How to exploit the CBS, Yahoo, and ESPN default draft room rankings

May 2024 · 6 minute read

Yo, my man … You like undervalued players? … For your team!?! I’m talking fantasy football sleepers!

OK, be cool. Come over here. No, over HERE!

I’m going to hook you up with a great trick to find some undervalued and overvalued players, specifically for your drafts on sites like CBS, ESPN and Yahoo.

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This ain’t no shell game. This is the real deal – you just have to know where to look!

Behind the Scenes at the Big Draft Sites

I worked for five years at CBS Sports, where the online commissioner leagues first began — and were then copied by the other major fantasy services. I’m going to share some things that should benefit you in your eternal search for undervalued players to grab and overvalued players to avoid.

First, think about your league’s draft site. My assumption is your league is on one of the Big Three Fantasy sites: CBS, ESPN or Yahoo. If yours isn’t, it’s cool, this will still work for you, just a little differently.

For CBS, and my assumption is that it’s also for the other two sites, the player rankings that populate the draft room are usually derived from the projections made by that site’s fantasy writers or a group of people associated with the site. For instance, the CBS player projections are created and maintained by SportsLine, CBS Sports’ gambling arm, and those projections populate the player rankings in the CBS draft room.

In other words, if the CBS stats guys like a player, he rises in their projections — and inside the draft room’s prepopulated player pool (say that three times fast!). And if they are down on a player, that player will get pushed down in projections and in the draft tool.

My point here is that each draft room has a different set of player rankings in it, most likely based on that site’s staff preferences.

ADP… It’s Easy as 1-2-3!

Now, think about when you are in your draft room, when some players are up near the top of the draft room, or set up to be the next pick — doesn’t it force you to think about drafting them, even though you might value them lower, or you know they have a lower Average Draft Position (ADP) already? Or maybe you’re ready to draft a player, but you realize he’s buried a dozen or so players from the top of the “best available players” group. This makes you consider waiting to take him because you think, “Maybe he’ll drop to me!”

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The site’s projections push a player up or down the available-players draft queue, which persuades owners to either pull the trigger early on a player or wait a little longer. That means it inflates or depresses the Average Draft Position on their site. Hence, each draft site has different ADP from each other.

Comparing Your Site’s ADP To Real ADP

Now comes the interesting part to this whole exercise — you were waiting, right? Let’s compare your league’s ADP to the average ADP from all the other sites. Whether you use your site’s ADP or you like looking at FantasyFootballCalculator.com or MyFantasyLeague.com, you can learn a lot when it comes to drafts on your league’s site.

By looking on FantasyPros.com’s ADP (a consensus of other sites’ ADPs), you get a wide-angled perspective of what the world thinks about players. But you’re more interested in how the rest of the world’s ADP can help you find undervalued players or avoid overvalued players. Look through the list to see which players stand out in ADP on some sites, whether higher or lower, than most of the other sites, and that’s where you can either find great value or avoid elevated values.

Note: FantasyPros only shows non-PPR ADP for CBS, PPR ADP for ESPN and PPR ADP for Yahoo. That’s OK, because we can still compare their ADPs against the other sources listed to find values.

Finding Value with CBS Non-PPR ADP

For this section, “Average ADP” is the consensus ADP of the other sites involved minus CBS’ ADP. Therefore, the numbers may differ a bit from the ones on the site because those include CBS’ ADP with the average ADP. Also, quarterbacks and defense/special teams seem to go higher across the board on CBS than most other sites.

Players Going Higher on CBS (You’ll have to reach if you want them)

Players Going Lower on CBS (You can wait a little)

Finding Value with ESPN PPR ADP

For this section, “Average ADP” is the consensus ADP of the other sites involved minus ESPN’s ADP. Therefore, the numbers may differ a bit from the ones on the site because those include ESPN’s ADP with the average ADP. 

Players Going Higher on ESPN (You’ll have to reach if you want them)

Players Going Lower on ESPN (You can wait a little)

Finding Value with Yahoo’s Half-PPR ADP

For this section, “Average ADP” is the consensus ADP of the other sites (Fantrax and FFC) without Yahoo’s ADP, which didn’t populate FantasyPros’ table, for whatever reason. I had to go to Yahoo’s ADP on their site to see which players were higher or lower compared to the FantasyPros consensus ADP. Also, quarterbacks and defense/special teams seem to go higher across the board here also.

Players Going Higher on Yahoo (You’ll have to reach if you want them)

Players Going Lower on Yahoo (You can wait a little)

I thought it was interesting that the only West Coast company (Yahoo is in Sunnyvale, California, just outside of San Francisco) had the 49ers quarterback so much higher than everyone else (ESPN 101 and CBS 92), and the former 49ers RB, Hyde, so much lower (ESPN 92 and CBS 80).

Let myself and the readers know if there are some interesting ADP differences you found by comparing these sites’ ADPs!

(Top photo: Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports)

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