- New Orleans Saints’ teammates Alvin Kamara and Michael Thomas, along with the Los Angeles Rams’ Allen Robinson, have been the biggest training-camp risers in earlier rounds of fantasy drafts.
- Carolina Panthers’ Christian McCaffrey has established himself as the locked-in No. 2 in fantasy drafts, often now going first overall.
- Green Bay Packers’ Romeo Doubs is the biggest riser in absolute draft position, rising more than 60 ADP spots into the teen rounds on recent best-ball drafts.
We’re all digesting the training camp news for injuries, depth chart positioning and good old-fashioned highlights. How much each piece of news has affected player perceptions is nearly impossible to quantify, but we do have fantasy football draft information for skill position players.
Throughout the offseason, fantasy football players have been putting down their hard-earned dollars on their fantasy prognostications, and I've been collecting every pick from every best-ball draft at FFPC. In the visualizations below, you’ll find the pre-training camp average draft positions (ADPs) in the form of average draft position a week before training camps began, which is plotted against players’ ADPs over the last few days.
Players to the left of the dashed line have risen through the process while those to the right have fallen. Getting a better idea of exactly where the trends are moving gives us a better idea of which waves to ride and which to pass, setting ourselves up to be ahead of the curve during the meat of draft season.
ROUND 1
The moves near the top of the draft are going to appear more subtle, as the movement of even a single place in average ADP is a seismic shift in perception. While Jonathan Taylor maintains his position at the top, Christian McCaffrey has closed the gap slightly and separated himself as the clear second pick. For PPR formats, Ian Hartitz and I have McCaffrey as our top-rated player, and it looks like others are starting to come to the same conclusion.
Travis Kelce has risen some in FFPC’s tight-end-premium formats, where his ceiling outcome makes him especially attractive. The biggest faller in the first round is Najee Harris. The Pittsburgh Steelers’ workhorse back recorded over 380 touches as a rookie and should see similar usage this year, if healthy. It appears that negative news out of Steelers camp about likely starter Mitchell Trubisky and first-round selection Kenny Pickett is starting to weigh on Harris’ ADP.
Joe Mixon and D’Andre Swift have moved up in recent weeks, now often filling the end-of-round spots for drafters selecting on the turn.
ROUND 2
Alvin Kamara is the clear training camp winner thus far, as he was a mid-to-late third-round pick a few weeks ago and now is going at the end of the second round in many FFPC best-ball drafts. Previously, a lengthy suspension was priced into Kamara’s ADP, but after another delay in litigation, there’s a good chance that Kamara doesn’t face suspension until 2023.
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