almost all scoring systems, they’re scored the same way anyway. So, for top RBs, you’re aiming for 1700+ “all-purpose yards,” or rushing + receiving yards. Most of the time, it takes a 5.5-6+ yards per touch to reach this pinnacle. TDs are extremely volatile and tough to predict; the top TD scorers tend to be outliers and therefore outperform their TD projections. That said, players don’t always need massive TD numbers to have useful finishes at the top of their positions. Of the top 20 RB scoring performances since 2018, 6 of them went to RBs with 13 or less total TDs, including the 6th best performance (Christian McCaffrey in 2018, with 13 TDs). Meanwhile, there were only 8 total 10+ TD performances among wide receivers from 2018-2019. Regardless of scoring format, your non-QBs are much more reliant on yardage for their fantasy performances than anything else. For WR and TEs, you basically want usage: the more receptions, the better. There’s not a huge correlation between yards/catch or yards/target and final standings; the more important correlation is how many receptions a player can get.
My rankings are based on Rudy’s projections, except I organized them by Points per Snap, Yards per Touch, and Touchdowns per Touch. This gave me an idea of the players who were most explosive and possessed the most characteristics of top-scoring players. It is my hope that this reorganization offers a coherent, rational, upside-laden approach to drafting your fantasy football team. I aim to be as simple as possible to give usable rankings to as many people as possible. It’s worth pointing out that I don’t worry about hierarchy whatsoever. It’s more important to worry about the probability of achieving the projection, upside, and potential to exceed these projections.
Again, all numbers are calculated from Rudy’s projections, and you can find the whole list here at FantasyPros.
Do you play on Underdog and want a set of rankings that’s more or less optimized for how I would approach best ball? You can grab that here. Upload the CSV directly to Underdog and you’re ready to go! Never used Underdog? Use our referral code “Razzball” when signing up!
The Top Tier
Rank | Name | Points Per Snap | Yards/Touch or Targets | Touchdowns per Touch |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Dalvin Cook | 0.398 | 6.21 | 3.13 |
2 | Alvin Kamara | 0.376 | 7.38 | 3.34 |
3 | Christian McCaffrey | 0.329 | 6.64 | 3.01 |
4 | Aaron Jones | 0.330 | 6.83 | 3.00 |
5 | Derrick Henry | 0.374 | 5.76 | 3.32 |
6 | Jonathan Taylor | 0.337 | 6.37 | 3.44 |
7 | Nick Chubb | 0.322 | 5.66 | 3.21 |
8 | D’Andre Swift | 0.334 | 6.68 | 2.94 |
9 | Antonio Gibson | 0.313 | 6.36 | 2.93 |
10 | Austin Ekeler | 0.355 | 7.07 | 2.40 |
11 | Saquon Barkley | 0.279 | 5.92 | 3.40 |
12 | Davante Adams | 0.247 | 184 | X |
13 | Travis Kelce | 0.215 | 139 | X |
14 | Stefon Diggs | 0.230 | 164 | X |
So, uh, 14 players in the top tier, eh? Well, it’s not exactly helpful to give you the “top 5 players!” if you’re drafting 12th, right? The first round is where you set the tone for your draft: are you going to be chalky and play it safe, or are you going to YOLO? Are you going to grab a top TE or WR and fish for RB later, or are you going to get a multi-faceted rusher as the base for your team? All of these approaches are valid, and if you’re diversifying your rosters throughout the season, then you’ll need to do them all at some point. So! Let’s take a look through the rankings of my top tier and do some explaining.
Dalvin Cook, Alvin Kamara, and Christian McCaffrey
These are the 1A/1B/1C of 2021 fantasy football. Alvin Kamara is the most explosive in yards per touch, Dalvin Cook has the most reliable track record across all categories, and Christian McCaffrey has the highest upside and the most questions. Kamara dealt with some injuries last year and had one outlier game that caught him up in TDs in the end-of-season rankings, but he was still productive across the board in yards and was elite in all scoring formats. Dalvin Cook will likely play more snaps than Alvin Kamara and therefore has a higher usage upside, although his explosiveness is less than Kamara’s. McCaffrey is coming off a season lost to injury and will experience his first healthy — hopefully — season under a new coach with a new quarterback. The talent is unquestionable, but the health and game plan leads to volatility. I put Cook at number 1 because he’s more reliable for most purposes, but personally, I’m drafting Kamara at #1 because if he gets more snaps than Rudy predicts, he’ll be hands-down the most valuable running back. Given the wonky situation in New Orleans — who will the QB be? Is Michael Thomas completely healed? — Kamara stands to be the engine of the offense and has the highest possible ceiling of the 3 RBs, although his likelihood of hitting that ceiling is lower than Cook or McCaffrey.
Aaron Jones, Derrick Henry, Jonathan Taylor, Nick Chubb
If you’re drafting at the 4 spot or later, you can take your choice of these guys. I’ll start with Derrick Henry, and one odd fact that requires some explanation: 1) a top fantasy RB must have more than 1700 all-purpose yards (rushing yards + receiving yards; 2) since 2015, only 5 RBs have produced 1700+ all-purpose yards in consecutive years; 3) of those RBs in point 2, none of them have done it 3 years in a row. Derrick Henry has accumulated 1700+ all-purpose yards for 2 years straight, and now faces a bit more competition for touches from Julio Jones. Therefore (phew, logic class paying off!), I put Derrick Henry lower than most rankers despite his access to touches, run-first coaching system, and efficiency. In other words: I’m using history to dictate this ranking, and supporting that evidence with his team situation. Process! Jones, Taylor, and Chubb round out the “high usage rate” crew, and I wouldn’t be angry if you took any of these guys 1.01-1.03. The highest likelihood to finish as 1.01 could be any of these RBs, from Cook to Chubb. However, Kamara/Cook/McCaffrey are the most likely to finish 1.01.
D’Andre Swift, Antonio Gibson, Austin Ekeler, Saquon Barkley
You can see that these guys are massive upside, and they’re very efficient and diverse in their capacity to score points because they rush and catch. But, situational issues abound on all of them. Swift and Ekeler have new coaches. Gibson and Swift have new quarterbacks. Barkley’s coming off a major injury. I wouldn’t take any of these guys ahead of the Cook-Chubb group, but I wouldn’t be angry taking any of these RB if I’m drafting in the second half of the first round. Due to the efficiency of this group and the diversity of the ways they score points, we’re likely to see two or more of them finish in the RB top 10 come year’s end.
Davante Adams / Travis Kelce / Stefon Diggs
For receivers/tight ends, you want top target potential, and these three are a magnitude ahead of their competition. Because of tight end scarcity, I think it’s acceptable to draft a player like Kelce ahead of the previous tier of running backs, but I wouldn’t draft Kelce before the Jones-Chubb group of RBs. Somebody in your draft will likely take Adams early, and that’s their choice. Adams comes with the most risk of any of the top tier because Aaron Rodgers might leave town, which would stick the Packers with a much weaker QB situation. If you’re drafting early, I wouldn’t take Adams in round 1 unless you’ve got a wonky scoring format or are in a 15-teamer.
Fantasy Takeaway
You should be thinking about “How aggressive do I want to play this team” when you draft. Rather than forcing yourself to take “value” or “next guy on the list,” think about the level of risk and potential for huge plays as you draft. D’Andre Swift is actually going in the third round in most of my Underdog drafts so far — maybe you want to get Kelce first? If you draft Saquon Barkley, you’ll probably want a sturdy RB2 in round 2 in case Barkley loses a step. If you draft Stefon Diggs, you’ll likely want to aim for Josh Allen in round 4 or 5. Your draft should be about accumulating as many high-upside edges as you can acquire; don’t worry about when you take players so much as how they fit together.
Thoughts? Comments? Love letters? Drop them down in the comments, and I hope you have a happy and healthy week.