Fantasy Football Best Ball ADP: Where are drafters taking Jonathan Taylor and the 2020 rookies?

Heath Cummings takes a look at Best Ball ADP and where the 2020 rookie class is being drafted.

From the start of March through the first week of April, nearly 500 Best Ball drafts have taken place on BestBall10s, which gives us a solid idea of where players are going to be drafted. More specifically, for the purposes of this article, it tells us where the incoming rookie class is going to be drafted. Or at least, where they'll be drafted before the NFL Draft.

Jonathan Taylor is the clear favorite among Best Ball drafters, and the only rookie with an average draft position in the first six rounds. Of course, this makes perfect sense to me: He's been my favorite back in this class since I wrote his NFL Draft profile earlier this year. Taylor's current ADP is 46.9, and it's almost certain to go up from here. If he lands somewhere like Tampa Bay or Kansas City, he could be a first-round pick by the time we get to August. 

The downside for Taylor looks something like a recent CBS Sports mock draft where Taylor fell to the third round to the Detroit Lions. If that happens, he's likely to fall out of the first four rounds. But there are two things to remember. That's close to a worst-case scenario, and you aren't losing anything close to the value you're gaining if Taylor finds a good landing spot. And that seems to be the case with the entire rookie class right now.

D'Andre Swift and JK Dobbins are the only other rookies with an ADP in the single-digit rounds, and they're both underdrafted as well. It could be uncertainty over the prospects or uncertainty over their landing spots, but virtually all of the rookies are values. Past history tells us this will not last. In fact, I'd guess by July I'll be listing a couple of these guys in my bust column because their ADP has exploded. This is the best reasoning I can give you for doing Best Ball drafts before the NFL Draft. There's an edge to be found in targeting what is one of the deepest classes in recent memory. They won't all be worth more than their current cost, but they all have more upside than downside at their current cost. 

Below are all the rookies with an ADP in the top 200. I added a column with where they were drafted in our most recent PPR mock draft, our first with rookies. Notice, Tua Tagovailoa is not on the list. He wasn't drafted in our draft either. That makes sense, because our draft was only 15 rounds and it wasn't best ball. But if Tagovailoa is healthy, I suspect he's going to have a high win percentage in these March and April drafts. His current ADP is 227 and he's been drafted in less than half of drafts.