The last time I looked for the best values in NFL.com fantasy football drafts, the site wasn’t even allowing drafts yet. That meant there was no average draft position (ADP) data available, so I compared the site’s official rankings to FantasyPros’ PPR expert consensus rankings (ECR). NFL.com’s official rankings were (and still are) all over the place, with tons of players multiple rounds away from their consensus rankings. So far, early ADP results aren’t much better.
Today, we’ll look for the biggest values in that ADP compared to ECR. You know the drill; these are the players you should be able to snag for a discount in an NFL.com draft. Let’s get started.
- Fantasy Football Draft Kit
- 2025 Fantasy Football Expert Rankings
- Fantasy Football ADP
- Fantasy Football Trade Tools
Best Fantasy Football Draft Values: NFL.com Leagues
Nico Collins (WR – HOU) | ADP: 17.9/ECR: 10
I have written nearly a dozen of these articles comparing ECR to ADP over the last two months, focusing on multiple sites. And one trend has emerged as by far the most salient: Experts like wide receivers more than the public, especially in the early rounds of the draft. Now that ADP data is available for NFL.com, it is no exception. Among the top 36 players in NFL.com ADP, there are 15 wide receivers. Only one (Terry McLaurin) is being drafted more than one pick ahead of his ECR. Eleven of the 15 are being drafted at least 25% later than their consensus rankings.
Collins is one of those 11, with an ADP a massive 57% below his ECR. But he also stands out for being not just one of many undervalued wide receivers but also undervalued within the receivers as a group. Experts have him ranked as the WR7 overall; NFL.com drafters are selecting him as the WR9. To be fair, the two players NFL.com drafters have elevated above Collins are Brian Thomas Jr. and A.J. Brown. Both of those players are legitimate studs, and I wouldn’t fault anyone for picking them over Collins, even if I wouldn’t do it myself. But combining that slight positional slide with the wider trend of receivers falling in the early rounds has made the Texans’ No. 1WR a screaming value in the second round of drafts.
Here’s the thing about Collins. The 26-year-old is simply one of the most talented receivers in the league. In 2024, he ranked second at the position in Pro Football Focus (PFF) receiving grade and third in yards per route run. If we remove the weeks in which he played fewer than 50% of the Texans’ offensive snaps due to injury, he averaged 19 PPR points per game. Only Ja’Marr Chase and Chris Godwin (in a seven-game sample) scored more. Heading into 2025, Collins is fully healthy and has no competition to run it back as the top target for a talented young pocket passer in C.J. Stroud. It shouldn’t surprise anyone if he finishes as the WR1 overall, and his floor is also one of the highest in the league (after all, he still produced last season as Stroud and the Texans’ offense floundered).
If you’re drafting in the back half of the first round in an NFL.com league, you should still be able to grab an absolute stud running back, even with their inflated prices. Derrick Henry is the consensus choice by ADP, although I (and the expert consensus) would recommend pivoting to Christian McCaffrey, Ashton Jeanty or De’Von Achane. If you can pair one of those workhorse backs with Collins in the early second, you will be well on your way to building an absolute juggernaut. If you’re more of a risk-taker and willing to start your draft with two receivers while running backs fly off the board, you should be able to add Collins with your choice of Amon-Ra St. Brown or Malik Nabers. That’s quite a receiving room, to put it mildly.
Chase Brown (RB – CIN) | ADP: 34.8/ECR: 30
If just a 4.8-pick discount on Chase Brown doesn’t sound too exciting to you, remember that essentially every other early-round running back is being overdrafted. That’s not an exaggeration: The six backs directly before Brown in ADP are being drafted on average 9.3 picks before their respective consensus rankings. Combine that with his own -4.8 difference, and Brown’s ADP suddenly looks like a full round discount, which is massive at this stage of drafts.
Once again, we can also look to positional rankings to see the value more clearly. Brown is being drafted as the RB14 on NFL.com, four spots behind his ECR of RB10. The four backs NFL.com drafters have elevated above him are Jonathan Taylor, Kyren Williams, Bucky Irving and James Cook. Even if you would draft any of those players above him — which I wouldn’t recommend, aside from Irving and maybe Taylor — that’s not a choice you have to make. Taylor (22.3), Williams (24.3) and Irving (25.2) are being selected at the turn between round two and round three. Cook (29.3) isn’t far behind. But Brown’s ADP has him firmly in the late third; he almost certainly falls into the fourth in plenty of drafts.
This makes the third-year back a no-brainer pick compared to his early-round running back counterparts. Yes, he wasn’t particularly efficient last year, and his late-season workload is likely to regress. But he averaged 20.6 PPR points after Zack Moss‘ season ended in Week 8 of last year. The only backs to average more points for the season were Saquon Barkley and Jahmyr Gibbs. And it’s not like the Bengals added much competition this offseason, with all due respect to Samaje Perine and Tahj Brooks. If Brown continues where he left off last season, he will win leagues at this price. Even if his workload isn’t quite as dominant (which is likely), he should still easily outperform his RB14 ADP as the bell-cow No. 1 back on one of the league’s best offenses.
Michael Pittman Jr. (WR – IND) | ADP: 148.5/ECR: 100
NFL.com’s default format is a 10-team league with 15 roster spots, meaning 150 picks are made in most drafts. When a player goes undrafted in a particular league, the site assigns them a draft pick position of 151 for the purposes of calculating ADP. This means a massive number of players, those who go undrafted in a large portion of drafts but are still selected with some frequency, have ADPs between 144 and 150. Of these players, Pittman Jr. stands out as by far the biggest value, the only one with an ECR in the top 100 (albeit just barely).
To be fair to NFL.com drafters, Pittman isn’t exciting. He’s a middle-aged possession receiver with real competition on an offense that should compete to be one of the league’s worst. He finished last season as just the WR48 with a miserable 10.4 PPR points per game. With that said, I’m already on the record as expecting a bounce-back season from the veteran. He’s not someone who should be going undrafted, even in shallow leagues.
For one, the Colts are ready to give up on the Anthony Richardson experiment, which means Pittman won’t have to deal with another season of historically bad quarterback accuracy. Either Richardson improves, or we get Daniel Jones under center, which isn’t great, but it’s something. Meanwhile, Pittman himself played through a fracture in his back last season. Before 2024, he had consistently proven himself to be an impressive target-earner, racking up 142 targets per season between 2021 and 2023. In a full PPR format, that level of volume will essentially always translate to usable fantasy production. Grabbing Pittman with your final pick of the draft is a no-brainer, with essentially zero upside and a very real shot at landing a reliable weekly play.
Trevor Lawrence (QB – JAX) | ADP: 149/ECR: 111
Like Pittman, Trevor Lawrence’s ADP indicates he goes undrafted in the vast majority of leagues. I can’t argue with this. Especially in shallow 10-team leagues, drafting a backup quarterback is often a waste of a roster spot. Even the expert consensus, which is much higher than ADP on Lawrence, has him ranked as just the QB18, clearly outside of starter territory.
However, even if you don’t click his name on draft day, Lawrence should be the first name on your waiver wire watch list if you don’t already have an elite fantasy signal-caller. With Liam Coen in town and two potentially elite young weapons in Brian Thomas Jr. and Travis Hunter, this might be the year he finally puts it all together as a consistent fantasy starter. Coen and a pair of elite wideouts helped another former first-overall pick, Baker Mayfield, post a top-four fantasy finish last season. A similar breakout year is squarely within Lawrence’s range of outcomes, so make sure to keep an eye on his early-season performances and snap him up ASAP if he starts hot.
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Ted Chmyz is a fantasy football contributor for FantasyPros.com. Find him on Twitter and Bluesky @Tchmyz for more fantasy content or to ask questions.
