Average Draft Position

What is Average Draft Position? It tells you where players are being drafted in mock drafts. Antsports.com runs mock drafts leading up to the season, then averages all the data for you. It's a great way to see how most people value players. Even though your league may use different scoring rules, most people will still draft about the same.

Why is this? I think it's because most people listen to the "experts", the professional fantasy writers. They're good, don't get me wrong, but they make mistakes just like the rest of us. In 2004 everybody and their brother had Kevan Barlow ranked highly. He ended up underperforming all the experts predictions.

The real problem with blindly trusting pros is that they tend to follow each other as well. If one guy starts ranking a player highly, they all will. Why? Maybe they feel like if they don't agree with that assessment, but they turn out to be wrong, the average player will stop trusting them. If that happens, they'll be out of a job. So, it's better for them to agree with each other. If they are all wrong, it looks like it's the players fault.

This is why you need to do your own research. The pros aren't necessarily better at grading players and drafting. You have the same players to rank and draft as the pros do. It's not like a pro writer can choose from Tomlinson, Portis and Holmes while you only get to pick from Thomas Jones, Warrick Dunn and Tyrone Wheatley. The player pool is fixed. So all you need to get better at is ranking players.

Bottom line is that the pros will have players all ranked in the same area. Owners will follow these rankings. That's why you can trust Antsports.com to have average draft position data that your draft will follow (approximately). Pay attention not only to the average position, but also the highest and lowest pick for each player.

Leverage this knowledge of average draft position by selecting a player as late as possible to create value. If you have Javon Walker ranked in the third round, but his average draft position is in the fifth round, you can select another player now and likely get Walker coming back. Always remember, try to get value for each pick.