Green Light. Red Light.

Players to target and others to draft with caution.

Part of my ranking process incorporates rating each player’s strength of schedule (SOS). The model used 160 total possible points over the course of a season (10 pts per game). From there, points would be deducted relative to the opponent’s rating. A player would lose 0 pts for every time he faced a team in the bottom 25% defense vs position (DvP), 1 pt for a bottom-middle opponent, 2 pts for an upper-middle opponent, and 3 pts when facing an opponent in the top 25%.

While nerdy, this is a simple process that can help identify players who may exceed an owner’s expectations, while finding others who may greatly disappoint. Take a player like Juju Smith-Schuster, who many consider a surefire top-10 fantasy receiver this year. He has a SOS rating of 129–the worst among WRs. In comparison, he has lost more than a game’s worth of points compared to another player similarly ranked—Keenan Allen (140). In this instance, I expect Allen to exceed his average draft position (ADP) and Juju to fall short.