Earlier this afternoon, Reddit u/S_Squar3d posted a breakdown of returns on investment from the top twenty picks in fantasy football from the last decade. His conclusion is the title of the post on the r/fantasyfootball subreddit:
The #1 fantasy draft pick is statistically the worst pick to have in the past 10 years.
I can hear all the folks who’ve had the number one pick sounding off from afar right now in the affirmative. It’s always mysteriously felt like getting the 1.01 in fantasy drafts could be the worst slot, given that you are buying a single player at their absolute highest expected value from that position.
u/S_Squar3d himself noted this, having begun his entire analysis with:
It seems like every season the #1 ADP player is cursed.
Well—sure it does! It feels almost impossible to generate the sort of expected returns there. Come the ends of fantasy seasons past, many 1.01 drafters were left feeling like they got absolutely jobbed. Imagine drafting Jonathan Taylor first-overall in 2022.
Stat round-up from u/S_Squar3rd’s deep dive
Here’s a handful of stats/conclusions I found particularly interesting:
- No ADP1 has every finished as #1 EoS: The closest players were Antonio Brown finishing at #4 in 2016 and Todd Gurley at #3 in 2018.
- #1 is statistically the worst pick to have: The #1 ADP player in the past 10 years has averaged an EOS FLX rank of 52.9. Awful.
- The order of best to worst picks in a ten team format: 4, 10, 9, 2, 3, 6, 5, 8, 7, 1. The #4 pick has an average EoS rank of 21.3. The next closest is #10 at 25.3.
- The pick with the most top 10 finishes: Pick #4 with 6 top 10 finishes
- The pick with the least top 10 finishes: Pick #9 with 1. Shoutout 2014 Dez Bryant.
- Most common top 20 ADP from 2014-2023: Julio Jones (7), CMC, Davonte Adams, Barkley, and Zeke (6). Adams, CMC, and Barkley have now tied Julio Jones at 7 if we include 2024.
Important to note here that this analysis was done based on leagues with ten teams. The full post has plenty more stats about ten-team leagues as it relates to returns on draft order position. You can read u/S_Squar3d‘s full breakdown here, and see the data in all its glorious, methodological transparency here.
Sounds like, given my pick of the board, I’ll be mock-drafting from slot #4 in 2025.
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