General Consensus
by D.J. Jones

4for4 Rankings with Reasons^®...

Should you use a General Consensus draft list? Is it a safe bet? Does using a consensus cheat sheet help or will it destroy your draft?

Ask a few football buddies for their fantasy rankings this year. Next, combine that feedback with rankings from 4 or 5 premium Fantasy Football services. Average it all out and chances are you’ll have a reasonable ‘General Consensus’ ranking list.

But, is it a good idea to use a consensus list? Does an average taken from 10-15 individuals result in truth? More importantly, will General Consensus information give you an edge over your competition?

If you’re not really sure how to answer, don’t worry! A distressingly high proportion of Fantasy Football owners, many of whom spend hours each week working on their team, don’t know either!

The good news is reliable answers exist. How? By pooling years of prior expert opinion rankings, 4for4 has tracked ‘General Consensus’ forecasting accuracy. From this rather basic, but well suited research, we offer the following observations.

Consensus cheat sheets actually do okay. In short, they can keep you out of trouble, especially if you are new to Fantasy Football. If you don’t want to embarrass yourself on draft day, you can feel reasonably safe using an up-to-date consensus cheat sheet. In fact, if you just want to ‘try your luck’ this fall, you can stop reading right here. For this owner, feel free to try a consensus list. Who knows, you might get lucky! However, if you really want to win, by all means, keep reading.

It turns out, on average, a consensus cheat sheet will forecast better than 60-65% of the experts making up the panel. That’s not all that bad. However, by definition, consensus cheat sheets, do not offer the serious Fantasy Football owner a sustainable and true competitive advantage. Let’s look at an exaggerated example to illustrate a point.

Example: Imagine you’re in a league with 10 competent veteran Fantasy Football owners. Further, let’s assume you and each of the other 9 cagey owners, independently and unknowingly, all set out on a mission to create the ultimate consensus cheat sheet - try and obtain as many qualified opinions as you can! You and your rivals all end up drawing from the same 15-20 reputable sources. As a result, you and your competition all have virtually identical rankings. What are your chances of having an exceptional draft?

Sorry to say, but your odds are not very good. Everyone is fundamentally drawing from the same lot. Worse yet, acing the draft in this exaggerated circumstance would largely be a function of random events outside of your control. 

Please never forget, the single most important thing on draft day is proper player evaluation. Draft strategies, complex value selection tactics and other methods can aid in your success. However, don’t get misguided, keep your eye on the ball, and remember, proper player evaluation is what draft day is all about. Several engineering friends think of it this way: Wallpaper can make a building more enjoyable, however if your foundation and flooring is weak, you’re going to be in for some serious trouble. Optimal player evaluation is the foundation to draft day success. If you have limited time to prepare for the draft, don’t get distracted with the wallpaper. 

If you follow ‘General Consensus’ and have reason to believe your competition is doing the exact same thing, your ability to draft a truly spectacular roster will be dictated by factors beyond your control. That’s not a good way to manage your team. Simply hoping you get lucky on draft day is not a viable long-term winning strategy! Without realizing it, this is what many Fantasy Football owners actually do! They follow the crowd and go with a watered down consensus cheat sheet. Sure this type owner may occasionally walk away with a killer draft. However, for them, the success won’t often be replicated. In general, in the long run, consensus draft strategists end up with mundane rosters.

All that being said, properly leveraged, ‘General Consensus’ information can assist you on draft day.  In addition, shrewdly knowing when and how to deviate from ‘General Consensus’ is key when generating player evaluations.

In short, 4for4.com uses historically proven factors to properly adjust player values. Leveraging time-tested odds allows us to surgically modify player values accordingly. Many of these factors are statistically based, but not all. Final optimized rankings properly adjust for late camp news, hard to find workload information, the offensive system, team factors, as well as unique, powerful and proven statistical analysis focused on player durability and consistency.

Overall, ‘General Consensus’ information provides a decent 30,000 ft. view of the NFL landscape. It’s a good way to spot land, but not very effective if your looking for an ideal neighborhood. 

Finally, on draft day, I suggest you examine ‘General Consensus’ data only as a guide to help you determine what your competition may be thinking. In looking ahead, ‘General Consensus’ information may help you anticipate what other owners may do.