Up-Dated Dynasty Rankings

Fresh Update and New Sheet for the 2024 Season: plus some guidance on how best to use the rankings in your leagues

Hey Folks,

Last night I posted my ‘Annotated RB Tiers’ with my colour-coded asset classes for each player, a buy/sell designation, and my brief thoughts on them going into the season.

Naturally, I added the rest of the positions into the mix today, to make sure you have fully up-to-date Dynasty Rankings. I’ve made an entirely new sheet as a way to refresh the link access so only paid subs can access it. (It’s at the very bottom of this post past the pay-wall).

Also, since it’s a new season about to start and we’re welcoming some new subscribers, I’ve re-posted a quick guide on how I tier my rankings and how to use them.

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1. The Base Pick Value

If you have access to the sheet, you’ll see that the ranks are organized in tiers. Those tiers are each given a title based on the tier’s “Base Pick Value.”

A “Base Pick” is a term I came up with as a measure of currency. It means a pick in the year following the up-coming season (i.e. a pick you can’t use in your lineup this year) that has an equal chance of being ranked 1-12. Its value is draft class agnostic, rather than tailored to the actual upcoming draft class.

For those reasons, this pick is purely a hypothetical exercise, meant to make player values more universal or easier to understand. No such pick actually exists.

In reality, every pick in your league is to some extent favoured to be early, mid, or late in the draft. And depending on the perception of the draft class, picks will have more or less value.

So when it comes down to weighing up a potential trade for a player, consider the “base pick” value not a representation of an actual pick but as a way to measure up the value of the deal. Are you sitting on a 2025 1st from one of the league’s best teams? Maybe this is worth about 0.75 “Base 1s” to you. The idea is that by converting each pick or player a to a rough approximation of their value in “base picks” that it gives you an idea of equivalent value - or more accurately - of equivalent value *according to me.*

Lastly, when considering what you’d buy or sell these players for, the pick value I’m assigning is neither. It’s what I think is fair value.

2. So Would You Do This Trade???

A common question I get from people is taking two players in the ranks, evening their value with some kind of pick, and then asking me if that means I would do the deal. In some ways, this is precisely how I want you to use these ranks and why I designed them this way, but in others it’s lacking some context.

These ranks are based 100% on *my* opinion. Now I assume based on you subscribing to me that you probably agree with my opinion a bit more often than not — though it’s certainly not a pre-requisite. So let’s say for ease of explanation that you value every player identically to how I do, and that your league settings perfectly match those the ranks are designed for.

First of all, if you work up a trade that’s equal according to the base pick values in my ranks, that means I’m saying it’s an equivalent or fair deal. If it fits your roster construction or team direction, then I’d favour it. If it doesn’t, then I wouldn’t. If there is no strategic reason to do the trade and it’s simply a matter of preference, then I have no opinion on it — you should be trying to either solve problems or win on value when you trade.

Also, my ranks largely do not take into account the market. I do this intentionally because to me the value add of these ranks is for you to see who I think is over or under-valued. However, trading for someone I feel is under-valued at my valuation of them is not how these ranks should be used. The idea is that if you agree with me about a player being undervalued, and we’re right, you can buy them at or near their current market cost, and eventually you yield the profit if they perform to the valuation I placed on them. The same goes for players I think are over-valued who are on your roster (or my own roster for that matter).

If you need a good ADP source, I reccomend Dynasty Data Lab.

I’m not one to say you should never make any deal unless you’re winning on market value, but you shouldn’t get in a habit of throwing away buying power just to trade for players guys think are under-valued: if you do you’re defeating the purpose.

I also want to note that the value assignments don’t hold up quite as well if there is a large discrepancy in how many players are being traded by each side. I’ve tried to structure the tiers in a way that dovetails with the near-exponential growth in value of assets at the very top, but when you start looking at 3-for-1 or 4-for-1 deals, I would wager that I prefer the “one” side in 90%+ of scenarios even if they come out at equal value in my rankings. You have to be mindful of replacement level and scarcity when trading, not purely “value” accumulation.

For more on trading in dynasty:

3. Are players in the Tiers Equivalent?

To be honest, the tiers will always be fairly arbitrary. I do my ranks in tiers because I think assigning a pick value to the ranks makes them easier to read, and more actionable. But it’s not as though there is some massive, impenetrable barrier between players on either side of a tier break, or that all players within a tier are the same. There’s a reason I define the tiers with a range at the top of the ranks, and then add a (+/-) further down the ranks. It should be viewed as a sliding scale.

Let’s take for example Puka Nacua and Chris Olave. Both are in the 1.5-2 Base 1s tier, but at opposite ends. Effectively what this means is that I see them as the same tier of asset - young, sub-elite WR, but at a different value within that description. Essentially, Nacua is more at the 2 1sts side of the spectrum while I’d put Olave closer to the 1.5 1sts side. Brandon Aiyuk and Nico Collins are probably just as close if not closer to Olave in my personal trade value than Nacua is, but you have to draw a cut off somewhere. Where the player is slotted in relation to their tier paints a pretty reasonable picture of how I value them.

So what do I think a Nacua for Olave trade should look like?

Well I’d say Olave + Early 2 = Nacua is roughly equivalent according to my values.

That means I’m saying the Olave side wins if that add on becomes a late 1, and the Nacua side wins if the add on becomes a mid-late 2.

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I hope that helps you navigate these and use them in your leagues!