This is the time of year when everyone is ranking players for upcoming drafts and it is a very fluid situation, particularly over the last two weeks. There are dozens of sites that offer free rankings and you can actually get a great rundown of most of them here.
You also have other sites looking at past rankings to help determine who offers the most accurate by position. Sara Holladay of www.fflibrarian.com does an excellent job of this each year. I myself do not possess the time most fantasy football rankers put into breaking down players’ stats, situations, injuries, etc., so I need to rely on others. Since I do not believe any one site or fantasy football ranker is superior to any other, I tend to aggregate rankings from multiple sites.
My association with the website Fantasy Football Aggregator brings me to the nature of this article, and that is to aggregate the positional rankings of multiple websites. After compiling the rankings I can then draw conclusions and attempt to understand why sites may differ greatly from player to player.
I chose ten different sites to aggregate my player position rankings, incorporating major fantasy football league sites and other sites that dedicate themselves to more frequent and in-depth analysis of players and the world of fantasy football.
The list includes: ESPN staff rankings, 4for4.com staff rankings, ProFootballFocus.com, NFL.com, TheFakeFootball.com staff rankings, FFToday.com, FFToolbox.com, CBS’ Jamey Eisenberg, KFFL.com and FantasySharks.com staff rankings.
I am starting with the quarterback position for this piece, but will also breakdown the running backs, wide receivers and tight ends in upcoming segments. I am not planning on spending time on defenses or kickers because you should not be worried about drafting them anyway and they are too random to care.
Below are the aggregated QB rankings with additional thoughts, outliers and observations. The number in parentheses depicts the average across all 10 sites.
1. Aaron Rodgers, GB (1) – Consensus #1 from all 10 sites, even 10 out of 10 dentists approved.
2. Drew Brees, NO (2.6) – Edged Brady by a tenth of a point and only FFToday did not give a 2 or 3 rank, presumably because of the loss of Head Coach Sean Payton or starting guard Carl Nicks.
3. Tom Brady, NE (2.7) – Received the 2 or 3 spot from every site except KFFL, which ranked Brady 5th overall. A number of preseason strength of schedule analyses show the Patriots having one of the toughest schedules for QBs, but of course we are talking about Tom Brady.
4. Matthew Stafford, DET (4.3) – The Lions has the highest percentage of pass plays last year and that might not change with the uncertainty around the RB position once again.
5. Cam Newton, CAR (4.4) – All 4th and 5th spots except KFFL, which ranked him at #3 overall, likely believing when you are bigger than linebackers your rushing TDs might not drop off like QBs before you.
6. Michael Vick, PHI (6.7) – Mostly 6′s from the rankers with KFFL and FantasySharks giving him an 8, most likely due to his high injury risk.
Below the top 6 is where the rankers started to disagree a lot more…
7. Tony Romo, DAL (7.8) – Received two 6′s from TheFakeFootball and NFL.com, while FFToday dropped him to 10th overall. He played hurt and still finished 7th in fantasy points last year, so would not expect any drop off unless Dez can’t learn to play nice with his momma.
8. Eli Manning, NYG (8.1) – ESPN and FantasySharks rank him at 6, where he finished last year, though NFL.com at 10th, and KFFL at 12th overall, are predicting a backslide. Go back and watch some of Cruz’s long TDs and you might agree more with the latter of this group.
9. Matt Ryan, ATL (8.9) – For a guy that finished 8th in fantasy last year, ESPN, NFL.com and CBS are not buying the new, pass-happy offense and rank him at 11th. KFFL and FFToday are believers, ranking him at 6th and 7th overall, and with Roddy and Julio I tend to agree.
10. Philip Rivers, SD (9.2) – Pretty straightforward 9′s and 10′s, with Norv telling everyone how amazing Ryan Matthews is and with vertical threat Vincent Jackson leaving town.
11. Peyton Manning, DEN (11.0) – Couple of 9′s from ESPN and NFL.com but KFFL was not buying, ranking him 14th overall. Until we see him in the pre-season he is still an unknown commodity.
12. Ben Roethlisberger, PIT (11.9) – Received seven 12′s from the group, so a consensus was formed. His offensive line likely keeps him ranked lower than his potential can carry him.
The next 3 are basically a tossup after averaging their rankings.
13. Jay Cutler, CHI (14.5) – Cutler was the least agreed upon QB. FantasySharks is loving the reunion with Marshall at 11th overall. FFToday must believe he is going to be run over by the team bus, ranking him all the way down at 20th, or maybe just assume it will feel like that standing behind a poor offensive line all game.
14. Robert Griffin III, WAS (14.6) – 4for4, FFToday and NFL might have visions of Cam dancing in their heads ranking him 13th overall, whereas FFToolbox and KFFL are more cautious with a 17.
15. Matt Schaub, HOU (14.7) – Schaub received four 13′s from the group, obviously believing he will return healthy after missing the final 6 games last season. He also received a 17 from ProFootballFocus and a 19 from FFToday, likely seeing him as more of a game manager when you have the league’s best run offense.
The rest of the top 20
16. Josh Freeman, TB (15.8) – KFFL sees a huge bounce back year from the 17th rank last season to 10th overall this year with the addition of VJax. No other site ranked him higher than 15th.
17. Carson Palmer, OAK (17.4) – 4for4 ranks him 14th and could be banking on his RB and WRs to stay healthy. ESPN and FFToolbox barely had him in their top 20.
18. Andy Dalton, CIN (18.4) – FFToolbox and FantasySharks see him and Green building upon their rookie season, and have him at 15th overall. 4for4 might be looking more at how he finished. He averaged only 178 yards with 4 TDs & 3 INTs over his last 5 games.
19. Ryan Fitzpatrick, BUF (18.7) – He started off hot and finished 12th overall last season. That was good enough for FFToday to rank him 14th. ESPN and NFL.com must have put more value on the way he closed out the season, as he failed to post double digit fantasy points in 5 of his last 9, and ranked him 23rd and 22nd overall respectively.
20. Joe Flacco, BAL (18.9) – A conservative Ravens offense had all the rankers conservatively rank him in the upper teens.
The leftovers at QB
21. Alex Smith, SF (21.2) – His best season ever is still not good enough for the top 20 from these rankers.
22. Andrew Luck, IND (22.3) – Not receiving the same rookie hype as RGIII.
23. Sam Bradford, STL (22.9) – When your offensive line can’t keep you upright and you average 0.6 TDs per game, you are lucky to be ranked 23rd.
24. Matt Flynn, SEA (25.0) – See Kolb, 2011. No one else is buying his amazing week 17 game last season.
25. Mark Sanchez, NYJ (25.8) – Since most believe he won’t be the starter after week 5, it is hard to rank him higher.
26. Matt Cassel, KC (25.8) – When your team says it wants to run the ball at least 500 times, no one is expecting much from the QB.
27. Christian Ponder, MIN (25.9) – He had negative fantasy points in his last start of 2011. Enough said.
28. Kevin Kolb, ARI (28.4) – Fitzgerald can cover the sins of his QB, but Kolb might end up holding the clipboard for Skelton.
29. Jake Locker, TEN (28.7) – Hasselbeck likely starts the season, but probably does not finish. That still does not make Locker a good option at any point, especially when your #1 WR is a knucklehead.
30. Matt Hasselbeck, TEN (28.8) – If you draft them both you still won’t get a top 20 QB combined.
Rankings are what make the summer months bearable and mostly just give us all something to talk about. Check back to see my other positional aggregations.
Luke Wetta
Fantasy Football Aggregator
www.ffgator.com
luke@ffgator.com
@FFGator
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