Dynasty Blues
It’s the most wonderful time of the year - the rookie season! From early March until late April, a make-believe interview is transpiring in the minds of dynasty managers on which college players they will select in their rookie drafts. These prospects are probed and prodded until they are ultimately praised as generational or banished to the outer darkness. To lead this investigation are the great houses of Film Scouts, Data Miners, Strategists, and Influencers who wage war for likes, subscribes, and Patreon memberships. In the royal court of public opinion, no one is looked upon more favorably than those who can prophesy the future. But unlike wise men and sorcerers, the best way to be prepared for the future is to understand the past.
Rookie Hit Rates For SuperFlex Drafts
Elwood - "It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses."
Jake - "Hit it.”
The Blues Brothers
Casting Lots
It’s the most wonderful time of the year - the rookie season! From early March until late April, a make-believe interview is transpiring in the minds of dynasty managers on which college players they will select in their rookie drafts. These prospects are probed and prodded until they are ultimately praised as generational or banished to the outer darkness. To lead this investigation are the great houses of Film Scouts, Data Miners, Strategists, and Influencers who wage war for likes, subscribes, and Patreon memberships. In the royal court of public opinion, no one is looked upon more favorably than those who can prophesy the future. But unlike wise men and sorcerers, the best way to be prepared for the future is to understand the past.
Before you decide who to select, you must understand the value of your rookie pick. This evaluation ultimately boils down to probabilities and ranges of outcomes. As bleached and sterilized as that sounds, this approach will help set healthy expectations to keep you from being easily led astray. In the first part of the Rookie Series, we will focus on the Hit Rates of rookie picks in Superflex drafts.
It Wasn't A Lie, It Was Just Bulls**t
How often have you heard a content creator say, “You should prioritize this position or accumulate these picks because the hit rates are far more favorable!” but they don’t cite the actual hit rate figure or where their data originated from? It’s difficult to recite a deluge of stats via video or podcast without sounding like stereo instructions, which is why written mediums lend themselves to highly detailed topics. Regarding detail, few have positively inspired me as much as Peter Howard (@pahowdy). Seeing his Rookie DLF Hit Rates from years ago has stuck with me and is the main inspiration for this article. My research however will explore some different facets of rookie hit rates.
My data was sourced by Dr. Koopa (@dynastyKoopa) with the following parameters:
Sleeper leagues
ADP of completed rookie-only drafts from actual leagues (not mocks)
2018-2023, specifically post-NFL Draft until the end of August each year
Superflex leagues, 9-13 starters
Using this data, I set out to discover the rookie hit rates for QBs, RBs, WRs, and TEs for each round (4-rounds), each tier of picks (1.01-1.03, 1.04-1.06, etc.), and each pick (1.01-4.12). A hit is at least one top-12 or top-24 season (PPR) at their position throughout their NFL career. I then went beyond the initial hit-rate percentages and tallied the total number of top-12 and top-24 seasons for each of these tables.
It is important to note that Sleeper did not debut fantasy football leagues until 2017, making 2018 the first true year for rookie-only drafts. But more importantly, with Sleeper came the steady rise in mainstream popularity of dynasty and Superflex leagues. Unfortunately, neither was extremely popular in 2018, so the data from that year only encapsulates ADP from 7 leagues and spans to only the 3.10 pick. Luckily, these formats went through a renaissance shortly after with 500+ rookie drafts in 2019, 3200+ in 2020, 9700+ in 2021, 17,000+ in 2022, and 25,000+ in 2023 (all of which had 4 completed rounds worth of ADP). But perhaps most critical to my research was the focus on SF league settings and ADP derived from actual leagues.
It can not be understated how much of a difference in value and draft strategy there is for QBs between 1QB and SF leagues. It may not be a stretch to say that any hit rate data sourced before 2018 is likely 1QB driven. On this basis, the hit rates will differ considering where QBs are typically drafted in 1QB leagues versus SF. It has taken years for the dynasty community to buy into the importance of QBs; even in SF. We didn't have our first 1.01 QB until 2021 (Trevor Lawrence) and there hasn't been one since. In terms of ADP versus ECR (I’ll have to do a future article on this topic), I’ll take the opinion of the masses from paid leagues every day of the week and twice on Sundays over “experts.” It is far more important for me to understand the views, behaviors, and markets of the average dynasty manager I will be playing with and whose sole motivation is winning their league. But this is enough yapping, let’s get into the findings.
Oh, We Got Both kinds. We got Busts *and* Face-Planters.
Beginning with a 30,000 ft. view of hit rates before we descend deeper into the minutia, we notice that hitting on a top-12 performing asset in the first round is slightly better than a coin flip. Those odds jump to 71% for a top-24 season. Perhaps the most unexpected aspect of these hit rates is how much better 3rd round RBs have performed over their 2nd round counterparts. It is disappointing how low the odds of hitting on an impactful WR are considering their ever-increasing popularity in fantasy. This is likely due to how difficult it is for incoming wideouts to outperform the elite veterans in the NFL, who are on top year in and year out. Ironically, the highest hit rate is attached to the least consequential position in fantasy. The odds of stumbling across an effective player fall off significantly after the second round.
The following chart of the total number of top-12/24 seasons highlights the massive disparity in talent between first-round assets and everyone else.
Key Takeaways:
The probability of landing a top-24 asset in the 2nd round is nearly the same as hitting on a top-12 player in the 1st round.
Focus on QBs in the 1st, TEs in the 2nd, RBs in the 3rd, & trade for WRs later on after they hit.
Considering 3rd round picks are amongst the most highly traded assets, the pro-gamer move would be trading your current 3rd for a future 3rd that can be used in-season for spot-starts.
Transitioning from whole rounds to tiers of rookie picks is when things become substantially more interesting.
The Foolish Things Shaming the Wise
Would anyone have guessed that a late-round 1st had the same likelihood of hitting on a top-12 performer as an early 1st!?! Or that it had a higher chance of securing top-24 production?!? This is the result of only one WR (Drake London) who has had an ADP in the top 3, and he has yet to crack a top 24 season (cross your fingies either London breaks out or MHJ bucks this trend). It can’t be ignored though how much value the last six classes have had at the end of the first round. This may be the fruits of the extraordinary depth coming out of college, the fantasy community’s deficiencies in letting these talents slide to the backend of the 1st, or perhaps both things are at play. It should be noted that just because we have 100% hit rates for top-12 QBs in the 2.07-2.09 range and for RBs in the 4.07-4.09 doesn’t mean I have discovered the Holy Grail of draft slots for those positions - it just means that the only QB & RB being drafted in those ranges happen to be Daniel Jones & James Robinson.
The following tables showcase why I chose to chart the total number of top-12/24 seasons in addition to hit rates. As you can see, the 71.11% hit rate by early-round RBs has been far more impactful than the 75% hit rate by late-round QBs in terms of fantasy production (15x vs. 6x Top-12 szns). It is encouraging to see that WRs are not a total loss in rookie drafts and that their 1.04-1.06 tier is the second-highest number of top-24 seasons (21x) amongst any position at any pick tier (trailing only 1.01-1.03 RBs, 28x).
Key Takeaway:
Having picks at both bookends of the first round is the way to go.
For the grand finale of this research project, we will now examine the hit rates of individual picks.
Do You Miss All The Shots You Don’t Take?
It is reassuring that 10 of the 12 draft slots in the first round have at least a 50% chance of landing you a top-24 performer. It’s also nice that the 1.01 lives up to the hype. Having the 1.02 on the other hand is like deciding between cutting the red wire or the blue wire in hopes that your costly draft pick doesn’t blow up in your face. We can knock on wood that Caleb Williams and MHJ are both can’t-miss prospects and that the 2024 class will mirror the 2019 and 2021 classes with both the 1.01 and 1.02 hitting. But it may not hurt to think long and hard about their potential barriers to stardom and parsing through whatever team situations they are drafted to. It may also be prudent to avoid dismissing the 1.03 as the “leftover” pick, but rather as an asset that deserves to be in the same tier as the 1.01 and 1.02 players.
Do You See The Light?
Stare at this data long enough and you will forget what you previously knew about the value of a draft pick. It’s taken me years to discern the light in dynasty. And now that I feel like I am beginning to understand, I feel like so much of what I have previously known has been nothing to me but blinding. But this is only the beginning of a multi-part series that will help you navigate the rookie season. So go get yourself some cheap sunglasses and let’s try to beat the dynasty masses.
The Dossier
As a bonus, I have listed below the SF ADP of the 2018-2023 classes.
