There seems to be a new draft fad every single year. It’s like diets in the way that people approach them – they work until they don’t. Seriously, in my lifetime there’s been too many of them to count, but some that have stood out over the last decade include the Atkins diet and the Keto diet. What’s included in those diets doesn’t matter, but you can assume one is the Early-RB strategy, while the other is the Zero-RB strategy.
They make work for a while, but every now and then, you’re going to hit a brick wall. That’s when everyone gains their weight back and looks for the next wonder diet. That’s what everyone is doing with wide receivers this year. After going WR-heavy in the first few rounds last year, the newest fad is to snag running backs early and pile up wide receivers later. Can you see the issue with this?
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Introduction to VBD (Value Based Drafting — created by Joe Bryant of FootballGuys) which includes no fads, only numbers. When you put together your rankings, you’re assuming they’re correct, right? I mean, that’s the only way you can actually win your draft. But even if you follow your positional rankings, it can be difficult to know which position to choose at certain points in the draft. With simple equations in VBD, you’ll know which position you should be taking at each point in the draft. Let’s talk about how this works.
What Exactly is Value Based Drafting?
It is putting historical numbers that line up with your rankings to give you the optimal value at any part of your draft. Did you realize Dak Prescott outscored Le’Veon Bell in fantasy football last year? Just because 11 of the top-12 scoring players in fantasy football were quarterbacks, it doesn’t mean you’d draft any of them in the top-12. That’s because you get a much bigger advantage over other teams with a running back like Bell than you do with a quarterback like Tom Brady. I think most understand this, as Brady’s ADP (average draft position) is around No. 53 overall, while Bell’s sits at No. 4 overall.
Now that we know fantasy points don’t automatically mean one player should go higher than the other, how does VBD work? There are a few ways to do it, but here’s what we use at FantasyPros:
VORP: This is valuing a player based on the replacement player your team can pick up off waivers. This is done by predicting who will be on waivers based on number of teams, roster requirements, bench size, etc.
VOLS: This measures the difference in fantasy points between the player you’re debating to pick and the worst player at the same position who will end up as a starter for your opponents.
VONA: The value of the next player available at your next pick. This assumes the number of players at each position that will be drafted by your next pick, based on number of teams, roster requirements, and our pick prediction algorithm.
VBD Score: We combine all the methods into one VBD Score in our Draft Wizard that will give you an edge in your draft. This can be synced with your actual live draft to help navigate you through the rounds.
What VBD does is assume that your rankings are your projections. By looking at past performance from those who finished as the RB20, you can project your RB20 for roughly 144.6 fantasy points (as averaged by the last three RB20’s). Your WR30 can be projected for 119.8 fantasy points. While it’s impossible to do the math in your head on the spot, VBD will automatically give you the best pick based on your projections. Remember that just because a player’s projected points are higher than the other, it doesn’t mean that you should draft that player. We don’t need to go back to the whole Bell/Brady thing, right?
The idea is this – the scarcer the position is, the more of the advantage you’ll have. Le’Veon Bell and a 10th-round quarterback will score more than Aaron Rodgers and a 10th-round running back. You also have to draft more than one running back, making it even more important that you gain the edge.
How Do You Calculate Value Based Drafting?
As mentioned above, your rankings will give you a baseline of projections from the previous years of data. It doesn’t matter who you have as your RB20 (everyone’s rankings are different), that player is worth 144.6 fantasy points in VBD. Typical leagues have 12 teams and run a 15-round draft. That would amount to 180 picks. As of now, there are 63 running backs projected to go inside the top-180 players. By our projections (your rankings), the RB64 (who would be on waivers) is worth 53.1 fantasy points, giving your RB20 a solid 91.5 points over the replacement player.
While navigating through your draft, you won’t even have to do that math with the Draft Wizard, as it automatically populates those numbers, along with the VONA and VOLS. The big one there is the VONA (Value Over Next Available) because you typically have two minutes to pick, and it’s impossible for you to figure out who your opponents will pick and then calculate the value of the current player over the one you’d potentially take next pick. Draft Wizard fortunately does all of this for you. Some like certain methods of VBD over others, so we’ve added an extra option where we combined all three of the methods into one combined VBD Score, which should give you a balanced approach.
What You’d Be Shocked to Know
You’ve likely heard it all before – wait on quarterback, get those workhorse running backs early, make sure you get at least one top-12 wide receiver, etc. Look, all of them can work if you pick the right players, but we all miss. Our job is to put you into the best position to win. So, here’s a few standouts that you might be surprised by with VBD based on historical data. Remember, your rankings may differ, but this is based on the ECR (Expert Consensus Rankings). This is based on a 12-team, 14-round draft with only VORP in mind. There’s an average of 24 quarterbacks being drafted in this range based on ADP, but we’ve lowered the number since we don’t often see more than 18 quarterbacks taken in a draft. This actually makes the quarterbacks worth less in VBD, so I promise, we didn’t help them out.
Aaron Rodgers is the No. 13 overall player in VBD. If you can get him in the third-round, do it.
Once touted as a first-round VBD player, Rob Gronkowski currently sits as the No. 27 overall player this year (if he’s your TE1, that is).
Five running backs should come off the board before Antonio Brown, as he’s the No. 6 overall player in VBD.
Whoever you have as your QB2 (consensus is Russell Wilson), he’s the No. 22 in VBD, over the WR8, who is currently Davante Adams in ECR.
According to VBD, there should be 17 wide receivers and 21 running backs come off the board before you take the TE2, who is Travis Kelce in most rankings.
Running back should be the priority when comparing them to wide receivers, all the way down to the 36th running back off the board, which is where the 37th wide receiver is finally worth more in VBD.
The Fine Line (Room for Error)
While there are plenty of positives to VBD, there are also some negatives, which is where your common sense needs to prevail. You need to know your leaguemates and how they draft. If you know that it’s a league where they all listen to fantasy podcasts saying, “wait on quarterback,” you don’t need to take Aaron Rodgers in the second- or third-round. Let’s pretend that you draft Rodgers in the third-round, and then the Draft Wizard says that Russell Wilson is the best VBD in the fourth-round, you should not take another quarterback, as you only need to draft one (especially if it’s Rodgers).
You have to keep this in mind throughout your draft, because if you’ve followed the VBD through the first five rounds and have a quarterback, three running backs, and one tight end, you’re likely going to be hurting if your league starts three wide receivers. This is normal for all draft strategies, so it shouldn’t really be used as an argument against VBD, but it is because drafters want to simply follow the numbers. That’s what mock drafts are for. Go inside the Draft Wizard, play around with the VBD option and see how you build a team by following each of the three methods as well as looking at our VBD Score, which should give you a solid, honest opinion on your team at the end.
Bottom Line About VBD (Why You Should Trust it)
Because you trust yourself! There will be a lot of people who say you can’t accurately project the exact points for each player at each position. That’s true, we can’t. If we could, I’d be rich and wouldn’t be here writing this article. I’d likely be playing golf in a canyon somewhere in 80-degree weather. I’m kidding, I’d still write this article, but I’d write it after playing golf. But if you trust your rankings (or mine), we know what players have done historically at their positions. There are going to be outlier players who exceed your ranking of them, yes, but they aren’t going to change what VBD does, because VBD isn’t some fad diet. No, it’s a historical numbers game that’s combined with your rankings. It’s about as close to perfect as we can get in this game of inches. You still have to do your part, so get practicing. Click here to go to the Draft Wizard.
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Mike Tagliere is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeTagliereNFL.
