Dynasty Fantasy Football Rookie-Only Rankings: Four receivers move up; Israel Abanikanda loses ground

Updated rookie-only rankings for Dynasty leagues

None of the 2023 rookies have played a down of NFL football yet, but that doesn't mean they're still ranked like they were in May. While the rankings below do mostly look similar to my post-draft rankings, there are some pretty big movers. Tank Dell, Roschon Johnson, and Rashee Rice have moved up quite a bit and all look more likely to contribute in Year 1 than I would have guessed back in May, with all of them earning meaningful reps the first week of training camp. Israel Abanikanda and Luke Schoonmaker went the other direction as Abanikanda struggles to gain traction and faces the threat of Dalvin Cook while Schoonmaker has been unable to get on the field. But those big movers aren't necessarily the most interesting movers.

I have gone back and forth on Jaxon Smith-Njigba vs Jordan Addison all offseason, but the main reason Addison was ahead on draft night was because he went to a team with just one star receiver in front of him and he landed with a coach that figures to call 100 more pass plays per season in Minnesota. But Smith-Njigba has reminded everyone in Seattle and on the internet how incredibly high his upside is, and I've decided it's pretty silly to worry about target competition when the guy out-performed Garrett Wilson and Chris Olave on the same team in college.

One other thing you may notice is that wide receivers as a rule trended up and running backs trended down. That's more of a philosophical change as the NFL has really hammered home how little they value their backs. It is hard to project any back for more than four years without some sort of dispute, and that's been reflected in these rankings. If you are a running back and you aren't projected as a starter this year, you aren't going to rank very high in my rankings, because not much is guaranteed for that position beyond this year.

The rankings below are sorted by PPR ranking. The rankings, from left to right, are: May PPR ranking, current PPR ranking, non-PPR ranking, Superflex ranking, tight end premium ranking.