(Note: This fantasy football cheat sheet will be updated frequently, with every major news story accounted for. Every time there’s a rankings and projections update, we’ll update this tool, as well). And please read everything, including the intro, because if you asked something already answered, you might get Mutombo’d.
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UPDATED SEPT 7
From the day I started at The Athletic nearly three years ago, I’ve heard one question, over and over: What’s with the DuckTales obsession?
But it’s usually followed up with pleas to create a tool that will allow fantasy football players to input league settings and turn our projections into customized rankings. That day is here. This tool holds many of the same ideas as Dom Luszczyszyn’s wildly successful fantasy hockey cheat sheet. For those of you familiar with it, you know how awesome this is going to be. For those of you not, strap in.
But enough preamble. Let’s get to it. All I ask is that you read the instructions carefully, because this is a very deep (but ultimately pretty amazing) tool with lots of interconnected parts. And if you get tripped up, I’ll be here in the comments to help. Enjoy!
Also: our full 2021 fantasy football draft kit — with rankings, beat writer inside info, expert roundtables, mock drafts and more — is live and awesome. There’s more than just a cheatsheet to the 2021 coverage!
If you want the condensed version, it’s this: Go to the individual team pages to make any changes to player stats/projections, scroll to the right on those pages to make sure you aren’t missing anything (the entry fields go all the way to column AH), only change stuff in yellow, and have faith that the tool is always doing its job in the background as you make changes. I added an instructions page in the sheet, as well, to help keep everything in one place for you. But here’s the longer version of the primer:
Pre-Instruction Note: If you don’t have Excel, here is a link to Office 365, which you can access free (you may need to create an account).
UPDATES: Yes! This will be updated with my projections and updates all the way up to the NFL season, just as with the Positional Rankings (over here), which are how I would draft (or… different from these, so check them out).
ALSO: The only scoring categories I project are the ones included. So, apologies, but if you have bonuses or extra categories like first downs, there isn’t a way to account for those.
1. Go to the individual team tabs to make tweaks
In other words, if you want to change Jameis Winston’s fantasy points, you have to go to the New Orleans tab, and tweak him there. You cannot just input a new fantasy points total on the Rankings tab. That’ll mess some things up down the line.
2. Keepscrollingright for the good stuff
A good amount of yellow cells are off to the right of the team pages, and you may not see them if you don’t scroll to the right. Once you get there, you’re in for some fun.
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The way this sheet works, you can’t change Devin Singletary’s rushing yards or rushing attempts directly in the cells — everything is connected to everything else in order to make the sorting and ranking work. Instead, if you want to change Singletary’s rushing yards, you’ll have to tweak a few things:
- COLUMN V “YD PER CARRY” — if you believe Singletary will have a better (or worse) YPC
- COLUMN X “TD PER CARRY” — if you think he’ll score at a higher (or lower) clip
- COLUMN Z “YD PER RECP” — if you want to tweak his receiving prowess
- COLUMN AF “EDIT RUSH SHARE” — to give him more of the backfield carries. PLEASE NOTE: When you bring Singletary up by 7%, you’re going to have to bring some other people down by 7%. Otherwise, you’ll cause “TOT SHR” (total share) to go over 100% (I made it turn red so you’ll know) and things won’t compute correctly. More on this below.
- COLUMN AG and AH to edit target share and TD share. This should make enough sense at this point to move on, right? we’re basically changing numbers in the yellow cells, and these then feed into and create/alter the player projections.
3. Meet “TOT SHR” in Column AF — he will be your worst enemy if you don’t adjust some things properly
Check out the red “TOT SHR” box in column AF (bottom right of the page). You want that number to be under 100 and not red. In the screenshot above, you can see how column W didn’t adjust to the new numbers in AF. Once we bring AF down to under 100%, column W adjusts accordingly, and all is well in the world (see the screenshot below). Basically, you can’t have more than 100% of a team’s rushes (or receptions, or whatever stat you’re messing with). That’s all this is doing.
4. Adjusting pass and rush %
Rows 30 and 31 are a lot of fun. Tweaking those numbers will move the positional projections accordingly. Just know that if you think the Cardinals will pass 65% of the time, that will automatically move the rush% down to 35%. And your RBs (and Kyler Murray’s rushing yards) will go down accordingly.
5. Overall Ranks and VORP (Value Over Replacement Player
- POS Ranks tab auto-sorts with any changes made for new FPS. The auction values do NOT change. There was no way to properly balance roster size, minimum starting spots and scoring tweaks to have the auction values calculate correctly.
- Estimation on how league size adjusts prices:
- For SuperFlex, quarterbacks jump about 50-75%, 2QB nearly double the cost and any position “premium” (tight end or otherwise) boosts about 25-50%. But remember! these are suggestions. Your league’s tendencies will skew the entire draft; it’s always best to judge the draft early and adjust on the fly.
- Moving up an additional two teams (to 14) hits QB and RB mainly. Quarterbacks go up around 10%, running backs 5-10%, wide receivers barely at all (1-3%) and tight ends barely more than receivers at around 2-4%. Decreasing in teams by two (to 10) drops positions by the following percentages: QB = 8-10%, RB = 10-12%, WR = 12-15%, TE = 2-5%. Tight ends barely move much across league sizes due to the significant drop-off from top-end picks to the rest, and shallowness of the position. And again, this is an overall estimate of value changes, as it still waterfalls positionally — meaning, RB6 and RB20 both might drop $2, but the percentage difference for both would be much different.
- VORP tab goes from positional (orange), to Overall (blue) to combined WR and TE (yellow) for all ranking types.
Default Projections Settings and Notes
- Passing TD = 4pt
- All Other TD = 6pt
- 25 Yards Passing = 1pt
- 10 Yards Rushing/Receiving = 1pt
- Default Sort = Half-PPR
- League/Budget = 12-team/$200
The fully customizable 2021 cheat sheet
Any questions or concerns, drop them below! I’m here to help!
(Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images)
Jake Ciely is rankings: Fantasy Football, Fantasy Baseball, candy, movies, video games, cereal... anything! Truly, Jake is a ranking prodigy. Oh, he's also the senior fantasy writer for The Athletic, an award-winning analyst and loves DuckTales. Make sure you #CheckTheLink and #BanKickers ... woo-oo! Follow Jake on Twitter @allinkid
