When I started writing about fantasy football, it wasn’t published. In fact, it wasn’t even on a computer. It was in one of those black Mead notebooks that you pick up in the school supplies section of Walmart. I was the only one actually reading my rankings. Nobody cared but me, but it didn’t matter. I did it because I loved the thought process that went into it. I loved that I could take down my thoughts, go back and look at it a few weeks later, and see where I was right and where I went wrong.

“You have Player X over Player Y in your rankings?! That’s got to be wrong. What about his quarterback? The other guy has to compete for targets. You’re wrong.” When you post fantasy football rankings, these are the questions that will come up. They are fair questions, even though they may come across as mean sometimes. I get it. I was on that end not too long ago. So instead of continue to do the norm, I wanted to explain why I felt the way I did. Someone asked me the other day, “Mike, how do you relate with your audience? Is there something that I should do in my articles that can help?”

Going back to why I started writing, it was all about the process. By writing anywhere from 200-500 words on a player, you’ll start to gain clarity as to who you’d pick and why you’d pick them. I did this for the top 30 players at each position. Then I started putting my work online and people started to find me. Why? Because I explained the process, which is always greater than the result. If you tell someone why they should be doing something and give them ample reasons to justify that, they’ll trust you, even if it doesn’t work out (I’m looking at you, Torrey Smith). Fantasy football is such a volatile game with such a small sample size that we’re going to be wrong, but it helps you feel better when you know the process was right.

With that being said, we’re just around the corner from fantasy season kicking off. Because of that, I’ve went through and re-adjusted all of my rankings. Below, you’ll find my top 200 fantasy football players for the 2017 season, with notes on all of them. It’s important to keep in mind that these rankings will change as we learn more, but this page will continually be updated all the way through the start of the season.

If you’d like to read up on some of the most polarizing players this offseason, I’ve been doing Player Profiles that are over 1,000 words apiece. You can find all of my work from this offseason right here.

2017 Draft Kit: View printable cheat sheets, sleepers & mistakes to avoid