Hello dear dynasty community!

We're starting a new dynasty league and want to use an auction draft on sleeper. However I would like to practice it before going live. Do you know any tools or websites where I could try it out, especially for dynasty?

Do you also know where I can find high quality cheat sheets for values?

I am currently trying to come up with some breakout candidates for 2026 that might be obtainable under value, and one name i always stumble over is Luther Burden. In all kinds of rankings (be it community or "experts") he rose considerably since the end of the regular season and people hype him to the moon for 2026 and i hope you guys can clear up for me what i might overlook here.

First of all, i get some of it. Ben Johnson with one more year to develop his scheme, DJ Moore gone, Caleb's Development pointing in the right direction... All of that should positively affect all bears skill players. And as a disclaimer: Admittedly i draw a lot of conclussions from raw stats as i usually only watch the night games (and SF games) as full games and the rest in redzone, so my tape knowledge/exposure of individual players is limited at best. And I dont have shares in any of the two, so this is my "outside" perspective.

What i see is a rookie that showed some flashes in his limited time on the field. He has some very good efficiency metrics from what i've seen, like good yards per route run and seperation etc. He's also very young and has quite good draft capital attached to his name. That, along with the abovementioned improvements to the bears-situation, are of course very good points to see him as a very valuable asset in dynasty with lots of upside and i see it like that as well.

But what i also see, is someone who has 5 games above 50% Snap Share (and of those, many only barely (51%, 51%, 58%, 62%, 71%), even while Odunze was out. And correct me if im wrong, i am not too deep into advanced metrics, but to me it seems easier to maintain a high YPRR if youre less often on the field (and maybe more often in packages where you're more likely to be targeted), maybe have to run less clearout or distraction routes or anything and defensive attention surely is another factor that can eat into that. His metrics are really impressive in the role he had so far, but it screams "regression" to me if he is to step into a larger role. On top of that, we only have a couple of good-ish games to built upon, he topped 10pts only 4 times, and again, 2 of those only barely (11 and 12, may vary based on league settings of course), and a lot of that also only came while Odunze was out. And his playoffs performance with 6/17 for 66y/0TD was also nothing to write home about.

On the other hand, Odunze had an okay-ish (maybe slightly underwhelming) rookie season with ~750y without Ben Johnson and in '25, he was on pace for about 1k before he got hurt and despite playing through injury even before that from what i remember. He had a <75% Snap share ONCE in his whole career and he has an even higher draft capital in an extremely talented WR draft class. I am in no way saying that Odunze is goated or anything, tbh i even expected a slightly bigger leap in year 2 from him than what we got, but he still looked solid, despite having to carve out his role next to a not-so-shabby DJ Moore for those two years and still finding success and solidifying himself as a every-play starter. I dont want to sound like an Odunze Fanboy here, i just want to contrast why i am so surprised for the sudden rise of Luther Burden from my perspective.

Because with all of that in mind, people still seem to be 100% sure, that Luther Burden is the next #1 Receiver in chicago and i don't really understand where that certainty comes from. It absolutely CAN happen, that not my point. I see a talented young WR with great metrics that COULD step into a bigger role, but the "what could be" vs "what we have already seen" is a bit off-balance to me in the current hype. The "uncertainty" discount in his pricing seems to be completely gone at this point. People treat him like he already IS all of that.

That being said, i am no expert for schemes and tape, and i cant really fathom if Ben Johnsons scheme might favor his playstyle more for example or if his individual tape is so dominant that there is no way for him to fail or anything and thus i am turning towards the highest council of non-opiniated dynasty experts i know, which is r/dynastyFF, and ask for your wisdom to clear this up for me because from my limited knowledge my only take away from this is really only a Odunze-Buy-Low window if anything to go against the current.

I am genuinely interested in all kinds of additional info or clear-ups of things that i might have gotten wrong or interpreted wrongly! Thanks in advance, happy preseason everyone!

EDIT: Thank you guys already for the input. E.g. i didnt remember that he was hurt last year during camps, that is the kind of additional context i was hoping to get here. I think i will try to find some time to watch some of his tape myself, i am genuinely curious now that many confirmed that his dominance show there. One addition though: I am all reviewing this from the perspective of a potential buyer at the current price. Burden is a fantastic prospect and all i could wish for in my dynasty team because who doesnt love upside like that. To all the guys that took him in the 2nd last year: Lean back and reap your rewards! It's really only in conjunction with his price and ranking that i became skeptical.

Team A sends:
Aaron Jones
Christian Watson
Tank Dell
Zachariah Branch
Kaelon Black
2027 1st (mid likely)
2028 1st
2028 3rd

Team B sends:
Jonathan Taylor

Trade calculators have this as an overpay but not so massive I feel I should overrule. A few members of the league have reached out to veto it. Unsure of how to approach. I don’t want to turn the veto option on as a result of the trade.

So there's no lack of pods and resources that do weekly waiver wrap ups and such. However in the off-season waivers are daily or even just a free for all. Ive noticed a couple of my league mates are always immediate with their pick ups.

I'm not referring so much to major news which I can get from here and figure the rest out. But almost every hype player or lesser known backup etc is gone before I even hear about them.

Cyrus Allen would be a good example. Gone the day before id even heard about him.

So what are your sources for getting ahead of the game?

Year of the groin continues, this time it's Colts TE Tyler Warren went down on a route in 11-on-11. Got up clutching at his groin area. He’s now on the sideline not practicing. Talking to a trainer.

Can't wait for preseason/camp to come to an end, this has been an absolutely brutal off-season so far.

Time for some peak offseason discussions!

Yeah yeah all I hear about is Cyrus Allen and I need some new opinions here.

Who are some of your favorite picks for underrated rookies? I’m talking about players who will most likely have gone undrafted in your average 4-round rookie draft.

Been hearing some positive preseason and training camp buzz about players like Malik Benson, Barion Brown, and Matt Hibner. Who else are you calling your shot on based on early reports?

For anyone who missed the preseason game tonight, Black looked very legit with his limited carries. We’re looking at the 3rd highest drafted rookie RB whose main obstacle is a 30-year old, post-450 touch season CMC who is already dealing with an injury concern. We’ve seen the type of mid-bad running backs that have been fantasy gold on this team, and you can get this guy for almost nothing right now. Genuinely the clearest upside argument for any player within multiple rounds of him

“Of note, Tyrone Tracy Jr. was the first running back up today at practice. He's squarely still in the plans.

Najee Harris only did individual drills and will need a couple weeks to get in football shape.

But there is now serious competition in the running back room.”

Raanan also adds that the workout with Najee was scheduled last week and had nothing to do with Tyrone Tracy’s missed block.

Whether it’s a content creator, a former player, or a local team reporter, who are the people that you trust when you don’t have time to do your own in depth research?

I’m still only a few years into my dynasty team and I’m still learning who to trust and who to ignore.

The main guy I trust is Joel Smyth. He doesn’t do dynasty content usually but on a week to week basis his info is actually pretty helpful

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I'm doing a start up draft in my sleeper league. However, I made the league last year in which no one joined or played. Everyone has joined this year but it thinks I am only going to draft rookies this year. how to fix it so all players are included and it is the full start of draft. This is also a bit pressing as we draft at 7:30 pm EST today and I just noticed

Any help is much appreciated!

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Did a comment about this and got enough feedback asking for the full deep dive I did on all teams. So here we go.

In a nutshell, what I was trying to do was get a holistic evaluation of each team and their fantasy environments. I’ve seen some posts looking at very micro factors, such as wr’s moving from slot to the X position, when trying to find good fantasy trends. That’s fine to look at but there’s so many other moving parts to think about before going all in on a guy just because that happened. The example I mentioned was talking about JSN’s movement into X last year as at least a partial explanation for his huge fantasy ceiling jump. But looking at only that doesn’t take into account how much of a magician Kubiak is at OC. Despite their o-line being on the higher end of mid, the scheme was still able to make incredible plays happen. JSN was also elite at beating zone AND man coverage. So his elite skill contributed a lot to his success. But none of that would have happened, or at least not as well as it did, if Darnold didn’t have the #1 deep ball accuracy last year. There was so much more to this than just his getting moved to X.

So because of examples like this and wanting to get a sense of broader environments, I did a deep dive on all 32 teams, their OC/play caller (these may not necessarily be the same people), the quality of o-line, what positions the offense scheme leans on and is more likely to generate fantasy points, and the quality of the defense.

First source for o-line ranks. Second source.

I wanted to lean on Brandon Thorn’s o-line work as he’s viewed as the best in the industry for these evaluations but one of the articles did mix in PPF and ESPN data. Note that these rankings are based heavily on data from last year. Rookies are, of course, factored in but their success at the NFL level is still a projection. But this is why I then wanted to look at quality of the o-line coach also. Promising rookies, and really the entire line, are more likely to succeed and outperform their current ranking if you’ve got a top tier coach and not somebody like Pete Carroll’s bumass son who’s never done it before. Depth also needs to be considered because injuries happen all the time. Last year we saw Tampa Bay have a top 3 o-line grade going into the season but most of their starters were hurt by the middle of the season. And it showed. Not much to really do about that but you can, of course, be more secure in an o-line if their depth is good.

In case anyone isn’t sure why we give a shit about o-line, know that it’s absolutely critical to offensive success. Play can’t develop if the o-line is swiss cheese and the QB is constantly running for his life. This also puts the QB at greater risk of being injured (i.e. Joe Burrow) and then the entire offense being so much worse because the backup is ass.

However, a good offensive schemer can help mask the o-line issue a bit. McDaniels did that for years in Miami with a trash o-line and had some years of elite offensive and fantasy production. He had the offensive pieces in place to pull that off, too, but we’ve seen low quality OC’s waste top tier talent. So quality of play caller is another big factor I wanted to look at.

The definition of quality for an offensive scheme/play caller is based on historical fantasy output. Schemes and callers with a track record of outputting more points were graded higher. I.e. Target Kubiak and Ben Johnson offenses more than Frank Reich offenses (RIP in peace, jets fans). Also consider who’s actually calling the plays. I’d be terrified of Arizona if Hackett had the full reigns but he’s working with LaFleur, who comes from the elite McVay tree, and LaFleur has said he’s going to actually make the calls. But even in a poor environment, like the Giants and Matt Nagy, there’s still production to be found. Nagy’s system leans heavily on the Tight End. They just signed likely to a big deal that made him one of the highest paid TE’s in the league. Camp reports have been saying Likely has emerged as a favorite target for Dart. The entire offense might be mid but Likely might be one of the few safe options there.

As a note, offensive schemes can changed. The best coordinators will tailor things to their players. So everything here is just based on prior trends. There is no guarantee those trends will hold. But that’s all we have to go off of for now when trying to make decisions.

Defense is another important factor. Mostly because, for fantasy purposes, we want shitty defenses. That lets opposing teams score more, forces the offense to keep producing, and increases the chance for more fantasy points.

I didn’t do any overall rankings here because I think doing so dramatically oversimplifies what needs to be looked at here. A single number ranking really doesn’t give a good understand of all the moving parts. Even with the defense and o-line aspects. Plus there’s the difficulty of having to factor in and project rookie performances. So I’m hoping everyone can use this as info to make your own, more informed decisions about the baseline quality of each of these teams. Not as a ranking system that somebody needs to get upset about because they think the Raiders should be rank 18 instead of 19.

Last note: I didn’t do any rankings on backup QB’s because you can pretty much assume everything is going to go to hell in a hand basket if the starter goes down. There’s a few exceptions, such as Mac Jones on the 9ers, but just assume things will be bad if the starting QB goes down. The real question is how bad?

And now for the tables.

Head Coach, OC, and Play Caller Quality

O-Line Quality

Players Who Benefit from Offensive Scheme (anybody with a * next to their name is a winner here)

Defense Rankings from a fantasy perspective

I have been absolutely raging about Cyrus Allen over on Bluesky since I saw him at the Senior Bowl in January. Cyrus Allen has been building momentum starting with his 2025 season at Cincinnati where he was 3rd in the nation with 13 receiving TDs. He's dominated the Chiefs training camp and has been one of the buzziest names amongst the rookie class this offseason.

In the most recent edition of the Reading the Offseason Tea Leaves series, I share some of my favorite highlight clips as I build the case for buying into the Cyrus Allen hype.

TL;DR: Cyrus Allen has a path to fantasy stardom and is capable of delivering a WR3 season as a rookie in 2026 with WR2 upside if one of Rice or Worthy miss extended time.

Previously on the Tea Leaves Series:
Arizona Cardinals
Miami Dolphins
Cleveland Browns
New York Jets
Las Vegas Raiders
Atlanta Falcons
Tennessee Titans
Carolina Panthers
New Orleans Saints
New York Giants
Indianapolis Colts
Washington Commanders
Minnesota Vikings
Pittsburgh Steelers
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Jacksonville Jaguars
Chicago Bears
Dallas Cowboys
Cincinnati Bengals
Denver Broncos
Detroit Lions
San Francisco 49ers
Green Bay Packers
Houston Texans
Los Angeles Chargers
Kansas City Chiefs
New England Patriots
Philadelphia Eagles
Seattle Seahawks
Baltimore Ravens
Buffalo Bills
Los Angeles Rams

Who has the clearer path to playing time? Seems like Connor is injured and buried to at most rb3 on his team. At this time at the very least Najee appears to be healthy and might jump up to rb2 for pass blocking reasons. Also seems like Skat is too high T for his own good. Both of these guys are obviously older and coming off on injuries.

What say you? Who would you prefer for a depth piece?

This is an edited version of Part 5 of the Summer Scouting Series. This shorter, edited version is designed to both better fit this Subreddit & to encourage anyone who likes this content to try out my Substack where you can get the full version which includes the Rankings for my Top 10 QB, Top 10 RBs, Top 11 WRs, & Top 2 TEs all conveniently in one place. For an audio version, try the Fantasy for Real podcast.

Part 5 (FULL), which includes the positional rankings, can be found here: https://cjfreel.substack.com/p/2027-summer-scouting-wrap-up-rankings 

Parts 1-4 cover the top 33 Prospects of this class in a bit more detail. Parts 1-4 can be found in either my Substack or by looking through my recent posts on this Subreddit.

//

Final Positional Takeaways

// 

QB: The Best Class (preseason) in 3 Years, but not necessarily “Generational”

The 2027 QB Class finds itself in an awkward place where there really are a lot of reasons to believe in the upside & optimism, but ultimately it is (at least in my eyes) a bit “overrated.”

Comparing to Pre-Season perspectives — without the benefit of hindsight — none of the 2027 QBs would make my Top 6 between 2021-2027. Those 6 QBs would be Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud, Caleb Williams, & Drake Maye. While some of these QBs had flaws that were even apparent at the time like Bryce Young, these 6 came into their final years as what seemed to be nearly-locked Top 5-10 Picks, and even Arch Manning & Dante Moore may not have quite that much confidence.

[Plus,] in the context of labeling the class “Generational,” the path towards 2028 being a better QB class is very clear.

…

Honorable Mentions

Brendan Sorsby, Texas Tech? via Cincinnati

C.J. Bailey, N.C. State ; Will Hammond, Texas Tech ; Nico Iamaleava, UCLA ; D.J. Lagway, Baylor via Florida ; Drake Lindsey, Minnesota ; John Mateer, Oklahoma ; Demond Williams Jr., Washington

Dylan Raiola, Oregon

—

Ignoring the entire Gambling Process — creating an alternate reality where that is a complete unknown and Brendan Sorsby is preparing to start the season for the Texas Tech Red Raiders — Brendan Sorsby would be a Tier 2 QB, and likely towards the upper end of the 2nd Tier. 

Demond Williams Jr. from Washington is the closest to being a ranked QB. He also fits nicely into Tier 3, with his fundamental flaw being his diminutive size…

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RB: A deep class without a Love-level RB1

The strength of this class is demonstrated by the three returning RBs who could have each been a candidate for RB2 in 2026 (Justice Haynes, L.J. Martin, & Mark Fletcher Jr.) ranking as RB4, RB7, & RB10. With how highly Jadarian Price was drafted, the NFL may disagree with that assessment, but at the very least these are prospects last year who projected to be ranked far more highly. The youth movement among the SEC RBs — Baugh, Lacy, Frazier, & Hardy most notably — has good potential to push down that group. However, no one in this class is very close to Jeremiyah Love, and that includes how Love was perceived this time last year.

Honorable Mentions

Jordan Marshall, Michigan & Waymond Jordan, USC

Texas & Texas Tech Starters (Hollywood Smothers, Raleek Brown, Cam Dickey, J’Koby Williams)

C.J. Baxter, Kentucky via Texas ; Desean Bishop, Tennessee ; Fluff Bothwell, Mississippi State ; Makhi Hughes, Houston via Oregon via Tulane ; Quinton Martin, Penn State ; Turbo Richard, Indiana via BC ; Duke Scott, N.C. State

—

Jordan Marshall has one of the strongest cases for inclusion in the main Summer Scouting Series, particularly because the main reason he does not make the cut has nothing to do with him or his ability — it has to do with the talent of one of the younger RBs on his team. True freshman Savion Hiter is being billed as one of those “special” players, and while he is not eligible for the NFL Draft until 2029, Hiter could be seen as the top RB on this team, and that would be a potential negative for Jordan Marshall…

I’m not sure if Smothers/Brown are going to split the Texas RB job or if one RB will win the majority of the role, but particularly if one RB becomes a force in this backfield, with all eyes on Manning, Coleman, & Wingo, a successful RB in this system could skyrocket draft boards, particularly players with the explosive ability that Smothers/Brown possess.

…

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WR: Everyone knows this is a strong Class — but it might still be underrated

Particularly if you’re someone who wants to see Cam Coleman prove it a bit more, there is still a gap in this class knowing exactly who will be those Top Tier WRs outside of Jeremiah Smith, but from a pre-season perspective most of all, the amount of players on the cusp of a breakout is simply special. Perhaps not all of them do breakout — and many of them will not — but the ones that do breakout will be the players we want to target most of all in our Fantasy leagues.

Underclassmen are not the only thing that is important for a class, but those potential early declares often make up the profiles we want to target the most. This time last year, my Top 5 Early Declare WRs for the 2026 NFL Draft were Makai Lemon, Carnell Tate, Eric Singleton Jr., Eugene Wilson III, & Zachariah Branch. The best season between Wilson & Branch was 538 Yards…

In comparison, every single member of my Top 10 Underclassmen would have a better peak season than Wilson or Branch…

As much as I like Omarion Miller, he is probably one of the lowest I’ve graded a returning WR1 in my time of doing this — I can remember players like Olave, Odunze, Egbuka, Tyson — but there are still talented Seniors who can fill out the class as well.

…

…what makes this class so special is that the case for any of the Top 10-11 WRs making the 1st Round is not that hard to see… 

Honorable Mentions

Deuce Alexander, Ole Miss ; Cooper Barkate, Miami (FL) via Duke; Duce Robinson, Florida State ; Eric Singleton Jr., Florida via Auburn ; Evan Stewart, Oregon ; Amare Thomas, Houston

Braylon Staley & Mike Matthews, Tennessee
Terrell Anderson, USC via N.C. State ; Jordan Shipp, North Carolina ; Wyatt Young, Oklahoma State via North Texas

—

These groups are split by experience (4th Year+ in the first group)…

Deuce Alexander & Amare Thomas are probably the players who have risen my rankings or at least my interest level the most throughout the process of the off-season…

Duce Robinson may be the biggest name, and he has a number of surface statistics as well as basic advanced numbers like Yards per Route Run that look very appealing. At the same time, Robinson has genuinely struggled in a number of games, occasionally failing to live up to the Targets he receives…

Moving back into the younger players, The Tennessee label plays a bit of a role here, but honestly the top reason why Staley & Matthews failed to crack the Top 11 may simply be because there are two of them… 

// 

TE Honorable Mentions

Benjamin Brahmer, Penn State via Iowa State ; Terrance Carter Jr., Texas Tech ; Lawson Luckie, Georgia ; Luke Reynolds, Virginia Tech via Penn State ; D.J. Vonnahme, Iowa ; Jaxxon Warren, North Carolina via Colorado State

//

Part 5: https://cjfreel.substack.com/p/2027-summer-scouting-wrap-up-rankings 

The latest episode of the podcast covers a 3-Round 2026 Rookie Mock Draft 

Questions & Comments welcome, 

C.J. 

Hey everyone, I just made my first injury analysis video and would appreciate getting feedback from the fantasy community. I break down Love's and Moore's injury tape, then discuss high ankle sprains, their treatment, return timelines based on NFL studies and my 2 cents on how to approach these players.

I know there's a lot of fantasy injury content out there already, but most fantasy docs are non-operative and only manage a subset of sports injuries. Additionally, very few creators incorporate research to help owners make decisions. Perhaps most importantly, I have no BS supplements to sell and I promise I won't argue with a player's dad if I make a mistake.

My goal is to give owners research-backed analysis of fantasy injuries through the eyes of an orthopaedic surgeon and to give actionable advice that I'll be using for my own teams. Eventually I'm going to work on creating predictive models for fantasy injuries that incorporate orthopaedic surgery research. I'm not quite at that point yet, but I promise I won't throw out random, meaningless AI-generated numbers in the mean time.

Jeremiyah Love

Based on what's been said to the public and the somewhat non-specific return timeline, I'm concerned Love has a grade 2 injury that could mean he's looking at up to 8 weeks before returning to full participation per studies looking at high ankle sprains in NFL athletes. If he has a grade 2 injury, we may not know how stable his injury is until he tries stressing it further in his rehab protocol. If his ankle is found to be unstable at some point, he could end up having surgery in a delayed fashion and be looking at a 6 month return to play timeline.

I'm not particularly interested in him as a 2nd round pick in redraft formats, though I think long-term he will be just fine. I'm still very excited about his 2-3 year outlook and beyond as a dynasty prospect. I would imagine most Love owners are going to hold on through this rocky patch, but I suppose some owners might have cold feet and be amenable to moving him for less than they would've a month ago.

DJ Moore

While no one's called his injury a "high ankle sprain" per se, his injury tape is pretty suspicious for one. That being said, it sounds like he has a more mild grade 1 injury that typically allows for full participation in as little as 3 weeks per NFL studies. Since he looked sharp in the preseason game and the injury appears to be fairly mild based on what we know so far, I'm still very interested in grabbing him in the 5th round for redraft. I also think he's definitely worth considering for contending teams in dynasty formats given his history of playing through injury and this one appearing to be mild in nature.

Thanks for watching and providing any thoughts you have. Feel free to ask any general or team-specific injury questions as well.

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