No moment shifts fantasy football ADP more dramatically than the NFL Draft. For months, drafters speculate on incoming rookie talent and landing spots. Then, in one weekend, the draft reshapes rookie evaluations and shakes up depth charts, triggering dramatic ADP swings in best ball tournaments. Some rookies will see their ADPs Skyy-rocket, while others tumble down draft boards.

This article series will dissect the anatomy of rookie risers and fallers to predict ADP shifts, creating actionable strategies for The Big Board and other Pre-NFL Draft best ball tournaments. 

Unlocking Tournament-Winning Upside Through Rookies

In playoff-style best ball tournaments, playoff production has an outsized impact on your results, with 70% of your team's expected value coming from Weeks 16-17. Both rookie wide receivers and rookie running backs consistently spike during the fantasy playoffs. This concentration of back-weighted production to the weeks that matter most is a feature — not a bug — that drafters can exploit. 

Applying this strategy in 2024, I had 15.3% exposure to Bucky Irving and targeted five late-round rookie WRs who could explode during the fantasy playoffs. This approach yielded Jalen McMillan (17.4 points per game Weeks 15-18) and Ricky Pearsall (24.7 points in the Week 17 Finals). 

Rookies are best ball tournament winners, peaking exactly when your fantasy team needs it most. 

Leveraging ADP Closing Line Value

In an increasingly sharp market, ADP effectively captures player value in a single metric. The Efficient Market Hypothesis suggests that for a format as complex as playoff-style best ball tournaments, ADP properly balances the relative importance of total fantasy points, points per game, positional scarcity, advance rates, and playoff production in the weeks that matter most.

While ADP has become increasingly efficient over time, it remains imperfect, which is why we use the Legendary Upside Rankings and the Sidekick while drafting.

ADP closing line value (CLV) serves as a key metric for evaluating drafting success. For the purposes of this article, ADP CLV refers to the difference between a player's Pre-NFL Draft ADP in The Big Board and their Post-NFL Draft ADP in Best Ball Mania, reflecting how well a drafter predicted market movements. 

The relationship between ADP CLV and team success is well-established. High ADP CLV is one of the most predictive elements of a winning roster and is a critical element of portfolio management. By selecting players whose ADPs rise significantly after the NFL Draft, drafters prove they can prospectively predict future sharper ADP, and thus gain a substantial edge.

The NFL Draft Reshapes Rookie ADP

The NFL Draft redefines rookie valuations overnight, forcing drafters to adjust quickly to new circumstances.

Among the 50 rookies with relevant ADPs in The Big Board 2024, 70% of rookies experienced ADP shifts exceeding one full round post-draft. The NFL Draft breaks favorably for some rookies, with 16% rising more  than one-round, and unfavorably for others with 12% falling post-draft. 

With many rookies being selected as fliers late in the draft, using an ADP of 200 as our “draftable” threshold (e.g. players frequently drafted in most leagues), the NFL draft helped 12% of rookies move from undraftable to draftable status, while ruining 16% of rookie outlooks causing them to fall out of draftable range entirely. Meanwhile 24% of aspirational rookies remained undraftable after the NFL Draft.

Anatomy of Rookie Risers and Fallers

Some rookies were clear offseason winners or losers.

• Winner: Xavier Worthy, Keon Coleman, Ladd McConkey, and Kimani Vidal all landed in the perfect situations that boosted their fantasy value.
• Loser: Adonai Mitchell fell out of the first round and landed in a low-pass-volume offense, significantly depressing his value.

Other players had competing forces working in opposite directions.

• Ben Sinnot was a huge draft day winner as a second-round pick, but over the course of the offseason it became increasingly apparent that Zach Ertz would be the Week 1 starter.
• Trey Benson landed on a potentially ascending offense behind an aging starter, but generated virtually no training camp buzz, confirming that it was James Conner’s backfield in 2024.

Ultimately, ADP shifts for rookies can be attributed to two distinct categories:

1. Talent-Based Factors: College production, film evaluation, combine performance, and training camp buzz are inherent to the player and drive initial perceptions of player value, including projected draft capital.
2. Team-Based Factors: Depth chart, projected role, and surrounding situation (offensive environment) are landing spot dependent.

Below are the frequencies at which each ADP Movement Force impacted the ADPs of the 50 rookies in 2024. Multiple forces often affected each rookie, so players were assigned both primary and secondary influences.

• Draft Capital: Influenced ADP when a player was significantly over- or under-drafted relative to Mock Draft Database’s Big Board expectation.
• Depth Chart: Factored in when a player projected for an immediate starting role or faced unexpected competition.
• Situation: Reflected the quality of offense the player landed in, including the quarterback.
• Training Camp Buzz: Post-draft performance reports and coach/team commentary.
• Talent: Represented pre-draft evaluations of player skill independent of landing spot.
• Talent: Changes in perception of player skill.

The primary takeaway here lies in understanding these influential forces, rather than focusing on the exact percentages from a single draft class.

Talent Evaluation: The Key to Predicting Rookie ADP Shifts

There are many forces that can dramatically move rookie ADP throughout the offseason. The talent-based traits inherent to the player's skill represent "knowable" information that we can use to predict player value during Pre-NFL Draft best ball tournaments. Yet, while talent-based factors are "knowable," the art of talent evaluation encompasses a wide range of opinions, as rookies have never stepped on an NFL field and are consequently difficult to price accurately. Unlike veterans where we have a better sense of their NFL talent, rookie evaluations contain much more uncertainty, creating market inefficiencies. These talent evaluation inefficiencies create opportunities for savvy drafters to exploit market mispricings in The Big Board. 

Talent-Based factors are already partially priced into rookie ADPs in The Big Board, while Team-Based factors remain landing spot dependent, which is largely unknowable before the NFL Draft. Not surprisingly, team-based factors exert greater influence on rookie ADP in Post-NFL Draft contests, as this new information wasn’t accounted for in the Pre-NFL Draft ADP.  

Yet, we still see Talent-Based factors influence the post-NFL Draft ADP Movement. This is actionable information, as if we can identify NFL talent better than our opponents, then we can gain an edge in ADP CLV in Pre-NFL Draft best ball contests.

Talent-Based analysis becomes even more important for late-round dart throws where NFL Draft Capital has higher variance. 

By mastering talent evaluation and anticipating market inefficiencies, drafters can systematically gain an edge in securing high-CLV players—setting their rosters up for tournament success. To maximize CLV gains, drafters should adopt strategies that anticipate market adjustments while mitigating downside risk. Additionally, even if we expect a player to be a faller, we can still believe that player is undervalued by the market and draft them, especially since rookies provide a systematic advantage through back-weighted production during fantasy playoffs. However, we should be mindful of our exposures to expected fallers, as we can increase our positions at cheaper prices later.

Ultimately, if we can better understand talent evaluation than our opponents, we can gain an edge in rookie ADP movement. Additionally, if we can identify when opponents are overconfident in their ability to predict draft day landing spots and are prematurely baking Team-Based forces into ADP, we can fade landing spot narratives in The Big Board. Matching players to specific teams have far more variance than the public often assumes, and chaos in the NFL Draft is the only certainty.

Key Takeaway: Team-Based factors that drive much of the Post-NFL Draft ADP movement are inherently unpredictable in The Big Board. By focusing on Talent-Based factors during Pre-NFL Draft tournaments, drafters can identify players poised for significant Post-NFL Draft ADP Movement and gain closing line value.

2025 Rookie Quarterbacks: Winning the ADP Closing Line Value Game

Let's apply our talent evaluation framework and knowledge of ADP market dynamics to the 2025 rookie quarterback class, examining each prospect's potential for ADP movement.