Happy Thursday, and happy 4th of July Eve!

I should have made a note of this last week, but I decided to send this week’s newsletter a day early to help keep myself (and you!) offline tomorrow to enjoy the hot dog eating competition and time with the family.

You should still see this in your inbox on Fridays moving forward.

Now let’s prepare to win our drafts!

In this week’s newsletter:

🏷️ Draft Room Values
🔎 How I use Abusing Draft Rankings
📉 ADP Trends Week-to-Week
🥇 RB Draft Rankings
🔜 Next Week’s Preview

🏷️ First Look Draft Values

Every week I’ll highlight draft values found in draft rooms, primarily using my Abusing Draft Rankings tool to help find these players.

Obviously right now it’s too early to take advantage of these values, unless you’re drafting this weekend! It’s still a massive benefit to keep an eye on both ADP trends (listed in the next section) and consistent discrepancies between ADP and expert ranks.

QB Jared Goff - ESPN PPR

Draft room rank: QB20 | Expert rank: QB11
Landmine Score: 0.0 (Lower is better, so a 0 is a steal)

Okay, I might be biased as a Lions fan (I try not to be biased) but… QB20 feels wrong. Goff has finished the last three seasons as a top-10 QB, even finishing last year as the QB6. He may not be the flashy QB pick but if you’re drafting on ESPN it seems like he is the late round QB target.

WR Josh Downs – ESPN

Draft room rank: WR42 | Expert rank: WR62
Landmine Score: 2.7

Downs, to me, is a great late round WR dart throw - and that’s at his WR42 rank! Mix in the fact that he is being ranked in ESPN draft rooms four rounds after that rank and I’m even more in. This is a bench player draft pick with upside (particularly if Anthony Richardson isn’t the starting QB, Downs could use some volume) and the steep discount makes that an easier pick.

WR Jauan Jennings - Sleeper

Draft room rank: WR38 | Expert rank: WR52
Landmine Score: 2.6

Jennings is in line for a bigger role in San Francisco with the departure of Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk returning from a knee injury. In Sleeper draft rooms you can get a three round discount on Jennings and I’m buying.

WR Travis Hunter - Yahoo

Draft room rank: WR29 | Expert rank: WR57
Landmine Score: 0.0

This is a wide difference in ranking on Yahoo, and understandably so - we don’t know how much play time Hunter will see at WR this year… but he’s currently ranked to go at the start of the 6th round by experts, appears at the start of the 11th in Yahoo drafts. For a late round pick, it looks like you can get a mid-round value in Hunter and that’s some value I’ll buy in on.

New for 2025: Landmine Score - It’s a 0-10 scale that rates how risky a player is in your draft room - based on how much earlier they’re ranked on your platform versus expert consensus.

Most players land somewhere in the 5-6 range. A score of 10 means they’re being pushed way up the board and you’re probably walking into a trap. A 0? That’s a straight-up steal.

🔎 How I use Abusing Draft Rankings

If I had to guess, my Abusing Draft Rankings tool was probably a primary reason you found this newsletter. I reference it quite a bit and it’s incredibly helpful in finding draft room specific values. But how do I use it? Allow me to explain!

Let’s pretend I have a PPR draft coming up for a league hosted on ESPN:

• Before the draft: Head to the ‘ESPN PPR’ tab in the sheet and create a filter (highlight the table and click the filter icon in the top menu). Sort by Landmine Score or scroll through to identify targets and traps based on where the platform ranks them vs expert consensus.

  • I keep these players noted as I head into drafts, knowing where they are appearing in draft rooms and consider when I may want to pull the trigger on drafting them.

  • Landmine Score: A score of 10 means the player is ranked way too high in comparison to expert ranks, while a score of 0 is one that the draft room ranks much later.

• During the draft: Keep the sheet open - as players are taken, mark an “X” in the first column to cross them off. You can keep it sorted as-is, it is by default ranked by draft room rankings.

Overall, these sheets let you know when players will appear on the screen for your draft rooms. You can identify which players will appear at the top in round 10 and keep note on which ones you would like to target or completely avoid.

📉 ADP Trends: Movers this Week

Each week moving forward this section will highlight weekly shifts in ADP to get a good sense of player movement as drafts and hype begin to exist throughout the summer. To start the summer off I’ll instead highlight the differences between ADP this season vs last:

📈 Weekly Rise in ADP

🔼 +22 - Zach Ertz - TE, WAS
🔼 +16 - Darius Slayton - WR, NYG
🔼 +12 - Curtis Samuel - WR, BUF
🔼 +11 - Greg Dortch - WR, ARI
🔼 +11 - Adonai Mitchell - WR, IND

📉 Weekly Drop in ADP

🔽 -31 - Justin Fields - QB, NYJ
🔽 -19 - Marvin Mims - WR, DEN
🔽 -17 - Roschon Johnson - RB, CHI
🔽 -16 - Ricky Pearsall - WR, SF
🔽 -16 - Cedric Tillman - WR, CLE

🥇 Top-Ten RBs

The first draft of my 2025 draft rankings are LIVE! Here’s a look at my top RBs. Feel free to view all player ranks at the link below.

📬 If this was forwarded to you…

I highlight my favorite draft values in this newsletter every Friday.

If you want to stay sharp, make sure you’re subscribed!

🔜 Next Week: Cheat Sheet Drop - Draft Ready

The first version of draft cheat sheets, JuiceSheets, drops next Friday.

We’ll walk through how to use it and why it’s the cleanest draft-day tool you’ll carry into the room (or have open on the computer)

Spread the word! Share this newsletter with your friends. Feel free to forward this to your friends, coworkers, or even your dad!