It ain’t easy being the GOAT – that’s what the Fantasy Football Counselor said to me as he signed off following our YouTube interview last summer. He ain’t never lied. Maybe about Ronald Jones being a league-winner, but he ain’t lying about the first part. My uncle, that most of you probably know as Rick Ross once famously rapped – “You want to be the hottest but that shit gets COMPLICATED.” So, we now have two credible sources letting us know just how difficult it is to maintain greatness, regardless of your field of work. The next line of that song happened to be “I pull your card, I know you’re pussy by your conversation” so the jury is still out on how relatable the song is to us, but you get the point.
As someone who has gained a following in subscribers far greater than I deserve, I feel as if I’ve adopted a responsibility that inherently comes with my position. I spend hours, and hours, and hours and sometimes even minutes, doing research for the videos that I produce and pray to the trap gawds that you guys enjoy them when they go live at 5 am EST on this beautiful website we call YouTube. Those hours spent researching are spread across dozens of websites, apps, blog posts, videos and podcasts. If someone were to ask me, right now, where they could go to find out X about Player Y – contract situation, injury news, how well Player Y performed in a dome vs. outside in 2016 – I could literally tell you where to go for that info, right off the dome. It’s not something I’m proud of – hence why I keep this article behind a paywall so only very few people can know this about me.
But the truth is…. that this is the truth.
That responsibility I mentioned earlier is that I shouldn’t be telling you who to draft, when to draft them, who to stay away from, all the bullshit you see fly through the airwaves of the current fantasy football industry. My responsibility is to teach you how to become better fantasy football players in the long-run. You want to find something out about Player Y, or Player Z? I’m about to teach you the rulez.
You make a man a marg, he gets drunk. You teach a man how to make a marg, and he’s buzzed for life. Stay jiggy. #szn
A gigantic list of my favorite websites, tools, apps, resources, podcasts to dominate fantasy football, forever:
***Make a bookmarks folder on your browser/in your favorites and throw all of these in there***
During the summer, I spend more time on Rotoworld than the Kardashians doing laying out by their olympic-sized pool. It’s disgusting.
Me spending that much time on RotoWorld isn’t the best either.
In my humble ass opinion, Rotoworld is the gold standard for a fantasy football resource. RW literally got ese’s working round the clock to update ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that happens in the fantasy football world. They got a fantasy football sweatshop basically, something I can only dream of turning the HQ into one day. RW covers players, coaches, depth chart moves, injuries, reports out of camps from beat reporters all over the map, game recaps, and 1,000 other things, neatly compacted into their Player News Feed. You can easily search any player’s name in the search bar:
And land on their player page, where it will hit you straight in the face with the most up-to-date news on that player. Whether you’re on the clock in a draft and want to make sure the TE you’re about to draft hasn’t been indicted on murder chargers over the last 24 hours or just hella bored at work – any news you need to know about a player should be found here.
This might feel ridiculous, but Twitter is absolutely the world’s best “on-demand” search engine, ESPECIALLY in the sports realm. EVERYONE on Twitter is tweeting about EVERYTHING that happens ALL the time. It’s actually really fucking annoying, to be honest, but also awesome. All of your favorite fantasy football analysts, analytics guys, NFL researchers, etc. are on Twitter. You can choose to forego following your high-school friends, your sister-in-law that hasn’t tweeted since April of 2015, even make a burner account so that no one even knows you have one – and follow strictly fantasy football peeps. It’s the move and a half.
Ok, action steps:
- Go to Twitter.com
- Create an Account
- Click Here to Follow me on Twitter
- While on my profile, click on “Following”
- Everyone I follow on that Twitter account is strictly for fantasy football and NFL related content. And maybe some of my fuckin boys from back home too!!!! – Roll down the list and click that Follow button until your wrist falls off.
- Come back to the app frequently and enjoy being an exponentially better fantasy football player.
- One of the most underutilized parts of Twitter is the search bar on the top right – not just for fantasy football but for real life. I.E. – It’s 11:42 am and you’ve been waiting for your train to come since 11:15 am – what the h*ck is going on? Type your train line (I.E. Spring Valley line + *location*) into the search bar and I’d almost guarantee you the train line will have made some sort of announcement on Twitter about it. Worst case scenario you’ll find really angry people on the internet tweeting at the transportation hub about how pissed they are, thus making your wait a little less miserable – it’s a win-win.
FFtoday is a beautiful website. You can find any (basic) fantasy football statistic or player ranking, during any week of any season dating back to 2001. All you need to do is head over to their stats page, select a year, a position, and your scoring settings in the dropdown menu and you’ll see their massive, clean, chart of data magically appear before your own two eyes. Everything is filterable, sortable, unfortunately non-exportable but that’s why I created copy & paste after I created the internet.
You’re able to sign-up a free membership and input your specific league settings to find previous player rankings according to your own personal league scoring rules.
One of the best features about the website is the ability to click on any individual player within the charts which brings you to that player’s page. On those player pages you’ll find individual game logs dating back three of the player’s most recent seasons, as well as a small writeup on the player’s fantasy outlook for the upcoming season.
Unquestionably a favorite resource of mine due to the copious amount of data compacted into a small, super easy-to-use space and easily sortable.
- Web Link
- App Link: N/A
The mecca of Redzone stats. Targets, rush attempts, passing yards inside the Redzone, 10-yard-line, goal-line – this, chief, is it. Pro Football Reference ain’t fucking around when it comes to their data.
Another super under-utilized offering PFR has is their unique player splits. If you search a player’s name in the top right corner of the website, you’ll land on that player’s individual page which is more filled with stats than Snacks and Animal are with bad takes.
Much like FFToday, you can find individual “Gamelogs” of each player, but on PFR, these date back through the entire player’s career. The “Splits” dropdown will take you to that player’s splits to an absurd degree – how he performs during different months – different days of the week – different TIMES OF THE FUCKIN DAY. In a dome? Sure, why not. On turf? You bet ur right titty on it. The splits is the shits. Lastly, “Touchdowns” is a litty dropdown, too. They have a list of every TD that player scored, against which opponent, during which week, from how far out it came and in which quarter. It’s a masterpiece. My pants are tight.
PFR is a powerhouse resource for NFL stats. Use it wisely.
- Web Link
- App Link: N/A
The only team in the NFL last year to run their offensive plays out of the “12” personnel at higher rate than the Philadelphia Eagles were the Houston Texans, at a rate of 40%.
I know that because SharpFootballStats exists.
If you EVER want to find something out about play-calling frequency, whether that be by personnel, position, pass vs. run, success rate, play calls on specific downs, by certain weeks – this is it. At what rate did the Raiders target their running backs on 3rd downs over the second half of the season when down by fewer than 10 points, but not leading by more than 10 (lol like that happened last year), you can literally do that here.
A good example of using this would be comparing the rate at which running backs in the SF offense were targeted when Jimmy G was under center versus the Niners backup. We know that GQ played during the first 3 weeks of 2018 and the final 5 weeks of 2017 – and easy split to find using this website – and easily predictable/projectable going forward for future running backs in a Jimmy G-led offense.
So, when you think SharpFootballStats, think ridiculously granular TEAM stats.
- Web Link
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PlayerProfiler has quickly become the gold standard for fantasy football resources. Crisply put together like some chicken fingers there is no better place to go to find out more about a newly drafted prospect or current NFL player.
Every single NFL player has an individual player profile (seen above) with all of their measurables, metrics and statistics. They’re pulled ONLY from the NFL Combine so they are the official numbers and percentiles seen on the site.
Underneath the basic player block of speed/size, age, etc., there’s dozens of advanced efficiency metrics like yards created per carry, target separation, average defenders in the box on carries, interceptable passes thrown, and the list goes on. Bookmark PlayerProfiler and have every NFL player’s info at your fingertips.
It’s also by far and away the best place to go for learning more about incoming NFL rookies.
- Web Link
- App Link: N/A
The NFL website keeps its statistics section quite clean. If you’re looking for basic team stats like how many passing yards/game the 49ers averaged in 2018, or what the average yards per carry tick the Raiders let up in 2014, this is the simplest place to go.
That’s the basic stuff, but the NFL’s working on some freaky shit over here too. Over the last couple of years, NFL players have been playing with little microchips inserted into their uniforms, with the goal of tracking players’ on-field speed, how accurate a QB truly is, how elusive a running back is and how much separation a pass-catcher can create for himself.
We know that at no point during the 2018 NFL Season was a player running faster then Matt Breida was in Week 12 during a 33-yard run, at which he hit a speed of 22.09 mph. Dalvin Cook was close behind hitting a top-speed of 22.07 mph during his 70-yard breakaway run in Week 9. The NFL is just getting started with these type of next-gen stats, but I expect over the next few years they make a ton more available to the public, including a handful of data points that are not only intriguing but make us better fantasy football players.
- Web Link for NFL.com
- Web Link for Next Gen Stats
- App Link: N/A
Snap counts >>>> raw targets/touches. I will hammer this into your head like I’m Johnny Sins playing firefighter.
We had FantasyInsiders tool at number 8 for a while, but the MAN sold out and now you must pay a premium to access the information. Not that it’s not worth it, but when you can find the same information for free elsewhere… uh ya. Enter Lineups.com which allows you to filter for snap counts by season, team, position, week, raw totals vs. percentages. It’s a beautiful thing. An added bonus is their injury page which keeps an updated log of all NFL injuries in real time.
- Web Link
- App Link: N/A
- Web Link
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As you can see, they ain’t pretty. God speed to the G-Men in 2019.
Anywho, the types of splits that you’re able to access in the app (tbh not sure why it’s called an app, it’s located on their website only) are plentiful. Not only can you do a two-player split as seen above with Eli and OBJ, but you can look at individual players and see how they performed: From Weeks 1-8 vs. Weeks 9-17, or against top-12 pass defenses vs. bottom 20 defenses, or in games where the Over/Under was set at 49 points, etc. The combinations are endless, as is the actionable information you can take away from the tool. Quite possibly my favorite resources on this entire list.
- Web Link
- App Link: N/A
Everyone once in a while I break out a big fact where even I’m like how tf did I find that. And then I remember Rotoviz’s Screener App. The Screener App allows you to export & download a list of NFL players based on any sort of criteria you choose to input: Age, Weight, Draft Capital, Position, etc.
For example, if you want to find out how many rookies since the year 2000 (data only goes back to 2000) have rushed for over 850 yards AND caught 35 passes, you can do that in here. Or, how many QBs that were drafted in the 4th round of later have thrown for over 4,000 yards in a season… guess what? We out here.
Case in point, this is the tool I chose to destroy James Washington’s life with.
- Web Link
- App Link: N/A
People joining their first dynasty league have not a fucking clue as to the trade value of players or future draft picks. Shit, people in their 2nd and 3rd year of playing dynasty rarely do either. Fortunately, there are a lot of folks that are vets to the dynasty game and were willing to help us out on that front.
The Dynasty League Football (DLF) trade calculator let’s you input both sides of your potential trade including future draft picks, while having the ability to adjust for league settings (1QB vs. SF, STD vs. PPR, etc.), and spits out a score, calculating which side wins the trade.
BY NO MEANS is this, or any dynasty trade calculator you find black & white. These are completely subjective scores stemming from whichever person working at DLF was tasked with assigning individual scores to every player and draft pick. This tool should simply act as a reference point to let you know if you’re getting shit on, or doing the squatting – otherwise trade how you want.
This tool is free through August 1, then it becomes part of the premium package offered on DLF (which I am not a subscriber of currently, so I can’t speak on it). The fact that all dynasty trade calculators cost money should tell you all you need to know about just how fucking bad people are at valuing trades.
- Web Link
- App Link: N/A
BDGE is officially partnered with DRAFT.com, but we’ve been a proponent of the website/app long before we inked that max contract. DRAFT is a bestball platform (they offer DFS games in-season, too), meaning you don’t make any in-season moves to the teams your draft. No waiver-wire, no trades, JUST drafting. You do a typical snake draft, selecting a larger-than-normal roster: 18 Players. There are 0 D/ST and 0 Kickers (<3) used in this drafts; only QB, WR, RB and TE. Every league is Half PPR (0.5). Each week, the DRAFT software automatically starts the best QB, the top 2 RBs, the top 3 WRs and the top TE on your roster and your team accumulates points weekly based on your top players’ performances. This goes on for the entire regular season and at the end, the teams finishing in the top-3 (for 10 and 12 team leagues) win a prize based on the buy-in price.
The best thing about DRAFT is that their league’s are paid leagues, so they’re technically not “mock drafts” although you can join free leagues on their platform. The paid leagues range anywhere from $1 up to $2,000 (might have to fact check me on that. So, you can throw $10 into the platform (and if you use promo-code “bdge” when you sign up, you’ll have an extra $3 in your account), and you can do 10 seperate drafts throughout the summer. When people are playing for actual money, even it’s as small as a $1 buy-in, they take it seriously, so the prep you get for your real-life drafts are second to none on this platform.
You can participate in drafts with 3, 6, 8, 10 or 12 people and can choose between fast drafts (30 seconds/pick) and slow drafts (8 hours/pick).
This shit is awesome, just take my word for it. If you want to see an example draft I conducted on their platform, you can find it here!
- Web Link
- App Link: N/A
Pretty self-explanatory, imhao.
4for4 has a really neat free section on their website that automatically pulls in the Average Draft Position (ADP) data from DRAFT, Yahoo, ESPN, CBS, FFPC, MFL10, NFL.
The downside is that at this point in the off-season (depending on when you’re reading this), they import the ADP data on the 1st of each month, only. And they don’t import data for a handful of the sites until later in the offseason, but once they start updating frequently and with all 7 sites, it’s an awesome tool to see the different ADP positions of players across the free, paid and very high-stakes platforms.
The discrepancies in ADP from Yahoo and ESPN to DRAFT or FFPC are hilarious sometimes. Shout out Patrick Mahomes, the 13th overall pick in Yahoo leagues….
- Web Link
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There’s a reason Vegas stays in business. Because they, by default, fade the public. Before the season kicks off, looking at player prop bets (i.e. over/under for a specific players receiving yards for 2019, etc) can be extremely useful for bringing yourself back down to earth. A lot of times we, as excited fantasy football players, get way too excited about what the potential ceiling of a player might be. Vegas is here to slap you in the face with what is realistic.
The Player lines for 2019 have officially been released and are available to the public, regardless of whether or not you have a DraftKings account!
Love the draft guide keep up the great work nick
<33
Lots of good information, love the tiered rankings. Ready to kick some fantasy-ass. Keep up the good work Nick.
2019 we’re taking over
Hey Nick thanks for helping us out in helping to make us better players! Knowing were to go to get an advantage, on other players gives us a GREAT Leg up on ALL players in ALL leagues! Keep up the great work! I have been with you since the beginning of last season.
Thanks for your help.
Terry
When I go to print and select PDF, I only get one page that says Post Navigation. Do you know why?
Bruh you’re absolutely Killing the game. All the resources you give out and knowledge you drop just goes to show how confident you are, you’re like the fantasy wizard. Hey bro maybe you’ve done one I’m sure u have. But a video on Live draft strategies, to stay on point when all your jealous homies are trying to get you hammered.. tips on how to host s badass draft party. Thanks a million times over
this is awesome! I’m glad I sub’d to the season-long perks! it’s my first year using bdge. so far, you guys have some unique & useful content that some others do not provide. keep it up bdge!
This is fantastic. You’re passion and approach is unmatched. Thanks for taking the time to share this.