With the 2012 NFL training camps underway, we’re all about to be buried under a mountain of news and rumors. And for fantasy football, every ounce of it matters. Everything from Randy Moss’s new attitude to Rokevious Watkins’s weight status can impact your season.



You might be wondering how fantasy football news relates to a post about ADP (or maybe you’re just wondering who the heck Rokevious is). Average Draft Position can be an effective shortcut to knowing what your opponents are thinking. This is because ADP nicely wraps up all the news and advice we read, hear and talk about into a simple list of our collective player preferences.



It’s important to know these preferences. The only way you’ll be able to maximize value during your draft is to have an idea of which players your opponents will likely take in each round. The best way to predict this (other than stealing their cheat sheets) is to assume they’ll stay close to the average draft position.



We’ve pulled together Average Draft Position data from multiple sources to give you a one-stop shop for all things ADP. So far, we have 5 sources for Standard and 2 sources for PPR. ADP comes courtesy of Yahoo, ESPN, CBS, MockDraftCentral, and FFCalculator. Here are the links:



ADP for Standard leagues | ADP for PPR leagues



A few things to note (we made some recent enhancements):

You can create a custom consensus ADP by clicking “edit sources” and selecting the sites you want to combine.

If you select two sources, you’ll be able to see how they compare to each other.

If you select only one source, you’ll be able to see how it compares to the Consensus ADP.

You can sort any of the lists by clicking on the column headers.

We recommend taking a look at the Consensus ADP and the ADP of the site you’ll be drafting on.



I should expand on that last bullet. When you read about rankings compared to ADP make sure you know which site’s ADP is being referenced. If you’re going to draft on Yahoo, there’s a chance your draft may not play out the same way as a draft on ESPN.



There are two reasons for this. First, it’s likely that your opponents could be using, or at least referencing, the pre-draft rankings that come preloaded at the draft site. They might even be auto-drafting from them (if so, please invite me to your league). Second, even your more competitive opponents are probably influenced by the advice on the site that hosts your league. This advice is the most readily available, so it’s likely being digested. You may disagree with Matthew Berry, but you’re probably still reading his stuff if you play on ESPN.



Here are a couple examples of how ADP can vary from site to site.



Trent Richardson

Yahoo ADP 13.7 | ESPN ADP 33.1

Yahoo drafters are considerably higher on this rookie than ESPN drafters. And is it any surprise that Yahoo drafters are grabbing Trent early when the Yahoo Experts are touting him as the 9th best player to take? Conversely, ESPN’s experts have Richardson all the way down at 36th overall.



Frank Gore

Yahoo ADP 60.4 | ESPN ADP 36.1

We’ve got the opposite here, with ESPN drafters liking Gore more than Yahoo drafters. And, again, these numbers are likely influenced by the advice provided on the respective sites. ESPN’s staff has Gore at #38 while Yahoo’s staff has him at #52.



So are the Joes following the Pros or are the Pros following the Joes? And how come the Yahoo experts can’t get together with the ESPN experts in a summit to settle their differences?



Perhaps they’ll use FantasyPros to squash their dissenting opinions. I just did a custom consensus ranking using three experts from ESPN (Matthew Berry, Eric Karabell and Christopher Harris) and three experts from Yahoo (Andy Behrens, Brad Evans and Brandon Funston). The result? Trent Richardson came in at #19 overall and Frank Gore came in at #46 overall.



How do you actually use ADP information at your draft? If you absolutely love Randy Moss as your sleeper of the year (I did… back in 1998), that doesn’t mean you should grab him in the second round since he’s probably still going to be available a few rounds later (ADP of 113, although likely to improve a bit thanks to news of his “new attitude”). You would achieve zero draft value by taking him that early, and you’d miss out on using that pick to grab someone younger (I mean, more valuable).



The best way to get some experience with using ADP as a guide is to try our Draft Simulator. You can do a complete mock draft in minutes. This tool has been getting a lot of love from our Cheat Sheet Wizard customers. If you want to do a live mock draft, try out Yahoo, ESPN, or Fantasy Football Calculator — our Draft Analyzer can instantly analyze your mock drafts from these three sites (as well as from our Draft Simulator).



We hope you find the ADP resources and mock drafting tools useful. Good luck with your drafts!



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