Stealing Signals Draft Kit, Volume 2
Updated links to rankings, all strategy guides, everything to crush your draft
Before I start, an important note. Like I did last year during this same weekend over preseason Week 3, I’m going to go camp on a buddy’s property with some friends, and touch some grass for about 24 hours before the season starts. My eyes hurt from all the screens. That means that the rankings won’t update super quickly for preseason Week 3 results, and I apologize for that for those of you who have drafts in the next day. My writeup on all those games won’t come until likely Monday, and for those of you with drafts today or tomorrow, the rankings won’t reflect any major injuries or significant storylines from the Saturday games (before I head out today, I’m going to try to go through the six games that have already been played, and get the rankings updated to reflect any notable changes, so it will just be the 10 Saturday games I’ll be 24 hours slow on). As always, rankings are at the very bottom of this post.
The questions you guys have been asking in the comments have been tremendous, and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to get to them. I have been trying to get a full Q&A mapped out for a while, but the tentpole content came first, so that everything was out there and ready for this weekend’s drafts.
That doesn’t mean I won’t have more between now and Week 1, and among the pieces I’m going to hit on next week are a Team HVT piece that looks at my projections and backfield upside, a bit more specific Superflex discussion (but I already tried to cover how I’d approach it a bit in the QB Tiers piece, as well as the other strategy guides, for those of you with Superflex drafts in the interim), some reviews of my own drafts, a breakdown of preseason Week 3, and then of course a mailbag.
I also wanted to do a stream Q&A for Signals Gold subs to talk through specific draft questions. If you’re a Gold sub and want to do that, please reply to this (via email) with your draft time so I can try to schedule that in advance of enough of your specific draft times. It’s been a whirlwind August with the season starting on September 4 this year (fun fact: the season has started on September 5 or later every year since 2014). I’ll work to fit something in to accommodate schedules, but have my own drafts so it’s all a bit tricky. Just let me know and that will be fluid.
With respect to the broader mailbag, the questions are always easiest for me to parse when they are boiled down a bit. It’s totally natural to go a little longer when you’re replying to a post from someone who writes 17,000 words to cover one concept, because I write about every possible counterpoint, and I do truly love the ones that are like, “Am I thinking about this right?” with the same sort of approach I take of just working through a lot of stuff. The issue is merely the time of reading, comprehending, and analyzing the longer questions. If the question is something quick, like I got one this morning that asked why I moved Isaac Guerendo down so far with the Brian Robinson trade, I can fairly quickly note that I still think Guerendo is way more talented, but Robinson is a success-rate back and the things he brings are the types of things that would make it a lot harder for Guerendo to consolidate if Christian McCaffrey were to miss time, so while I still love the talent profile, it’s just about the strength of the bet now being meaningfully worse, and a lot of other RBs being guys I do prefer to stash. There’s signal in the trade itself that’s not good for the argument to draft and stash Guerendo.
That’s my idea of a quick example! Anyway, I’m going to work back through the comments on posts early-ish next week, and if there’s something you are still hoping for an answer on but you think your question is kind of long, maybe reply to it with a quick version. That’d be awesome. Also, in the past, some of you subs who have been around for a while have circled through and helped direct people to places where I’ve hit on stuff, or offered thoughts about stuff I’ve written about before. I love that, if you’re willing to help.
A ton of the questions ask me stuff like I remember seeing one briefly through an email notification (so apologies I didn’t quickly respond) that was about how Harold Fannin fits with David Njoku, and my response would be just to point that person to the AFC North Offseason Stealing Signals piece, because it’s well broken down there and the best way I can answer the question is there. That’s why those pieces exist. The links for those are below, and they break down every offense; in some cases, stuff has evolved in August, but probably for at least 80% of players you can get a good idea of why I have them ranked in ranges I do based on the way I wrote about them in those team-by-team breakdowns of what I saw in the offseason quotes and team actions, and then how the player profiles fit together, when I did my deep dive research for projections.
Alright, let’s get to all the links. I know you guys have a ton of drafts coming up; this is how you dominate.
Draft Strategy
A piece called “Cut your fantasy football drafts into quarters” is a good primer for draft strategy, and how to think through your team-building approach.
“The best way to play home leagues in 2025” gives you the specific blueprint for winning your league, tailored to softer draft environments.
The auction strategy guide breaks down all the relevant considerations in that format.
Positional strategy, Targets and Fades
Each of these posts includes a long introduction about the position and how to understand it for fantasy football. I probably should break those things off into their own posts, but it’s very important context about what the positions are and how to exploit them.
Then, I work through my tiered rankings and look at all the players a different way than the team-by-team nature of the Offseason Stealing Signals series, and importantly updated with about a month of new information since those deeper dives were written.
Preseason Stealing Signals series
Game by game breakdowns of all the relevant snaps from each preseason week, including discussion of how key rookies looked on the field.
Offseason Stealing Signals series
Team-by-team deep dives into all the key trends of each offense, and why the different players have different ranges of outcomes in the different offenses. The specific ways the different coaches and schemes fit, and what the players do within those schemes, is probably the biggest edge in fantasy football right now, as everyone flocks to aggregate research and individual player profile notes without understanding the relevant context.
Here’s that context, on a team-by-team and player-by-player level, with summaries for each team highlighting what’s “Signal” and what’s “Noise.”
The suddenly intriguing AFC South, including an introduction to the series
Some strong WR targets and young QBs in the NFC South
Unique offenses that challenge projection logic in the AFC East
Top-tier talents at QB, RB, and WR in the NFC East
Breakout WRs from four great offenses in the deep NFC North
Rookie RBs ready to dominate in the AFC West
Various degrees of target concentration in the NFC West
Rankings changes
Several pieces with blurbs and some Q&A about players that rose and fell after the Offseason Stealing Signals breakdowns. Most of these moves are relatively minor, but they document things we’re seeing and how we’re reacting to them in a way that provides more helpful context.
August 1 — A couple of changes, plus a lot of Q&A from initial rankings release
August 5 — Roughly 20 blurbs about rankings movers
August 8 — Roughly 20 more blurbs detailing camp news, more movement
August 13 — More rankings changes, risers and fallers
August 15 — Overall top 50 rankings, plus more movers
More from earlier this offseason
Field Tippers
While this series is from January, I’d argue that means better-contextualized data discussion very close to the end of last year, and it’s research I referred back to extensively through my projections process this summer.
Player specific pieces
Jan. 19 — How is Jayden Daniels so good?
Jan. 25 — Caleb Williams, Rome Odunze, and big situational improvement
Feb. 27 — Matthew Stafford, Kingmaker
Apr. 24 — How much can Travis Hunter play?
May 1 — RJ Harvey is an asymmetrical bet (pre-J.K. Dobbins signing, still relevant)
July 2 — Achane, and the Dolphins as the most important team for 2025
July 17 — Why I ranked Jahmyr Gibbs RB1 (with a bit more here)
Blurb posts
Some theory discussion
A piece called “One of the most common forms of analysis is actively harmful to good fantasy play” aims to help you understand other interesting analysis you’re seeing out there.
“The 5 biggest lessons from 2024” reminds us “it’s hard to board a moving train,” RB scoring has evolved, and more about the way fantasy evolves over time. I wrote about how to approach RBs in 2025 in a separate piece.
A long answer on how to navigate rookie RBs as possible roster cloggers in home league redraft situations from an impromptu mailbag
How and why touchdowns were up in 2024, and what that means for fantasy in 2025
Projections
Full projections release, plus why you should pay more attention to the rankings than the projections
Biggest lessons learned from the projections process for all 32 teams
A projections correction and discussion about uncertainty and faux precision
Rankings
The overall top 50 rankings are a week old, so consult with the updated rankings doc to see where guys have moved around within their positional rankings tiers. That will track with how they would move in the overall top 50, which as I write in the introduction there, isn’t a hard and fast list of how you have to draft since the players in those ranges are all the best picks and all have very strong ranges of outcomes that overlap quite considerably.
The way I’m feeling about different players’ ranges of outcomes are always fluid as we get more information about how they are trending for Week 1 and what their season might look like. There’s so much uncertainty not just for Week 1 but all year long; I promise you don’t want a fantasy analyst who makes rankings in July and doesn’t update them regularly. But the nature of that is sometimes things change after you’ve drafted. It’s the same as how value is going to change each week in-season. That’s the NFL.
The below rankings tool is an awesome way to use the rankings in live drafts, with the ability to click names to cross them out and track who is available in different tiers, and visually see the tier breaks, Targets, and Fades.
Additionally, if you’re looking for a spreadsheet version of the rankings, there’s a download .csv button on the top right of the tool.