Risk tolerance levels and roster construction are two fantasy football draft strategy attributes that can have a huge impact on a fantasy manager's success rate. These factors are separate from one another, but risk tolerance and roster construction have their greatest impact when their efforts are coordinated. This is best achieved when you use custom fantasy football rankings during your fantasy draft.
This customization includes using tailored fantasy football cheat sheet tiers and projections that are made to fit your squad. You can achieve this customization via your subscription to RotoWire.
This overview will show you why risk tolerance should influence your rankings, detail how to adjust rankings for different roster strategies, cover the plusses of balancing floor vs ceiling in different league formats, give you insights into managing the NFL injury report and player volatility and walk you through using tiers and exposure planning to stay consistent.
Why Risk Tolerance Should Influence Your Rankings
Fantasy managers often have very different risk tolerance levels. Some managers like to aim for proverbial home run hitters and thus will prioritize high ceiling levels when looking at the RotoWire fantasy football projections. Other managers want to avoid the pain of a low score by stacking up higher percentage prospects.
Whichever mindset you utilize, please note that the custom rankings you get via the RotoWire fantasy football draft kit will allow you to prioritize stability, or upside, depending on your comfort with volatility. Just be sure to clarify this in the input section of the draft kit. Do that and you can rest assured that the rankings will help you accurately weigh your risk tolerance on draft day.
"I like my early-round picks, the most important ones, to be my safest," said RotoWire fantasy football expert Jake Letarski. "If I can, I want a proven talent with little-to-no injury risk. Save the risky picks for the later rounds. Using the RotoWire Draft Assistant, I can make my rankings reflect that desire using the risk tolerance sliders in the Draft Plan setup stage."
Adjusting Rankings for Different Roster Strategies
The value of customization increases notably when fantasy managers use creative roster builds such as Zero RB, Hero RB, Late-Round QB or heavy WR. These approaches have a major impact on how that particular fantasy manager's team will value different fantasy positions, so their draft-day rankings should reflect those value variations.
Custom tiers are a great way to help with this process. These tiers, which are available through the RotoWire fantasy football draft assistant, help reinforce draft plans. This allows fantasy managers to stay disciplined with their draft strategy, rather than reacting emotionally during runs.
Balancing Floor vs Ceiling in Different League Formats
The type of league you are in can play a big part in your risk tolerance level. Fantasy managers in re-draft leagues may favor weekly consistency during the regular season. Those who are in Best Ball leagues know that this format rewards spike-week upside, so weekly consistency is not nearly as important.
Fantasy managers who take part in a dynasty structure will usually emphasize long-term growth and NFL depth charts opportunities over any short-term scoring trends. Whichever league format you choose, you can benefit from custom fantasy football ADP rankings, as these will shift to reflect format-specific risk profiles.
"A Best Ball format favors upside over consistency, as you'll be sure to get a volatile player's best games counting toward your score," said Letarski. "Using the Best Ball rankings on the site is a great, quick solution, but I like to add an even higher degree of customization with the Draft Assistant. Not only will the stability factor be inherently devalued, but you can also set specific targets/sleepers you can refer to when you're in the late rounds and need a quick pick."
Managing Injury Risk and Player Volatility
If you are a manager who prefers safer team builds, you will definitely want to downgrade players with durability concerns or unstable roles. This doesn't mean to avoid these types of prospects altogether, but rather to place a greater emphasis on their risk potential, so that you can target them only when the reward is likely to outpace the risk.
On the flip side, if you are a more aggressive manager, your custom rankings will elevate players who may have risk, but who also provide league-winning potential if things go well. If you go this route, be sure to go through a solid share of practice drafts in the RotoWire fantasy football mock draft tool. This will give you a better sense of where your aggressiveness level rates in comparison to other managers.
"Injury risk is one factor out of the many options that I prioritize when setting up a Draft Plan with the Draft Assistant," said Letarski. "By moving it near the top of my priorities, the 'Suggestions From Your Assistant GM' will be less likely to recommend a player with an extensive injury history."
Using Tiers and Exposure Planning to Stay Consistent
There is no worse feeling on draft day than having to panic draft because things went in a much different direction than you expected. The best way to prevent is through tier-based custom rankings. These are designed to support consistent decision making and prevent that draft day panic.
Another plus of using tier-based rankings and other customized planning tools is that these can help you control player exposure rates and properly diversify risk if you are playing in multiple leagues. It's a peace of mind that you'll definitely want when bouncing between draft rooms during peak draft season.
