Best Fantasy Football Tools
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by a #footclan member detailing why the UDK is one of the best fantasy tools.
The days of waiting until a draft room opens 30 minutes before you’re on the clock and basing your selection off of the generic rankings provided by the draft site are long gone. To dominate your league’s fantasy draft, you have to also dominate during the pre-draft process. To do that, you need the best fantasy football tools available.
These are tools outside of the realm of the regular Joe Schmo. When you demolish that same Joe Schmo in the opening week of play, it will be because you had top-notch resources at your disposal. While he drafted with the bottom of the barrel standard information you can muck up while waiting until you’re on the clock.
The Ultimate Draft Kit is that top-notch resource that you need on your side to come out victorious. Created by the three hosts of the Fantasy Footballers Podcast, this kit provides you with some of the best fantasy football tools available. With these groundbreaking tools and all the breaking information, you could possibly need, your team will be unstoppable. Check out some of their most unique and innovative features below.
Tier-Based Position Rankings
Once you draft off of tier-based rankings, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without them. Tier rankings take the typical player rankings that you see floating around the web, and they add a unique twist. This twist can very well be what helps you win your fantasy football league’s draft.
In UDK’s tier rankings, players at the same position with similar projections are grouped together in what is known as a tier. These tiers allow you to properly evaluate players based on how many top tier players are still available at a given position. This keeps you from reaching for specific players when you can simply wait for a round or two and select a player with the equivalent value.
Say for example if I’m trying to decide between drafting a QB and an RB. I can take a look at the number of people available in each tier for each position that I’m interested in. If you have lots of tier-one QBs left, but only a few RBs at the same tier, you can breathe easy when you take that RB. This is because you will likely still get one of the many QBs in that top tier by the time your next pick rolls around.
This is a tremendously useful feature and one that is unmatched by the majority of fantasy ranking providers.
Risk Rating
We’ve all been burned by a draft pick or two in our time. Most of the time when you look back on it, you wonder why you didn’t see the obvious before pulling the trigger on that player on draft day. Of course, everything is clearer in hindsight, but the UDK can help you reduce the likelihood of this happening in the future. The Ultimate Draft Kit’s Risk Rating is a metric that helps you determine how much of a “risk” any given player is.
Any number of different factors can change the likelihood that your selection will actually live up to your expectations. The experts at UDK take all of the small details into consideration when formulating a player’s risk rating. Whether its age, wear and tear, new offensive schematics, off the field conduct, or any other factor, sometimes you draft pick just doesn’t pan out the way you hoped. When you utilize the UDK risk rating, you can better take into account how much of a liability a pick might be, no matter how talented the player is.
Take for example, Josh Gordon. We all know the talent that Gordon boasts, but we also know the baggage that he drags around with him. If you ranked Gordon based solely off of talent, it would be a no-brainer to place him at the top of most draft boards. However, with a plethora of off the field complications leading to a lack of playtime over the years, Gordon is a shaky pick at best. Risk Rating takes into account the whole player and their situation to give you an accurate idea of how safe a player will be as your draft pick. You should remember that Risk Rating does not blatantly affect one’s positional ranking for the most part. For instance, a player can be ranked within the top five at their position and carry the same, or an even worse risk rating than someone rated outside of the top 50. Sometimes high risk equals high reward.
Player Profiles
The Ultimate Draft Kit provides its users with thorough, in-depth video profiles covering over 100 of the most integral fantasy players around. If you’re having trouble determining the pros and cons of a given player, you can simply let someone else spell it out for you. The UDK video profiles give you a better understanding of each player’s potential value and faults.
You don’t have to worry about making your decision based off of outdated information because The Fantasy Footballers constantly update information as it breaks. All player profiles remain up to date and accurate no matter when you view them.
Want to not make the same mistakes in 2019? Check out Six Draft Mistakes to Avoid in 2019.
Custom Scoring Projections
The Ultimate Draft Kit takes stat projection to a whole new level. The Fantasy Footballers provide you with award-winning projections for a player’s protentional performance in the season. As if that wasn’t enough, you can customize these projections based off of your league’s individual scoring settings. Whether your league operates off of standard settings, .5 pt. PPR, full PPR, or any unique settings, the UDK can project a player’s output accurately.
Non-Traditional League Rankings
While standard leagues may reign supreme for the more novice fantasy footballer, seasoned players can sometimes strive for a more advanced league. League types such as auction, dynasty, and rookie drafts, just to name a few, can sometimes be forgotten by the masses of the mainstream fantasy media.
As someone who manages and plays in a keeper league, this one certainly hits home. When purchasing the UDK, your worries of traditional rankings carrying over to your specific drafting needs is no more. The Fantasy Footballers have specific rankings based off of a multitude of non-tradition league types so that you receive tailored expertise.
Dynasty Startup Guide
Speaking of non-tradition leagues, if you’re looking to get started on a Dynasty league, the Dynasty Startup Guide is one of the best fantasy football tools out there. The UDK provides this tool to help you make the most out of your Dynasty draft.
The Dynasty Startup Guide gives you player rankings without tiers because dynasty owners have different objectives and goals than traditional drafts. You can properly evaluate a player’s long-term value based on many different factors. Their tools give you accurate age breakdowns to the decimal point, as well as dynasty-based player rankings separated between veterans and rookies so you can make the most educated decision for your dynasty league.
Reception Perception
One of the most unique fantasy football tools that the Ultimate Draft Kit provides its users with is the Reception Perception. This feature, created by Matt Harmon, gives you one of the most in-depth analysis of wide receiver talent around. Harmon takes the top-50 players at the wideout position and charts out everything you could possibly want to know about them.
Do you want to see how Adam Thielen performs operating out of the slot as opposed to out wide? How about Alshon Jeffery’s success versus press coverage? Is it Curtis Samuel or D.J. Moore for Carolina in 2019?Harmon goes into explicit detail about every integral part of what makes a wideout a viable fantasy option.
Real-Time Updates
What use is the best fantasy football tool if you can’t keep it updated? The Ultimate Draft Kit provides you with constant updates and the latest breaking news as it goes down. They constantly shuffle player rankings based off of cutting-edge information. Any stat, tool or insight changes constantly based on the most recent news and updates.
5-Star App
The best draft tool is one that you have available to you at virtually all times. The Fantasy Footballers’ Ultimate Draft Kit app sports a sparkling 5.0 rating on the Apple App Store, and a 4.9 rating on the Google Play Android Store. Compared to similar top of the line draft kits, UDK blows the others out of the water with their sleek and simplistic design.
The UDK app provides users with most of the same wonderful tools and features that are available on the desktop version. You can mark players, catch up on the latest news, browse rankings, and much more, all from the convenience of your smartphone.
Final Verdict
The Ultimate Draft Kit offers the best fantasy football tools available hands down, and it’s not really much of a competition. From taking your typical rankings and elevating them in a way that is actually useful come draft day, to receive the most up to date expert takes and projections based off of relevant and up to the minute news, you can rely on the Ultimate Draft Kit.
They offer features such as custom scoring projections, non-traditional league rankings, and more. All of these features are something that is so small, yet makes a major impact on a huge demographic of fantasy football players around the globe.
One of my favorite features is the Reception Perception tool, simply because you literally cannot find anything like it anywhere else. You won’t find it in other draft kits, on other websites, or in someone’s blog, because it is 100% unique and one of a kind. It is just one of the many innovative tools that the Ultimate Draft Kit provides you with to keep you a step ahead of the competition.
To cap it all off, not only do you have many amazing features to access from your desktop, but you can also utilize their streamlined mobile app as well. When it comes down to it, the UDK app blows similar competitors out of the water before you even take a look at the features it provides! Overall, if you’re looking for the best fantasy football tools around, with the most innovative features, the Ultimate Draft Kit simply cannot be beaten.