In the Week 7 edition of my Best Ball Mania IV (BBM4) Advance Rate Review we pushed the NFL veterans aside to focus exclusively on the 2023 rookie class. This week we will do the same.
I wrote in Week 7 about how many rookies see their usage change at some point during the season. This year we’ve seen Dalton Kincaid, Demario Douglas, and Jahmyr Gibbs take on huge roles midseason after slow starts. All three went from barely fantasy relevant to one of the top options on their teams in a matter of a few weeks. That’s the nature of rookies in the NFL and is why so many folks target them heavily in fantasy drafts. I don’t think we’re done with the rookie breakouts, either. Zach Charbonnet, Tyjae Spears, Rashee Rice, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and Michael Mayer have all shown flashes and could join the group above down the stretch. Today we’ll revisit our rookie-only advance rate visualizations and try to pick out some under-the-radar rookies that could make a splash down the stretch.
Each visualization shows all rookies at a given position by their final Underdog ADP and current advance rate. The red dashed line denotes an average advance rate of 16.67%. Players with advance rates above that line are colored in green, players below the line in red. I will only include players drafted at least 100 times.