Value-Based Drafting or VBD is a fantasy football strategy which I first learned about in 2017 thanks to Joe Bryant of FootballGuys. This draft approach focuses on identifying the value of a player and how much better (or worse) they are compared to baseline players at the same position.
Fantasy Football Helper offers custom VBD rankings customized to your exact league settings to help you get optimal value for every pick:
- Understanding VBD Fantasy Football Principles
- VBD Rankings for 2024 PPR Leagues
- Request VBD Rankings Customized to Your League
Understanding VBD Principles
As mentioned above, value-based drafting is all about determining the value of a player compared to baseline players. There are several types of baselines which you can use for comparisons such as the best player not drafted, the projected worst starter in your league, or it can be anything you value, for any reason, such as the 100th ranked fantasy football player in ADP.
For example, in a 12-team, 1QB league, there are 12 QBs started weekly. Therefore, the 12th ranked QB could be used as a baseline as the worst projected weekly starter at his position. If Josh Allen (QB1) is projected to score 350 points and Kyler Murray (QB12) is projected to score 250 points, then Josh Allen would have a score of 100 (350 – 250 = 100). Kyler Murray would have a score of 0 because his score is the baseline of 250, while any QB ranked lower than Murray would have a negative score (below baseline).
VBD Rankings for 12-Team PPR
Below is a current example of VBD rankings for 12-team PPR leagues. To determine these scores, we did the following:
- Create player projections (we used the average from Sleeper, ESPN, and Yahoo)
- Use the projected totals to calculate fantasy point totals for PPR scoring
- Determined a baseline player for VBD score
- VBD score = total projected points above/below best non-drafted player
- Determined a baseline player for VORP (Value Over Replacement Player)
- VORP = total projected points above/below worst league starter
- Compared VORP vs. Sleeper PPR ADP
By comparing VBD or VORP (which I prefer) to ADP you can easily visualize which players are over/undervalued according to your projections.
The most glaring example in the table above is Gibbs vs. Pacheco. Gibbs is expected to score only 0.15 points per game over replacement (see VORP/G) more than Pacheco, however Gibbs’ ADP on Sleeper is 26 spots higher. Gibbs requires a late first round pick, whereas Pacheco can be drafted in the late third or even early 4th for essentially the exact same projected production.
Additionally, you can see Deebo Samuel and DJ Moore are being drafted a full round later than their value suggests, making them a fantastic value based on projections.
Creating Custom VBD Rankings
Just like how ADP will change based on league settings, so too does the VBD score and VORP of each player. Non-default league settings require non-default projections. When you request your custom VBD rankings, you will receive the following:
- Player projections for your exact scoring settings
- You can request us to use specific platform projections or send us your own
- VBD scores and VORP for each player based on your exact league settings
- You can request custom player baselines in addition to VBD and VORP
- VBD/VORP vs. ADP
- You can request which ADP you want us to use for comparison
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