2026 standard rankings: how the board is built
Standard scoring pays nothing for a reception, so a player's value is yards and touchdowns alone. That compresses the receiver position and widens the gap at the top of the running backs, because volume on the ground is worth the same as it always was while volume through the air is worth less. The replacement bars are the same as PPR — the 36th running back, the 36th wide receiver — since the roster is the same; standard changes what the player at that rank scores, not who they are.
Where the replacement bar sits in a standard-scoring league
| Position | Dedicated slots | Per-team demand | Replacement player |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quarterback | 1 | 1.00 | QB18 |
| Running back | 2 | 2.46 | RB36 |
| Wide receiver | 2 | 2.46 | WR36 |
| Tight end | 1 | 1.08 | TE19 |
| Kicker | 1 | 1.00 | K12 |
| Team defense | 1 | 1.00 | DEF12 |
What standard scoring changes
With no points for receptions, a player's projection is yards and touchdowns. Touchdowns are the least predictable component of a season, so standard scoring is the format in which projections — anyone's — are least certain, and tiers matter more than exact order.
Running backs benefit most: goal-line work and rushing volume are unchanged by the scoring rule while receiving volume is devalued, so the top of the position pulls further away from its replacement bar than it does in PPR.
Tight end compresses. Without reception points, the difference between a targeted tight end and a replacement one is mostly touchdowns, and that is not a difference worth an early pick.
The four formats, side by side
| Format | Points per reception | Second QB slot | QB bar | RB bar | WR bar | TE bar |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PPR | 1 | No | QB18 | RB36 | WR36 | TE19 |
| half-PPR | 0.5 | No | QB18 | RB36 | WR36 | TE19 |
| standard | 0 | No | QB18 | RB36 | WR36 | TE19 |
| superflex | 1 | Yes | QB28 | RB37 | WR37 | TE20 |
Five rounds off the 2026 standard-scoring consensus board. Twelve teams. No account is needed to start it: signed out, the link opens this setup and you start it from there. That board is the consensus one described further down — a median across this product's projection sources, built when you start rather than committed to this page, which is why the live numbers are there and not here.
How a player's number is built
- The board the practice draft deals from
- A consensus board, which is an average — for every player and every stat, this product takes the median across each projection source it holds for the season and scores the result with this format's rules. A median rather than a mean is what keeps one outlying source from dragging a player. The sources it is taken over are the external projection feeds this product ingests and, when it has a current snapshot of its own, the model described next — so this product's model is one input to the board, not the whole of it. The data underneath comes from Sleeper, ESPN, nflverse and Fantasy Football Calculator.
- Projection
- This product's own projection is a full stat line — attempts, targets, yards, touchdowns — built from each player's projected opportunity and the efficiency rates their position and role have historically produced, then scored with this format's scoring rules. It builds a stat line rather than ordering players directly, which is what makes one number comparable across formats. It is this product's own opinion, and the board above takes it as one of several.
- Replacement level
- The points scored by the player in the table above — the one still available once every team in a 12-team league has filled its need at that position, plus half a league of buffer for flex and bench churn.
- VORP
- Projected points minus replacement level, divided by a per-position scale so the positions are comparable. This is the number that answers “which of these two is the bigger pick”, and it is why a quarterback who outscores every running back is still not the first pick in a one-quarterback league.
- Tiers
- Groups cut where the gaps between consecutive players are largest, not every N players. A tier break is the thing worth reaching for; inside a tier the order matters much less than the draft-room noise around it.
- Injury and risk
- Availability is modelled separately from production: a player's status and injury history produce an expected games-missed figure, and the board can be switched to rank on risk-adjusted points, which moves the replacement bar for everyone rather than only penalising the injured player.
Method, freshness and limits
Everything printed on this page is roster construction and arithmetic over it. The roster, the per-team demand and the replacement ranks are read at build time out of this product's own configuration, not copied into the page by hand, so they cannot drift from what the draft room computes.
This page deliberately does not print a player-by-player board. A published number that comes from a data snapshot has to carry that snapshot's age, and a number whose snapshot has aged out has to stop being published rather than sit here looking current — that is the rule, and this product enforces it in the build rather than trusting anyone to remember it. Until a board can be republished on the same schedule the data behind it refreshes, the honest place for live player numbers is the draft itself, where they are computed at the moment you start it.
So the useful thing this page can hand you is the shape of a standard-scoring league: which player sets the bar at each position, and therefore where value actually comes from. The practice draft above applies it to the current board.
The ranks above assume this product's standard roster. A league that starts three wide receivers, two tight ends or a second flex moves its own bars, and the board follows the league you model rather than these defaults.
Adjacent pages
- 2026 PPR rankings — The same breakdown for a PPR league.
- 2026 half-PPR rankings — The same breakdown for a half-PPR league.
- Every draft setup you can practice — The full catalog: scoring, team count, rounds, seat and season for each one.
- Help and fantasy glossary — What VORP, tiers and ADP delta mean, in plain language.