Using Our Draft Kit to Win Your Yahoo Fantasy Football League

We're all in the thick of fantasy football draft season, and while we may not have had as much training camp and preseason exposure as usual, the algorithms at numberFire haven't been sleeping.

And that's good news for us because our draft kit is fully customizable for your league settings, and we can use those to find leverage spots in fantasy football drafts.

Because your draft lobby will sort and rank players differently based on your site of choice, your favorite sleepers may be gone by the time you normally would draft them in your mocks. If your site ranks your 10th-round gem as a 7th-round pick, you have to adjust.

So, know your league settings and plan accordingly. I'm trying to help.

I ran numberFire's projections -- tailored to the default Yahoo scoring setup -- to find the biggest discrepancies between our ranks and Yahoo's default list.

Things to Know

1. Yahoo's starting lineup is QB/RB/RB/WR/WR/TE/Flex. This means you start only two receivers but have a flex spot.

2. There are two injured reserve spots. This gives you some flexibility in case of positive COVID-19 tests.

3. Yahoo defaults to half-PPR scoring. Your players will receive 0.5 fantasy points per catch.

4. Interceptions are -1 fantasy points, not -2. This may or may not matter to you, but it's worth noting that picks aren't as harmful as they are on other sites.

Overvalued Yahoo Players According to Our Projections

There are a lot of discrepancies here in our projections compared to the Yahoo draft app.

By no means are these "can't draft" plays, but when I've done this study in the past, the discrepancies aren't usually this voluminous and cavernous.

A big reason for the dissonance is that Yahoo lists 28 quarterbacks inside their top-180. In a 15-round, 12-team draft, 180 players get selected. In a single-quarterback league, 28 quarterbacks won't be drafted in the top-180. We have just 20 quarterbacks in our top-140. Similarly, Yahoo lists 21 tight ends in their top-180. We've got 18 and then a big drop off to the rest.

Individual discrepancies exist, of course, at running back and receiver. Damien Harris appears overvalued, though Harris is in the top-150 for JJ Zachariason, Jim Sannes, and me.

A few depth running backs are higher on Yahoo's list than ours -- Chase Edmonds, Justin Jackson, A.J. Dillon, to name a few -- but they're all at least 120th in the app's rankings.

Among players in the double-digit picks, the most overvalued are Tyler Higbee, who is 62nd on Yahoo's list but 124th in our rankings. Jared Cook (71st, 131st) isn't too far off.

Undervalued Yahoo Players According to Our Projections

These are the players in our top-180 based on Yahoo's default settings with the biggest discrepancies in Yahoo rank.

A few players really jump off the page, and they're all running backs without starting roles. Darrynton Evans should have a third-down role for the Tennessee Titans behind Derrick Henry. Joshua Kelley and Devine Ozigbo have pass-catching backs (Austin Ekeler and Chris Thompson, respectively) in their way but could carve out early-down work. The same goes for Ryquell Armstead (Ozigbo's teammate and a screaming value if he takes over the early-down work from Leonard Fournette). Thompson himself is a value.

DeSean Jackson is currently the WR1 for the Philadelphia Eagles but is 246th in the Yahoo draft app. Preston Williams led the Miami Dolphins in target share while healthy in 2019 but is 190th.

A Closer Look at the Top

There are actually 21 instances within Yahoo's top-36 where our ranks are at least 6 picks apart.

Basically, our projections suggest that the Yahoo app is downplaying the early-round running backs. It flies against the temptation to go with the ZeroRB strategy, but early-round production is really hard to find from waiver-wire running backs.

If you trust our numbers, there's a lot of value to be found and avoided when drafting on Yahoo this season.