Forget Ranks: Tiers & Humility-Based Drafting are the Way

Let me be explicitly clear. If you're drafting in only one league, go get your guys.

Fantasy football is supposed to be fun. Rooting for players you like or find exciting is fun. Grabbing a guy you don't like solely because he slid 1.5 picks past ADP is a sure-fire way to make your 2024 fantasy football season less fun.

But if you're drafting a bunch of teams, we need to be really honest with ourselves about a few critical concepts when it comes to projecting fantasy performance: probabilities, ranges of outcomes, and diversification.

Stick with me, because I promise that this piece won't be a boring lecture…

The expensive Jalen Reagor lesson

For the past eight years, I've drafted high stakes fantasy football teams and documented these drafts on the Ship Chasing podcast. In 2020, my co-host, Pat Kerrane (who would later go on to win Best Ball Mania III for $2 million dollars), and I fell in love with rookie WR Jalen Reagor.

Philadelphia had selected him 22nd overall that year. Reagor was fast (4.47 40-yard dash), dominated in college (28.1% target share), and broke out at a young age (18.7). In addition, the Eagles were desperate for pass-catching weapons, and Reagor had a clear path to emerging as their No. 1 WR.

Across our handful of high stakes drafts, we selected him in every. single. one.

You might now be remembering who went directly after Reagor in that draft: Justin Jefferson. Those back-to-back picks are forever immortalized in NFL lore thanks to the clip of the Vikings front office laughing at the Eagles for having selected Reagor over Jefferson.

Nov 28, 2021; East Rutherford, NJ, USA; Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Jalen Reagor (18) cannot hang on to a potential game winning touchdown with seconds left in the game, as New York Giants cornerback Aaron Robinson (33) defends at MetLife Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

Like the Eagles, we were completely blind to Jefferson, who was going in the exact same ADP range of fantasy drafts as Reagor. Despite having the same draft capital, a similarly stellar college profile, and a direct path to targets in Year 1, we were overconfident slappies.

As a result, we drafted a player who we slightly preferred at a 100% rate, which implied that Reagor was a significantly better pick than Jefferson. I'm sure you all remember how their respective rookie seasons played out:

Jefferson: 88-1,400-7
Reagor: 31-396-1

Womp womp.

Jefferson turned out to be a league-winner, and Reagor ending up being a massive bust. We didn't advance a single high-stakes team to the playoffs that season and lost all of our entry fees. But in doing so, we both learned an expensive but important lesson.

Ranks vs. Tiers

Everyone loves rankings. They serve a valuable function, especially for managers who don't have time to eat, drink, and sleep fantasy football. However, trying to precisely rank every single player in the drafting pool from best to worst with pinpoint accuracy is an impossible task.

Football is a volatile sport. The NFL is an unpredictable league. And fantasy football is filled with randomness.

When you treat rankings as gospel, you fail to acknowledge this inherent chaos. Tiers, on the other hand, embrace this chaos and encourage us to practice humility when drafting.

It's why I love that Fantasy Life's rankings aren't just ranks. The players are also segmented within tiers. A ranking set forces you to choose who is better between Jefferson and Reagor, whereas tiers place them in a similar cohort.

Dec 24, 2023; Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson (18) catches a touchdown pass from quarterback Nick Mullens (not pictured) as Detroit Lions cornerback Cameron Sutton (1) defends during the second quarter at U.S. Bank Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports

Rankings say, “this player is better than the other, and you'd be an idiot to take the lower-ranked player first”.

On the other hand, tiers say, “there's a similar probability that both of these players succeed, so go ahead and flip a coin”.

Drafting off ranks is like using a physical map during rush hour traffic. Sure, the Road Atlas has all of the relevant streets and highways, but it can't apply any context to help you get to your destination in the most efficient way possible.

It doesn't know that there's an accident on I-90 or that an ostrich escaped from the zoo and has shut down traffic on the off-ramp. Oddly specific reference, I know.

Drafting off tiers, though, is like utilizing your GPS navigation. It knows that there isn't only one way to get home. It can provide multiple avenues to your destination and help you optimize your route depending on that specific day's traffic.

How to navigate 2024 drafts with tiers

Here are a few key areas in 2024 drafts where I'm practicing humility and mixing up my bets within tiers.

WRs in Rounds 2 to 3

Drafters do not like the second round this year, and I understand why. You can make a case for virtually every single WR going in Rounds 2 and 3 to be the first pick of the second round.

Do you want to chase the sky-high ceiling of Marvin Harrison Jr.? How about the tantalizing environment upgrade for Drake London? Or maybe you just play the hits with Davante Adams and Mike Evans, both of whom have been great year after year? Oh, you're a San Francisco fan? Well guess what, both Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk are on the menu here as well.

To put this long, flat tier in perspective, there are an astonishing 22 WRs in our Tier 3, starting with Chris Olave and going all the way down to Amari Cooper.

The takeaway is simple. Switch up your bets in this range across multiple drafts. Mix and match your favorite WRs in this ADP range, or feel free to "reach" for a unique pairing. Reaching is only bad if you're doing it across tiers and sacrificing ADP value.

Elite TEs

Elite TE is the dominant strategy for 2024 drafts. I think that there are seven Elite TEs (I don't include Jake Ferguson, personally, but that's beside the point), but I want to have exposure to all of the guys listed here: TE rankings Sure, Trey McBride and Mark Andrews are my favorite elite TEs at cost, but I don't want to be too underexposed to Sam LaPorta and Travis Kelce just because they're the most expensive.

Instead, I want to lean into the structural element (what an elite TE provides for my starting lineup) and not get bogged down on exactly which one could deliver a league-winning season. At the end of the day, all seven elite TEs this year have that potential in their high-end range of outcomes.

Late-Round Rookie QBs

I think that there's a lot of upside (and uncertainty) with the late-round rookie QBs. I'm interested in Drake Maye, Bo Nix, and J.J. McCarthy this year. I prefer Maye's profile the most – I think he has the most fantasy-friendly game – but I'm constantly reminding myself of how bad we are collectively at knowing which incoming rookie QBs will hit each year and which will bust.

A year ago at this time, the consensus was that Bryce Young was a much better bet than C.J. Stroud. In previous years, the entire NFL industrial complex was convinced that Justin Herbert and Josh Allen would be bad. Plenty of people were even convinced that Zach Wilson would be great!

There is a wide range of outcomes on all of these late-round rookie QBs in 2024, but if/when they hit, they can hit big and can smash their respective ADPs. I'm not going to get out over my skis on any of these three rookies, especially because a few of them might not start right away. Instead, I want to diversify based on who makes the most sense in each specific draft for my existing roster in the late rounds (i.e. stacking with their teammates).

It's not fun admitting that we're bad at perfectly ordering these players. We all fancy ourselves as omniscient fantasy GMs who can see the entire board, but that's not the reality.

Draft within tiers and enjoy the spoils of a diversified portfolio that doesn't have to be perfect to win.