Defining What ADP is in Fantasy Football

It is now mid-August and officially fantasy football draft season. Everyone from experts to those completely new to fantasy football will be completing their fantasy drafts in the next few weeks, if they haven't already.

The fantasy football world also comes with its own set of terms and lingo, and while you've probably heard most of the acronyms and vocabulary by now, you might not know what they all mean.

What is ADP in Fantasy Football?

One of the more prevalent fantasy acronyms is ADP, which stands for Average Draft Position. ADP is the average number pick that a certain player is being drafted across the combined results of multiple drafts conducted on a specific platform.

For example, let's say we wanted to better understand Saquon Barkley's ADP. For the sake of ease here, imagine there have been 10 ESPN Fantasy Football drafts conducted in total to date, and Barkley was drafted No. 1 overall in all 10 of them. That scenario would give Barkley an ADP of 1.0. However, if Barkley were drafted No. 1 in five of those drafts, and No. 2 overall in the other five of those drafts, that would give Barkley an ADP of 1.5.

ADP is sometimes broken down further to represent by position. So you might see someone listed with an ADP of RB12, which would indicate this player is the 12th running back to be drafted on average. While ADP might seem like a simple or marginal piece of information, it can actually be a useful way to find value, especially in the middle and later rounds.

If you compare the ADP rankings from the various drafting platforms (ESPN, Yahoo!, CBS, etc.), you might find some significant variance, which could show a certain player may be overvalued or undervalued on whichever platform you are using.

ADP is one of the most commonly used acronyms and statistics when preparing for your fantasy draft and can also be a useful tool for comparison. One thing to know, when entering your fantasy draft, there's no such thing as having too much information or knowledge.

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David Kaestle is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, David also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username davekaestle. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in their articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.