Dynasty Rookie Pick Values by the Numbers

At Footballguys this offseason, we are trying to cover the topic of dynasty rookie picks from as many angles as possible. Last week, Kevin Coleman broke down rookie pick value from the perspective of what he has seen in terms of actual trades involving rookie picks and players. The week before, I looked at rookie pick and player values in the immediate aftermath of the combine. Alfredo Brown broke down a Superflex Rookie mock draft, while Dave Kluge highlighted the biggest movers post-combine in his analysis of a pair of expert Superflex Drafts.

Everyone has their own method to determine dynasty rookie pick values. Mine is a bit more analytical than most to start but leaves plenty of room for scouting and gut feel before reaching a final result.

This article will detail my process, which includes the following steps:

1. Determining the actual career-to-date fantasy value of all recent draft picks based upon fantasy production in past seasons.

2. Combining that career-to-date value with their current value (taken from the dynasty trade value chart).

3. Using linear regression modeling and the performance of recent picks to estimate how much dynasty value any player should have based only upon his position and when he was drafted.

4. Making adjustments to the draft capital-based values to determine a final value for rookie picks

Draft Capital Based Model

In the tool below, you will see estimated rookie values based upon projected draft capital. Please note that these are the raw numbers before any adjustments (which we will discuss below) and are based upon projected draft capital as determined by each player’s average pick in a consensus of online mock drafts. The values below will automatically update as the mock draft consensus changes over the next six weeks leading up to the draft. Once the draft occurs, we can then plug in actual draft pick instead of relying on projections from mock drafts.

Below, we will go into detail on how we calculated these numbers.