As much as I would love to be a good carpenter, I just never have the right tools. I hung a TV in my bedroom — and it’s a little co*ckeyed. It’s like watching movies on a hill. I am convinced the bubble in my level is messed up. (I put blocks under one side of our bed and now I see everything straight!)
Advertisem*nt
I just don’t have the right tools, apparently.
But from a fantasy football perspective, I believe in making sure I have all the right draft tools – especially the free ones.
That’s what this piece is about – sharing the best fantasy tools that won’t cost you any money. They should help you with your draft research, rankings prep and draft strategy. You might have some personal favorites you prefer instead, and I won’t hold that against you. You might even have a few draft tools that you pay for that you love. Hey, it’s your money! I’d rather save that money for beer and wings during the draft!
1. The Athletic Fantasy Football Draft Kit
While this isn’t free, since you paid for your subscription already, this is still one you won’t have to pay more money for! It’s like when someone invites you for dinner, but asks you to bring the food!
The Athletic Fantasy Staff has some great draft tools this draft season, including articles on:
- Breakouts
- Sleepers
- Dynasty targets
- Mock draft recaps
- Injury analysis
- Auction values
2. Jake Ciely’s Customizable Cheat Sheet
This one gets its own shout-out because it’s that deserving. This spreadsheet gives you the ability to either a) continue on with Jakey Jake’s rankings and projections, or b) you can make your own adjustments in the team stats tabs to create your own cheat sheet.
3. FantasyPros Mock Draft Simulator
By far, my favorite fantasy draft tool over the past decade. If you haven’t run a couple free mock drafts on this, you’re missing out. It’s fast (do a one-man mock draft in 10 minutes against 11 computer teams loaded with the rankings of every fantasy writer you can think of), it’s smart (reverse picks you don’t like and try again), and it’s addictive (try different draft strategies, like RB-RB-WR, or WR-WR-RB, or RB-WR-RB, etc.). The paid version obviously unlocks a lot more, including a way to connect your draft to the tool for instant in-draft help, but the free version is already great.
Advertisem*nt
4. FantasyPros ADP Comparison Tool
They pull in the data from several different drafting sites to give you an overall draft perspective on where players are getting drafted. (Keep on the lookout later this summer for my “ADP Draft Hack” Series, which shares the players who are over- and undervalued on different sites, as show by this ADP tool.)
5. FantasyPros Consensus Experts Rankings
About one decade ago, FantasyPros started aggregating the fantasy rankings of dozens of fantasy writers. This average rankings tool was great then and it’s even better now, as you can change the “Experts” dropdown to show only the average rankings of the top-10 overall most accurate rankers of 2020.
6. FFToolbox’s Fantasy Strength of Schedule
There’s room for debate on whether fantasy strength of schedule is worth using to determine your draft strategy. Does a team someone plays late in the season really affect where you draft them, since whoever they play might be considerably different by the time that game rolls around? While I don’t always subscribe to seeing who has the best fantasy SoS, I do like seeing who has the worst schedules for certain positions. Here are the teams with the toughest fantasy strength of schedules at each position:
- Quarterback: Cleveland
- Running back: Tampa Bay
- Wide Receiver: Cleveland
- Tight End: Seattle
- Kicker: Buffalo
- Defense/Special Teams: Baltimore
This tool is great because they not only break it down for the season, but you can also break it down by partial seasons (Weeks 1-5, Week 6-10 and Weeks 11-15). Keep an eye out for my upcoming “Fantasy Tricks To Pull in 2021” article, which will use this tool.
7. FantasyFootballCalculator.com’s Scenario Calculator
This tool is simple, but I love it. While you are deciding who to pick in which round, setting up a predraft strategy, use this tool to see the probability of a player’s availability at a certain pick. Did you know that if you have the 10th pick in Round 4, Chris Godwin has a 76.1% chance of still being available in a 12-team PPR league, whereas Adam Thielen has a 93.3% probability.
Advertisem*nt
8. NFFC’s Average Draft Position
The National Fantasy Football Championship is still considered one of the biggest and best money leagues in which everyday folks like us can participate. Their ADP isn’t full of abandoned drafters, and it’s not a mock draft on a site that essentially mimics that site’s writer rankings. This is the ADP of the (very much invested) people!
9. FantasyFootballers’ Wide-Angle Stats Page
I like going over these stats to get a different picture of some players. Like, by looking at the running backs stats, it’s interesting to note that Dalvin Cook led the NFL with 26.14 rushing attempts+targets per game. That’s not too surprising, with Christian McCaffrey (26) and Derrick Henry (25.6) right behind him. But two things that jumped out to me were the fourth and fifth running backs. Joe Mixon (24.17) and James Robinson (21.43). The latter will have Travis Etienne eating away at those touches, but the former lost Giovani Bernard in the offseason. Mixon might rise on this list!
10. FFToolbox’s QBBC – Quarterback By Committee Tool
I’m not a fan of drafting a quarterback early, as there are always good options to be had in the middle and later rounds. For those in agreement with me (and Salfino!), consider some of these players, and then consider pairing them with a quarterback with good matchups during your first quarterback’s bad matchup weeks. For example, I consider Trevor Lawrence an intriguing sleeper at quarterback this season, and this tool suggested (this was a week ago) picking up Carson Wentz as his QBBC partner — he’s injured now, but you get the idea.
11. FootballGuys’ Rate My Team
This is one of my favorite tools of the past decade. You tell it where your league is hosted, log in to your league, it imports it and executes some stuff behind the scenes, then it spits out a draft grade. You can read the report on your own team, but what I really like is their newest addition that shows you what the draft grades were for all the teams in your league. And you can share it with your league, just to tick everyone off! (Then again, the report shows how they can improve their team, so maybe sharing isn’t a great idea.)
Advertisem*nt
12. FootballGuys’ Depth Charts
There’s something about the simplicity that makes it my go-to depth charts page. You can have IDP and coaching staffs added as well.
13. FootballGuys’ Pick Value Calculator
Does your league do your draft lottery days or weeks before your draft? Can you trade draft picks before the draft? If so, take a look at this tool to make sure you are getting fair value. For instance, if you owned the fifth pick in the first round (1.05) and you decided you wanted to trade down, you could pair it with your ninth-rounder (9.05) for 2.04 and 4.04. That’s basically a five-round bump on your ninth-rounder, for dropping 11 spots with your first pick. You can also look at it the other way – you could try to get an additional first-round pick with this move.
14. TheHuddle.com’s 2021 Offensive Line Rankings
There’s usually a direct correlation from the best fantasy players to the best NFL offensive lines. David Dorey has been writing this column for years, thankfully, and we love consuming it for our fantasy futures.
15. FantasysPros.com’s Bye Week Cheat Sheet
Figure out which players have the same bye weeks as the players you’ve already drafted, so you can avoid bye-week potholes.
And if you think that’s cool …
16. FFToolbox’s Ideal Bye Week Running Backs
While it’s nice to see which players are going to be on byes at the same time, it’s also nice to look ahead and see which middle-round running backs would make good pickups to start in place of your superstar on an early bye. For instance, if you draft Alvin Kamara, consider snatching up Washington’s J.D. McKissic later on, as he makes for a good bye-week starter in Week 7 against the Chiefs, while Kamara is resting. (No team allowed more receiving yards to RBs last year than the Chiefs defense.)
17. NBC Sports Edge’s Fantasy Player Headlines
Advertisem*nt
This one looks new, but really, it’s just the old Rotoworld’s NFL Player Headlines page. It pains me that Rotoworld is now a dead name, but still, this tool is great to have on your browser while you work. It refreshes on its own and you’ll never not know fantasy news again.
7 More Obvious Free Fantasy Football Draft Tools You Might Not Have Considered
- Google Alerts: Set an alert for “fantasy football” and get links to all sorts of fantasy articles from many different websites.
- YouTube: Subscribe to a few fantasy channels for great content – and watch them on your TV through the YouTube streaming app!
- Instagram: Follow your favorite writers on your favorite sites and you’ll get insight on player news pretty quickly.
- Twitter: Whether you use it to just read writers or websites you follow, or you use it to ask for draft advice, this is a great spot for quick responses.
- Facebook Groups: Join a Facebook Group for fantasy football (there are plenty to choose from) and become part of the community with your own comments and questions.
- Podcasts: Listen to fantasy advice at work, on your commute or while you walk your dog. (We suggest The Athletic’s Fantasy Football Podcast, and Fantasy Football in 15 with Michael Beller and Derek VanRiper!
- Reddit: Use the mother of all message boards for crowdsourced fantasy advice, dynasty league advice and even just for finding a league in which to play.
I’ve been tracking great free fantasy football draft tools for the past 10 years or so. If you know of some I might have missed, please let us know in the comments section below!
(Top photo: Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
