Best Fantasy Football Draft Values Based On 2024 ADP Vs 2023 Wins Above Replacement (WAR)
Preseaon football is in the air and we are officially entering fantasy football draft season. While savvy leagues wait until the third preseason game is over, there are others out there drafting early in the name of getting the whole crew together. So I'll be shooting off a few pre-draft take blogs this week as a bit of a crash course for those rolling into mid-August to login to the ole Yahoo, ESPN, Sleeper, whatever account.
I've done a couple pre-draft blogs so far including a round by round evaluation of select players compared to their 2023 WAR (my self-created stat no big deal) and my picks for this year's Troll of the Year. Today I'm just going to pull some names that present themselves as the best values overall among the top-70 in ADP. Again, pretty much all my fantasy content is based on the WAR metric I created which estimates how many wins your fantasy team is expected to get based on a single player vs a position replacement.
Anyway, let's pull up a list of players with the best "values" based on 2023 WAR and 2024 ADP. The cool thing about WAR is you can order which players were the best across position which makes comparing to ADP the next season a good little way to get an idea of who is over/under rated. Of course, not all players might be expected to run it back the same way as 2023 if they changed teams, got injured, etc. so we still need to give like a little looksie to see what's what.
Here's the list. The higher/greener the "Difference" column, the better blunt value before considering year-over-year changes in situation.
Dak Prescott
Dak Prescott is our underated winner for any player drafted in the top 70 of ADP which was my limit to keep the focus on dudes you might actually be excited about. Turns out, Dak isn't really one of them. But perhaps he should be.
Evan Engram
There's excitement about a lot of tight ends this season and let me tell you, Even Engram isn't one of them. I haven't heard a peep out of him and had to double check to make sure he was still on the Jaguars. 114 catches last year for 964 yards is pretty darn good for a tight end but he was on the bad side of the coin in the touchdown department with just four. I smell a regression candidate. I mean think about it. Who's thinking of drafting Evan Engram? Absolutely nobody. And that's probably why we should draft him. We wont. But at least now we'll know we should have.
Jalen Hurts
Quarterbacks just arent getting the love they deserve. Hurts was the 6th best player in fantasy last season and you can scoop him up in the middle of the third round. Better value than Josh Allen, the only quarterback better than him last year. Only question is what the impact of losing Jason Kelce and gaining Saquon Barkley is going to be. I tend to think they are going to try to keep Jalen from getting hurt and pound it with Saquon in leiu of the tush push. So for me, I'm probably taking a stab at a Jayden Daniels or Caleb Williams but there's a lot to love about giving the value Jalen offers.
Trey McBride
OK so Trey might be the reason we can rationalize not drafting boring old Evan Engram. I've seen some say McBride has a real shot at the TE #1 for 2024 and I totally get it. Marvin Harrison might actually help take attention away from him as he continues on his second half of 2023 explosion into 2024. As it stands now, my WAR rank for 2023 and this years ADP is pretty darn close. But remember he's starting every game this year as opposed to just the latter half of last season. I'm ecstatic if I can get him at his end of Round 4 ADP.
That's it for now. Just some names that jump out to me at the top of the value board but give a looksie again to find some others you might think have reason to show up again in 2024. Just remember, while the names I picked out might be dead wrong. The ones you pick probably will too. That's fantasy football baby.
Working on a quarterbacks preview blog next. Will do my best in not hyping Caleb Williams to the moon. No promises.