Cheat sheet format
This year (2020), we changed our cheat sheet format from position-by-position to a color-coded overall top 200 format.
Many readers have complained that they don't like the new overall format.
Good news! We hear you.
- If you bought this year's Fantasy Football Index, you can obtain an updated position by position list for free by downloading the Internet Extra. If you bought the magazine at the newsstand, click here. If you bought the magazine direct from us, then log in and then click "Your Stuff."
- In our newsletters and in future editions of the magazine, we will present the full-season rankings both ways.
You can obtain position-by-position rankings via the subscriber area of this website. (If you're a first time visitor to the subscriber area, then you will be able to create an account.) When you're signed in, click the link for cheat sheets and auction values. They're displayed in both formats: overall, and position-by-position. You may need to scroll down in order to see the format you prefer.
We changed our default format to the overall style for many reasons:
- For many years, subscribers have complained because our overall rankings went only 25-35 deep.
- A recent survey conducted by The Athletic found that 41.1 percent of fantasy players are drafting from a spreadsheet, and 26.8 percent are using the draft queue in an online service such as ESPN.com, which requires pre-loading draft rankings from top to bottom. That leaves 32.1 percent working from a paper draft list, many of whom prefer to see the overall rankings.
- In light of the pandemic, we expect even more people to draft at online websites, entering their pre-ordered top-to-bottom rankings into a draft queue.
- An overall Top 200 list with positions color-coded does accommodate people who are looking for the highest-ranked player at a given position. However, the traditional list with separate positions does not accommodate people who want to know whether they get more value by picking the highest ranked RB vs. WR vs. TE.
- SuperFlex leagues, in which each fantasy team can start two quarterbacks, are growing rapidly. We expect the number of Superflex leagues to grow rapidly this year due to fear that a starting QB could be diagnosed with COVID. And we excpect the migration to the Superflex format to continue, which will accelerate the need for overall top-to-bottom rankings.
This is our 34th NFL season. Long term relationships are our lifeblood. Thank you for sticking with us through the years. We believe that readers will come to prefer the new color-coded format if they will only give it a fair chance, but for now we will provide both.