The Weekly Rank

The 2026 Flag Plant: Jadarian Price

2026-09-06T00:00:00.000Z

This year it is Jadarian Price, and I have been looking forward to writing this one all summer.

He is the last pick of the first round, he is the Week 1 starter for the defending Super Bowl champions, and he is being drafted as the 26th running back off the board. Read that again. That is the entire reason we are here.

What Is Actually Open in Seattle

Kenneth Walker III left in free agency. Zach Charbonnet tore his ACL in January, had reconstructive surgery in February, and opens the season on the PUP list, which by rule means a minimum of four games.

Here is what those two accounted for last season:

	Carries	Receptions	Touches	Rush TD
Kenneth Walker III	221	31	252	5
Zach Charbonnet	184	20	204	12
Combined	405	51	456	17

Two hundred and fifty-two touches gone for good. Another two hundred and four unavailable for at least the first quarter of the season.

And this is not a small pie. No team in the NFL gave its running backs more carries than Seattle last season, and no team gave its running backs more red zone carries either. The volume is already there. It has been there for years. It just needs somebody to take it.

The goal-line detail is the one I keep coming back to. Charbonnet's twelve rushing touchdowns led the team and made him the first Seattle player since Marshawn Lynch in 2014 to reach double digits. That role currently has no incumbent to start the season.

The Walker Comparison

This is the cleanest way I can make the argument. He is, after all, a former flag plant of mine, so it feels fitting.

Kenneth Walker ran for 1,027 yards in this exact offense last season. He played all seventeen games. He finished RB22 in total half-PPR points and RB29 in points per game, averaging 10.4.

A thousand-yard rusher on the eventual Super Bowl champion, and he was at times a questionable fantasy asset.

Why? Because he split everything. He shared passing-game work with Charbonnet, and in games where Charbonnet was active, Walker saw only 34.8% of the running back red zone rushing work. He was not being failed by the offense. He was being failed by the arithmetic of a two-man committee.

Price does not have to split to start. Not in September, and I do not think in November either.

So Why Is He Cheap?

Three reasons, and all three are fair. I would rather name them than wave at them.

One: Charbonnet comes back. PUP means four games minimum, so realistically Week 5 or later, coming off a reconstructed knee. This is the objection everybody makes.

Two: Price has only 113 college carries. He split the Notre Dame backfield with Jeremiyah Love, who went third overall to Arizona. Nobody has seen Price carry a real workload, at any level, ever.

Three: there is an Achilles tear in his history and he is 203 pounds. Evaluators flagged both: durability concerns lingering from the injury, and a lighter frame that raises questions about a bell-cow workload.

And one more, quietly: he did not play a preseason snap. Lower-body soreness cost him a week of camp and Seattle kept him in street clothes for all three exhibition games. Reports since have him at full go and running with the starters, but the first time anyone sees him carry the ball in an NFL uniform will be Week 1. That's part of the price too.

The Gibson Comp

This one feels familiar, and I want to say why before somebody else does.

In 2020 my call was Antonio Gibson. A college wide receiver Memphis had started handing the ball to, electric with it, and with a college carry count so small that nobody could tell you what he was. The unknown pushed him down the NFL draft board to the third round, and then fantasy forgot about him entirely. He went in the double-digit rounds. He finished as the RB12.

Price is the same shape of player at a higher price point. Fewer college carries than anyone is comfortable with, an obvious trait on tape that the carry count cannot show, and a market that treats "we have not seen it yet" as "it is not there." With Gibson, the situation was a Washington backfield with nobody else. With Price, it is a champion's backfield with nobody else for a month and a run game coordinator calling plays.

I was early on Gibson because I trusted the trait over the sample. That is exactly the bet here, and the record says it has paid off more often than not.

The Part Nobody Is Talking About

Klint Kubiak left Seattle to become head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. The Seahawks replaced him with Brian Fleury.

Fleury spent seven seasons in San Francisco. His most recent title there was tight ends coach and run game coordinator. He has been in Kyle Shanahan's orbit since Cleveland in 2014.

Now read that again next to the table above.

A team that just vacated 456 backfield touches handed play-calling to a run game specialist from the Shanahan tree.

That system has been manufacturing usable fantasy running backs for two decades, largely independent of pedigree. That is the entire history of the scheme, from Denver through Cleveland through San Francisco. And the archetype it is built around is a one-cut back with vision and burst who can press a hole and get vertical.

Every scouting report on Price says the same things. Outstanding vision beyond the line of scrimmage. Big-time acceleration and long speed. Low center of gravity, good knee bend, patient with clean footwork. Specializes in creating chunk plays.

You do not have to squint to see it. That is a team drafting for a scheme and then hiring the coach who runs it.

There is continuity here too, which matters. Kubiak and Fleury share the same coaching lineage, so Seattle did not change offensive philosophy. They changed the person calling it. The fit that justified spending pick 32 on Price in April is intact.

The honest risk: Fleury has never called plays. Not in the NFL, not in college, not anywhere. That is a real unknown, and it is part of why a first-round back on the defending champion is available in the fifth round.

What the History Says

Since 2016, fourteen running backs have been taken in the first round. Thirteen of them played as rookies.

Year	Player	Pick	PPG rank
2016	Ezekiel Elliott	4	RB3
2017	Leonard Fournette	4	RB6
2017	Christian McCaffrey	8	RB13
2018	Saquon Barkley	2	RB2
2018	Rashaad Penny	27	RB75
2018	Sony Michel	31	RB31
2019	Josh Jacobs	24	RB13
2020	Clyde Edwards-Helaire	32	RB23
2021	Najee Harris	24	RB9
2021	Travis Etienne	25	missed season
2023	Bijan Robinson	8	RB17
2023	Jahmyr Gibbs	12	RB11
2025	Ashton Jeanty	6	RB17
2025	Omarion Hampton	22	RB15

Half-PPR points per game among all running backs, minimum six games. Data: nflverse.

Five of thirteen finished as top-12 backs per game. Eleven of thirteen finished top-24. The two who didn't, Penny and Michel, were both 2018 picks who walked into backfields they had to share, and one of them was hurt. That's the whole bear case in one row of a table: the workload, not the talent.

Which brings me to the comp I have to acknowledge, because somebody in my replies will if I do not: Clyde Edwards-Helaire was also the 32nd pick, and he is the RB23 near the bottom of that list.

The difference is workload security. Edwards-Helaire walked into a healthy Kansas City backfield and immediately started sharing. Price walks into a backfield where the two men who took 456 touches last year are gone and hurt, and the depth behind him is George Holani, an undrafted free agent with 25 carries across two NFL seasons, and journeyman Emanuel Wilson.

The committee argument requires somebody to form a committee with. For the first month, there is not one.

What the Model Says

I should tell you where the numbers land before I tell you where I do. They are not the same thing, and this site is built on showing both.

The projection model behind the rankings starts from Seattle's team totals, gives Price a conservative share of them (I set it lower than I believe, on purpose) and comes out with him as RB17, 39th overall, before any judgment is applied. That is with no film, no gut, no Fleury argument. Just vacated volume and a share of it.

The market has him RB26. The model has him RB17 on shares alone. Everything below is the case for why even the model is too low.

The Film

As I have described before, it all starts with film, and that is where I started with Price too. Like Dalvin, I knew pretty quickly this was my guy this year.

What I saw: the speed. He has a real knack for breakaway chunk plays, and the long speed to finish them off. He is elusive and strong. He can break tackles, and the way he moves east-west, changes gears and finishes a play is a lot of what I saw in Dalvin and Gibbs. That is why I see Price in a similar light.

See for yourself. These are his college highlights, and the traits above are all in the first minute.

Jadarian Price, Notre Dame highlights.

The Call

Jadarian Price. RB26 today, and I think that number looks silly by November.

I will grade this in January the same way I grade all of them, and I cannot wait to see how it goes. The full record is here: seven calls over nine years, the ones that hit and the ones that did not. That is the whole point of writing it down before the games are played. An opinion you cannot check is not worth reading.

The Flag Plant: Nine Years of One Name

2026-09-05T00:00:00.000Z

The habit started with a running back I couldn't stop watching.

Ahead of the 2017 season, doing research into players for draft day, I stumbled upon the rookies of that class (and there were quite a few). That's how I found Dalvin Cook, and I decided to watch his college highlights. You can and should watch them too.

Dalvin Cook, Florida State highlights.

I was immediately blown away. I could see how this player would be a surefire star in the league. He was elusive. Fast. Acceleration and long speed. Made people miss, but still had power. I was enamored and ready to draft him at all costs. And I did, almost every season he was on the Vikings. It was a mixed bag of results with some major injuries, but ultimately he was one of the best running backs in the NFL for that stretch.

That was the 2017 season. After that, I was motivated to have that same find every season. So I started watching all rookie running back tape after the draft. I've done it every year since, and I've never gone back and softened a call after the fact. I won't force a pick, so there are a couple of years with no call. The point is also to find a player and see a trait in him that isn't consensus. I loved Leonard Fournette's tape out of college too, but everyone agreed on that one. He was the fourth overall pick, expected to be a star.

The Rule

One rookie. Called before Week 1. Usually a running back, because that's where my eye is best. The call comes from film first, something I see in how a player moves that I don't think the consensus has priced, and then from situation. It does not come from a spreadsheet, and this is the one place on this site where it isn't supposed to.

Graded in January. Hit, push, or miss. No partial credit for "well, if he'd stayed healthy." There are cases where a player does develop into what I saw, just later, which is its own kind of rewarding. A rookie's situation isn't always perfect from the start.

The Eye

I can't put exactly to paper what it is I see that gives me the feeling about a player. Some of it is truly a gut feeling from the eye test.

Some of the traits are the ones I described in Dalvin. Fast, and can accelerate. Lateral shiftiness: I like players who can change direction easily and then keep that speed to the second level. Long speed: a player needs to break off chunk plays and finish the splash plays. Evasiveness: I like a player who can break tackles, because that extends plays and leads to big ones.

That's obvious, and a lot of players have many of these traits. For the players I'm describing, something different speaks to me. That's the piece I can't explain.

The Record

2017 — Dalvin Cook, Minnesota

The tape is up top, in the origin story.

What happened: Cook opened as the starter, ran for 354 yards in four games, and tore his ACL in Week 4.

Grade: Cook, incomplete. The read was right and the season ended before it could prove anything, which is the risk with every one of these.

Since then: This is the one that stings least, because the read was right by a mile. Two years later he was the RB5. The year after that, RB3 in total and the RB1 in points per game, at 22.6 a week. Four top-15 seasons in a row before the wheels came off. Incomplete as a rookie call. Not incomplete as a read.

2018 — No Call

Saquon was obviously a generational talent from the start, and I loved his tape. None of the other backs stood out to me, and ultimately that was the right call.

2019 — David Montgomery, Chicago

David Montgomery, Iowa State highlights.

What happened: 242 carries, 889 yards, 6 touchdowns, 25 catches. Started from Week 1 and held the job all year, but the Bears' offense was a slog and the ceiling never showed up. Finished RB25 in half-PPR points, 32nd per game.

Grade: Push. He was exactly the player I thought he was in an offense that couldn't use him. The volume was there; the points weren't. I've thought about this one a lot, because it's the year I learned the environment matters as much as the back.

Since then: One year later, RB4: 15.9 a game in the same Bears uniform, once the offense got out of its own way. Then five straight top-24 seasons, two of them top-13, including the Detroit years. The player I saw showed up. He just needed a better room.

2020 — Antonio Gibson, Washington

Antonio Gibson, Memphis highlights.

What happened: A college receiver converted to running back, going in the double-digit rounds. 795 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns in 14 games, plus 36 catches. The 16th-best back in half-PPR points per game, RB12 in total, as a rookie who'd been a wideout eight months earlier.

Grade: Hit. This is the one that made me trust the process. Nobody had him. I was ahead of the beat reports and buzz through camp, when I saw something special. The film said the ball-carrier instincts were already there; the situation said Washington had nobody else that could do what he could. Both were right.

Since then: RB10 the next year, then the role shrank as Washington moved on, and by 2024 he was a change-of-pace back in New England. Two top-12 seasons out of the gate is the hit. It didn't become a career, and I'd rather say that than pretend.

2021 — Javonte Williams, Denver

Javonte Williams, North Carolina highlights.

What happened: 903 rushing yards, 4 rushing touchdowns, 43 catches for 316 yards and 3 more scores. Every bit as good as I thought on tape, and stuck in a near-even split with Melvin Gordon all season. Finished RB17 in half-PPR points, 27th per game.

Grade: Push. The talent evaluation was correct. The workload call was not. I underweighted how much Denver would keep leaning on Gordon, and the split capped a back who should have been top-10.

Since then: The knee in 2022 took a year and a half. Then last season, finally, the one I called: RB11, 14.1 a game, in Dallas. Five years late and on a different team, but it was the same back on tape. This is the clearest case on this page of right player, wrong year.

2022 — Kenneth Walker III, Seattle

Kenneth Walker III, Michigan State highlights.

What happened: Opened the year behind Rashaad Penny, took over in Week 5 after Penny's injury, and ran for 1,050 yards and 9 touchdowns in 15 games, the 15th-best back in half-PPR points per game. Second in Offensive Rookie of the Year voting.

Grade: Hit. The first month was ugly and there were texts. Then the job opened and he was exactly who the film said he was. This one taught me to hold the call through a slow start, which is relevant to this year.

Since then: Three more top-24 seasons and never a top-12. The film was right that he'd be a starter; the ceiling turned out to be a timeshare, first with Charbonnet and then with an offense that spread the work. Solid. Not the star. A hit that I'd grade a little lower with hindsight.

2023 — Jahmyr Gibbs, Detroit

Jahmyr Gibbs, Alabama highlights.

What happened: 945 rushing yards, 10 rushing touchdowns, 52 catches for 316 yards and another score, in a rotation with David Montgomery. RB10 in half-PPR points and 11th per game, in a season where he never had the backfield to himself.

Grade: Hit. The easiest one to defend in hindsight, which is exactly why it's worth remembering that in August 2023 the consensus had him well behind Bijan Robinson and worried about the Montgomery split. The split happened. It didn't matter.

Since then: RB2 the next year, RB4 last year, nearly 20 points a game both seasons. The only one on this page who became the player I saw and then kept going. If the record has one call I'd frame, it's this one.

2024 — No Call

A sparse running back class overall, led by Jonathon Brooks, who I did like, but not at the level of the rest of the players on this page.

2025 — TreVeyon Henderson, New England

TreVeyon Henderson, Ohio State highlights.

What happened: 180 carries for 911 yards and 9 rushing touchdowns, 35 catches for 221 yards, all 17 games. The Patriots went to the Super Bowl. Henderson split the backfield close to evenly with Rhamondre Stevenson all year and finished as the 24th back in half-PPR points per game, RB19 in total.

Grade: Push. Same lesson as Javonte, four years later: I got the player right and the share wrong. Nine rushing touchdowns as a rookie in a committee is a real season. It isn't the season I called.

Since then: One season. Ask me in January.

What the Record Says

Seven calls over nine years, with two years I sat out. By my grading: three hits, three pushes, one incomplete.

The hits have something in common, and it isn't the film. Gibson, Walker and Gibbs all walked into situations where the volume was either already open or about to be. The pushes (Montgomery, Javonte, Henderson) were all good reads on the player in backfields that stayed shared or offenses that couldn't score. The film has been right more often than not. The share has been the miss.

The other pattern only shows up if you keep watching after the grade. Cook became the RB1 in points per game. Montgomery was the RB4 a year later. Javonte finally had his RB11 season last year, five years after the call, on his third team. Three of the seven have peaked as top-4 backs, and two more as top-11. So the honest version of the record isn't three hits and three pushes. It's that the eye has been right on the player almost every time, and wrong on the year about half the time. That's the part I'm trying to fix with the share.

That's worth saying plainly, because it's the whole shape of this year's call. Seattle vacated 456 touches. The depth behind the rookie is an undrafted back with 25 career carries. The mistake I've made three times is the one this situation makes hardest to make.

The Rest of the Story

The 2026 call is Jadarian Price. It's on the record now, before Week 1, the same as the other seven. I'll grade it in January the same way, hit, push, or miss, and it'll go on this page either way.

How the 2026 Rankings Were Built

2026-09-05T00:00:00.000Z

Most rankings you'll read this week were made the same way: someone who watches a lot of football sat down with last year's numbers and a feel for the offseason, and ordered players until the list looked right. That's not a knock. It's how I did it for twelve years in my own league, and it works about as well as anything.

This year I wanted to be able to show my work. Not because the numbers know better than a good eye, they don't, but because when a player moves nine spots in October, I want to be able to point at the reason. So the 2026 preseason rankings were built in a specific order, and every step of it is below. If you only read one section, read the last one, because that's where the rankings stopped being a spreadsheet.

Step 1: What Happened Last Year?

Everything starts with the team, not the player. Before I thought about a single running back, I pulled every offense's 2025 totals: how many times they ran, how many times they threw, how many yards and touchdowns came from each.

Those totals are the ceiling. An offense that ran the ball 450 times last year (most likely) is not going to run it 600 times this year because you like their new back. While shifts can happen, they need to be within reason. Starting from the team keeps you honest about that. It also catches things you'd otherwise miss, like a receiver on a team that barely passed can look fine by his own stats and terrible once you see how small the pie was.

One adjustment matters here: last year's numbers get pulled partway toward the league average before I use them. A team that threw for the most yards in the league in 2025 will probably throw for a lot in 2026, but probably not the most. The same goes in the other direction. The pull is stronger for touchdowns than for yards, because touchdowns swing wildly year to year and yards mostly don't.

Step 2: Why Bet Against Vegas?

Last year's totals tell you what an offense was. They don't tell you whether it's about to get better or worse. While we all have assumptions about what may happen, the age-old saying is "the house always wins". Who am I to bet against Vegas? So, for this portion I used the one number the betting market publishes for every team before the season: the win total.

The logic is simple. Teams that win more games score more, and teams that score more produce more fantasy points across the whole roster. So every team's projected touchdowns get nudged up or down based on how far its win total sits from the middle of the league. A team the books have at 11.5 wins gets a bump. A team at 4.5 gets a haircut. Yards move too, but only slightly. Good teams don't gain dramatically more yards than bad ones, they just finish drives.

Now I will clarify, I don't treat Vegas as gospel. I disagreed with some of the projections and changed them, and those changes are noted in the model. But as a starting point for "which offenses are the environment you want your players in," it beats any single person's guess, including mine.

Step 3: Who Gets the Ball?

This is the part no formula can do, and it's where most of the preseason work went.

Once you know a team is projected for, say, 460 carries and 550 targets, you still have to decide how those get divided. For a returning starter who didn't change teams, last year's share is a reasonable starting point. For everyone else, the 73 players who changed teams and the 42 rookies who've never taken an NFL snap - there's no last year to lean on. Those got a share by hand, one at a time.

That's about 115 decisions, and they're the ones that actually shape the rankings. Whether Kenneth Walker gets 55 or 62 percent of Kansas City's carries matters more than any metric I could apply to him afterward. Some of these I feel good about. Some I'll be wrong about by Week 3, and when I am, the share changes and the rank moves. The change column will show it.

Every player's share and the team total behind it sits in the model. When I say a player projects for 1,150 rushing yards, that number is a share times a total, and both are visible to me.

Step 4: The Metrics

I built four of them. You'll see them referenced in the weekly write-ups, so here's what each one does in plain terms.

Opportunity Trend tracks whether a player's share of his team's touches is growing or shrinking over the last month. It's the one that catches a role change before the box score does.

Role Clarity is for running backs only. It measures not how much a back is used, but where: early downs, third downs, the red zone, the two-minute drill. A back who owns all four is a different asset from one who only sees early downs, even if their carry counts match.

Scheme Fit compares a receiver's profile to the offense he's in. It matters most right after a trade or a coordinator change, which is exactly when everyone's guessing.

Passing Game Health is for quarterbacks. Is the line holding up, are the weapons on the field, is the team playing fast and throwing more than the score suggests it should.

Here's the thing about the preseason, though: most of these are quiet right now. Opportunity Trend needs a month of 2026 games before it means anything. Scheme Fit is switched off until I'm happier with it. Role Clarity and Passing Game Health are running on last year's data at half strength. So the preseason baseline is really a test of steps one through three. The metrics start pulling their weight from Week 3, and I'll say so when they do.

What I'll tell you about how they're weighted: each one adjusts a specific stat (carries, touchdowns, yards per target) and never the rank directly. What I won't tell you is the exact weight on each. The inputs are public. The weights are not.

Step 5: The Board

By the end of step four, every player has a projected stat line and a points-per-game number. That is not a ranking yet, for two reasons.

The first is that points per game across positions is misleading. Quarterbacks score the most, so a raw list would be twenty quarterbacks and then everyone else. The fix is the same one experienced drafters use by instinct: measure each player against the best option you could get for free at his position. A running back who scores four points a game more than the last starting-caliber back is worth more than a quarterback who scores four more than the twelfth quarterback. The model does that math, and it's why the top of the board looks like a draft board and not a scoring leaderboard.

The second reason is that the model doesn't watch film, doesn't know a coach's tendencies, and doesn't know that a player looked different in August. I do (sometimes). So the final step is a board I moved by hand. Every player started where the model put him. I dragged the ones I disagreed with, drew the tier lines where I felt the cliffs were, and started writing a note on everyone I moved more than a few spots. Not all of those notes are in yet. The biggest moves have them, the rest land over the first week. Where the note is missing, you'll see a dash, not a guess.

On the rankings page, you'll see both numbers: where the model had him and where I put him. When they match, I trusted the projection. When they don't, I overrode it, and the note says why. That column will be more interesting in November than it is now, but it's there from day one because the point of this site is that you can check.

What Happens Next

This is the baseline. Every player on the list has a dash in the change column right now, and that's on purpose. There's nothing to compare against yet.

When the Week 1 rankings publish, that changes. Every player gets a number next to his name showing how far he moved from this list, up or down, and if it's more than a few spots, a sentence on why. Maybe a share changed because a backfield split looked different than I expected. Maybe a metric started moving. Maybe I just saw something on Sunday that I couldn't unsee. Whatever it is, it'll be written down next to the move.

The preseason file itself never changes. It's the thing the rest of the season gets measured against, which means every call in it, good and bad, stays exactly where it is.

I'll be wrong about some of this. Probably the shares more than anything else; those are the guesses with the least data behind them. When I am, you'll see it here first, because the alternative — quietly fixing the number and pretending it was always right — is the thing this whole site exists to not do.

And honestly, that's the part I'm looking forward to most. Not being right. Being able to show you the whole trail.

The TV Fell Off the Wall and I Won Anyway

2026-09-05T00:00:00.000Z

In 2014 I was sitting in my family's living room for my first-ever fantasy football draft when the television came off the wall mount. Not dramatically. It just gave up, tilted, and took my laptop connection with it on the way down. By the time I got back online, I had missed at least three rounds to autodraft.

I won the league that year.

I have thought about that a lot in the twelve seasons since, because it is a genuinely annoying story to tell. It undercuts everything I would like to believe about preparation. That season, my friend Steve had spent weeks building what was, on paper, the best team in the league. Not a cuttable player on it. Waiver picks, great draft and trades (many questionable). I had a broken wall mount and a computer that picked for me, and I had Jimmy Graham as my first pick. Dez Bryant and Andrew Luck. And that turned out to be enough.

What I have decided it means is not that preparation is worthless. It is that most of what we call analysis in fantasy football is really just confidence, and the two are easy to confuse.

Twelve Years, Same League

That league still exists. Six of the original members are still in it. Everyone else has been there since 2017. Friends from high school started it, some friends of mine from college mixed in. We are not all experts, but strangely it is always competitive, people make great picks and develop great teams.

I have been the commissioner the entire time, which mostly means I am the person who gets texted at 11 AM on a Sunday about helping the league vote to push a trade through.

I have won it three times: back to back in the first two seasons, and once more recently in 2024. I have also finished as runner-up, and I have missed the playoffs outright, which I mention because a track record that only contains the good years is not a track record.

What I Kept Noticing

Somewhere around year six I started paying attention to something that bothered me and that nobody seemed to talk about.

Every fantasy site publishes rankings, and most update them every week. What I wanted was the part in between: how far a player moved since last week, and why. When a guy goes from 14 to 22, that move is the information. It tells you something changed in his role, his offense, or the way I am reading him. So every ranking here is rest of season, every player carries his change from the week before, and last week's file stays exactly where it was so you can go back and check.

Baseball has had this for a while. Pitcher List has published rolling rankings with visible movement for years, and it works because the movement is the information. Football has never had a focused version of it, at least not one I have found.

That is the gap my site exists to fill.

What The Weekly Rank Actually Is

Rest-of-season fantasy football rankings, published weekly, with a change column showing exactly how far each player moved and why.

Three rules I am holding myself to:

Every ranking is dated and permanent. The archive is not editable. If a call was wrong, it stays wrong and visible.

The change column is computed, never typed. It is generated by diffing this week's file against last week's. I could not quietly adjust it if I wanted to.

Movers get explanations. A player who jumps nine spots gets a reason, in plain language, tied to something specific.

The Numbers, and the Part the Numbers Miss

I have built a set of metrics to explain movement. Opportunity trends across every skill position. Role clarity for running backs: not how many touches, but what kind, split across early downs, third downs, red zone, and two-minute. Scheme fit for receivers, which matters most right after a coordinator change. A passing environment index for quarterbacks.

There is a full methodology page if you want the mechanics.

But I want to be clear about something, because it would be easy to oversell this. The metrics are built from public data, the same play-by-play anyone can download. What I keep private is how they are weighted. And they do not touch the rank directly; each one moves a specific stat, so that when a player climbs nine spots I can point to the number that moved and the reason it moved. Where my own judgment disagrees with the model, that adjustment is separate, visible, and comes with a written reason. You will always be able to see which one won.

The clearest example is a habit I have had since 2017.

The Flag Plant

Every year I pick one rookie running back and commit to him before the season starts. Not a sleeper list. One name.

Cook. Montgomery. Gibson. Javonte Williams. Kenneth Walker. Gibbs. Henderson.

That call has never come from a spreadsheet. It comes from watching someone and seeing something the consensus has not priced yet. Sometimes that is a read on a coaching change nobody has connected to the personnel. Sometimes it is just how a guy moves when the first read is not there.

It is the least defensible thing I do and the thing I am most confident about, which I recognize is a strange combination. I publish it before Week 1, on the record, and I grade it honestly when the season ends. Here is the running list.

Who Is Writing This

Costa Angelakis. Marketer by day, which is relevant only in that I understand audiences and distribution, and it explains why this site looks like something rather than nothing.

I am not a former scout. I have no insider access and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I have is twelve years of doing this seriously, a habit of writing down my calls before I know how they turn out, and enough respect for the people who built this space to try to add to it rather than repackage it.

If you have been reading Matt Harmon, JJ Zachariason, Matthew Berry, or the Fantasy Footballers for years like I have, you will recognize what I am trying to do here.

What to Expect

Rankings every week during the season, starting in September. Explanations for anything that moved more than a few spots. One rookie call a year that I will live with publicly. And an archive that does not get edited.

I can't wait to participate in this space and hopefully help some of you win your leagues while looking at things in a new way.

Find me at @theweeklyrank.