Fantasy Football: 5 Players Undervalued on Yahoo

You shouldn't go into a fantasy football draft with just players you like and players you don't at certain draft positions.

Which site you draft on also matters.

A vast majority of fantasy football managers aren't diehard zealots with their own individual rankings and in-depth knowledge of where a player should be valued on any platform. When on the clock, the masses are likely to peruse the top of the site-generated draft rankings. I do that exact thing a lot of the time when it's my turn to pick -- even as someone who does this for a living. It's hard for most of us to reach all the way down 15 spots lower than the pre-draft rankings on a given website, especially if there's not much time given to pick.

That's why knowing a player is vastly under-ranked on a given platform can be such a huge advantage. At any point in a round, you can scoop up a player most of your leaguemates won't consider for another 10 picks. It's easy value to find, which is the name of the game in fantasy football.

In a three-part series, I'm going to take a look at the predraft rankings of three of globe's largest fantasy football platforms and see where their consensus rankings differ the most compared to the rest of the fantasy football community.

This piece will focus on Yahoo's fantasy football platform. ESPN's undervalued players and Sleeper's undervalued players are also available.

Note: A player's expert consensus ranking (ECR) comes from FantasyPros' expert consensus rankings data. The ECR used for Sleeper Ranking and FantasyPros is for half-PPR scoring.

Undervalued Players on Yahoo's Fantasy Football Platform

Jalen Hurts, Philadelphia Eagles

Yahoo Ranking: 36th (QB2)
ECR: 29th (QB2)

By and large, Yahoo is the most efficient, up-to-date set of rankings of the three sits I studied when compared to FantasyPros' consensus data. There are two key takeaways with the purple giant: early quarterbacks and rookies.

In Yahoo's one-quarterback formats, QBs are going lower than any other platform. Josh Allen (31st) is the first one in their rankings. In particular, I find Jalen Hurts to be a value relative to his peers on this site.

When looking at his ECR (29th), there's a sizable gap to his Yahoo rank (36th). It's much larger than Patrick Mahomes' gap (36th in ECR to 40th) or Lamar Jackson's (37th in ECR to 39th).

This is probably the site to snag the Birds' signal-caller if you like him. I'm concerned about Hurts as QB2 relative to others when his rushing upside came from touchdowns -- not yards -- that might be harder to come by as key changes to the "tush push" take place in 2024.

Allen, Mahomes, and C.J. Stroud are also draft bargains relative to their consensus ranking, so the key takeaway here is that some of these elite quarterbacks tumble to the fourth round at times. That's a steal.

Tee Higgins, Cincinnati Bengals

Yahoo Ranking: 60th (WR30)
ECR: 49th (WR26)

While largely efficient, Yahoo drops Tee Higgins into a tier that I believe he clears.

Higgins has the luxury of an offense and a quarterback (Joe Burrow) in Cincinnati we know to be among the best in the league when healthy, and Higgins and first-round pick Ja'Marr Chase should both benefit from key changes to the roster. Joe Mixon and Tyler Boyd have left behind 4.5 red zone touches per game.

While some are averse to Higgins because he's clearly locked into the WR2 role with the Stripes, the former Clemson Tigers star tumbles behind George Pickens, Zay Flowers, Terry McLaurin, and Tank Dell -- the Houston Texans' projected third option -- on this site.

Consensus rankings have Higgins, the WR15 on a points-per-game basis in his last season with a fully healthy Burrow, above all of them entering a contract year where the franchise tag might be shifting to Chase. I'm incredibly comfortable deploying Tee as my WR2, and he can easily be had in the fifth round.

Christian Kirk, Jacksonville Jaguars

Yahoo Ranking: 71st (WR33)
ECR: 57th (WR30)

Yahoo sees the Jaguars' target tree a bit different than most other sites.

They're much lower than other sites on Evan Engram (89th vs. 77th in ECR) and Christian Kirk, dropping the latter down to 71st overall as the WR33. They're higher on Brian Thomas Jr. (100th vs. 110th in ECR) and Gabriel Davis (144th vs. 151st in ECR) in this offense.

With a top-55 ranking on FantasyPros, Kirk is going way too low when he still should be Trevor Lawrence's top target. In nine healthy games in which he played at least 70% of the offensive snaps, Kirk led Jacksonville in target share (25.0%) by a good margin over the next-best rate (18.1%). He added 3.6 downfield (10-plus yards) and 0.7 red zone targets per game in this stretch.

Thomas and Davis will jockey to fill the role the departing Calvin Ridley, but Kirk's share of this offense -- with no changes to play-calling this offseason -- should largely be unchanged after he netted 12.5 PPR fantasy points per game (FPPG) last season. Health just needs to be on his side.

Jonathan Brooks, Carolina Panthers

Yahoo Ranking: 109th (RB35)
ECR: 98th (RB33)

The range of outcomes for Jonathan Brooks this season is pretty wide, so I'm not surprised to see the adaptive, up-to-date Yahoo rankings moving him backward.

Brooks seems like a lock to miss a decent chunk of time as he starts the season on the PUP list after a November ACL injury in college. Nonetheless, the Panthers invested a second-round pick into Brooks, so they likely had in mind a meaningful workload for Brooks next to Bryce Young. Any sort of significant workload around the 100th pick should be on our radar.

Per NFL's NextGenStats, Miles Sanders posted -0.42 rushing yards over expectation per carry (RYOE/c) in 2023, which allowed Chuba Hubbard (0.19) to take over the Panthers' backfield. However, Hubbard's established ceiling -- yet to eclipse 5.0 yards per carry (YPC) in the NFL -- pales in comparison to Brooks'. The former Texas Longhorns stud posted 6.1 yards per carry, 11.1 yards per reception, and 11 total touchdowns during his final season in Austin.

As indisputably the top rookie running back entering the season, Brooks is a high-risk, high-reward endeavor at this point in drafts. Yahoo makes that "risk" a bit lesser, so it's a good platform to get your exposure to the talented newcomer.

Brock Bowers, Las Vegas Raiders

Yahoo Ranking: 122nd (TE12)
ECR: 108th (TE11)

Yahoo's tight end rankings are as efficient as they come. No top-15 tight end is more than one spot off their ECR. However, how rookie Brock Bowers stacks up relative to the overall player pool is interesting.

The Raiders announced Gardner Minshew will be their starting quarterback, which should help some of the pieces in this offense stay fantasy-relevant after Minshew led the Indianapolis Colts' best skill players to solid results in 2023. Jonathan Taylor was the RB8 on a points-per-game basis in half PPR (14.7), and Michael Pittman Jr. was the WR15 (12.2) in those parameters.

In addition to Davante Adams and Zamir White, Bowers could be an early contributor. Indianapolis didn't really have a tight end to uplift. Bowers, who is an athletic freak, is more of a utility weapon than tight end, and Las Vegas intends to use him that way.

Our fantasy football projections expect 103.3 targets for Bowers in his rookie season. If you fail to secure an "elite" tight end in the first half of the draft, the rookie might become one in 2024 and can be had potentially outside the first 10 rounds on Yahoo.

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The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author's advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.