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OverADP — How to Use the War Room

OverADP is an AI-powered fantasy football draft assistant. It uses machine learning trained on historical NFL data plus current roster overlays, teammate target competition, draft-value rookie signals, prior-year contract signals, and split-conformal quantile regression for 80%-target projection ranges. Target Intel uses opportunity-cost draft math that adapts to roster settings, live picks, VBD, ADP, flex paths, and player availability before your next turn. The projection model and daily draft-market refresh are dated separately so you can verify freshness.

Understanding the UI

Player Pool (Left Panel)

Each player row has two action buttons:

• DRAFT — Click to add this player to YOUR team.
• TAKEN — Click to mark this player as drafted by an OPPONENT (removes them from the board).

Column	Meaning
ADP	Average Draft Position — where the market usually selects the player. A lower number means an earlier pick.
VALUE vs ADP	Market ADP minus the live board's estimated draft slot, measured in picks. Estimated slot = current overall pick + BOARD rank − 1. At pick 1, an ADP of 35.7 and BOARD rank #38 equals −2.3 picks. Positive/green means the board would take the player earlier than the market; negative/red means later. It updates with league settings, roster needs, positional scarcity, and live picks.
PROJ	Projected fantasy points for the full season (half-PPR by default; scoring format is configurable).
VBD	Value Based Drafting — projected points above the replacement level at each position. Higher means more value over a waiver-wire fill-in.
W1 / MISS / Q / O	Preseason badges summarize reported season-opening outlook: W1 means expected ready for Week 1, W1? means monitor, MISS means regular-season time is expected to be missed, and SZN means expected out for the season. Once official weekly reports begin, badges switch to Q/D/O. Select a badge for the source, return estimate, expected games missed, and draft-value adjustment. No badge means no current report in the covered sources—not guaranteed health. nflverse roster/report data is adapted under CC BY 4.0.
RANGE	The model's 80%-target season projection range, shown low–high. It is calibrated across comparable players; it is not an 80% guarantee for one player. Wider ranges mean more uncertainty. Rookie and second-year ranges are widened to reflect their limited history.
UNC	Uncertainty: low / medium / high, based on RANGE width relative to PROJ within the player's position. Low means a tighter range. High means a wider range or a player near replacement level.
DRAFT RISK	Low / medium / high — a draft-value warning that combines RANGE uncertainty, recent injury history, rookie/second-year unknowns, possible ADP overpay, and low VBD at the player's cost. It is not a medical projection.
BYE	Bye week for this player's team. Watch for conflicts with your other starters.

Draft Board Sort

Offensive players (QB/RB/WR/TE) are sorted by an opportunity-cost draft score. VBD and projections measure value, ADP measures price, and the board estimates whether a player is likely to make it back to your next pick. Kickers (K) and Defenses (DEF) are sorted by projected points since they have no meaningful VBD signal.

My Team (Center Panel)

Roster slots are driven by your league configuration (Settings). Players are auto-assigned in priority order:

• QB → QB slot(s), then Superflex (if configured)
• RB → RB1, RB2 (or however many RB slots), then Flex, then Bench
• WR → WR slots, then Flex, then Bench
• TE → TE slot(s), then Flex, then Bench
• K / DEF → their dedicated slots (configurable count)

Bye weeks are shown next to each player. Red = bye conflict with another starter at the same position.

Right Sidebar Panels

Panel	What It Shows
Target Intel	Top recommendations from opportunity-cost draft math, blended with VBD, live roster holes, flex needs, positional scarcity, next-turn availability, and intrinsic player uncertainty. Sleeper/bust and Value vs. ADP labels remain visible as context without being counted again. It schedules DEF and K late, adapts their timing when multiple slots are required, and activates Roster Lock before any pick could make the configured lineup impossible to complete.
Positional Scarcity	Drop-off from elite to replacement level per position. Higher dropoff = position is scarce = draft early.
Bye Conflicts	Warns when multiple starters share a bye week. Critical = no bench coverage. Warning = bench available.
Sleepers & Busts	Compares model rank vs ADP. Sleepers = model ranks higher than market. Busts = market overvalues.
Handcuff Alerts	Backup RBs on the same team as your starting RBs. If your starter goes down, the handcuff takes over.
Opponent Drafts	Tracks what positions opponents are taking — watch for position runs.

Key Concepts

VBD (Value Based Drafting)

VBD = Projected Points − Replacement Level Points. The replacement level is the projected points of the last player typically drafted at each position (including bench). This means even bench-worthy players get positive VBD, helping you compare value across all rounds — not just the early ones.

Target Intel

Target Intel is separate from the point-projection model. It asks a draft-specific question: given your roster, league settings, current pick, next pick, ADP price, and the players still available, who is worth taking now?

The recommendation layer is ADP-guarded: ADP remains the price anchor, but the app boosts players with enough VBD, roster need, and scarcity to justify taking them now, especially when the next-turn estimate says they probably will not make it back.

Roster settings matter. No-flex, multi-flex, 2QB, unusual starter counts, and very shallow or deep benches all change the opportunity cost and next-pick math directly.

Positional Scarcity

Measures the drop-off from the elite tier to replacement level at each position. If QB has a small dropoff but TE has a huge one, you should prioritize TE — because the quality falls off a cliff after the top TEs are gone.

How it's calculated: For each position, OverADP finds the projected points of the #1 player (elite) and the projected points of the last starter that would be rostered across all teams (replacement). The difference is the scarcity score.

Scarcity Level	What It Means	Draft Strategy
High Scarcity	Huge gap between elite and replacement	Draft this position early — waiting means getting a much worse player
Medium Scarcity	Moderate dropoff	Balanced — draft when value aligns with your pick
Low Scarcity	Shallow dropoff — many comparable options	Safe to wait — replacement-level players are almost as good as "starters"

Example: In a 12-team league starting 1 TE, the #1 TE (Kittle, 136 pts) and the #12 TE (~97 pts) differ by 39 pts. But the #1 QB (Lamar, 245 pts) and #12 QB (~170 pts) differ by 75 pts. However, QB scarcity is often lower because there are only 12-14 starting QBs rostered, while TE has a steeper talent cliff at the top. The scarcity panel shows you which positions have the steepest cliffs so you can draft accordingly.

Projection Range (CQR)

The 80% target range is built via Conformalized Quantile Regression — separate 10th- and 90th-percentile models plus a split-conformal adjustment learned from 2025 calibration rows.

The procedure targets 80% marginal coverage across comparable players. Its post-adjustment 2025 coverage is a calibration diagnostic, not an independent test result or a guarantee for one player.

Rookies and 2nd-year players get a 1.8× / 1.3× width multiplier to reflect their scarcer historical data.

Point-Model Accuracy

The published point-model results aggregate 1,052 player-season predictions from two chronological folds: train through 2023 and test on 2024, then train through 2024 and test on 2025. The exact-cohort ADP-only comparison is not marketed because the 2025 input is an explicitly labeled preseason-rank proxy rather than true ADP.

Position	MAE	RMSE	R²	Held-Out N
QB	57.15	72.43	0.61	134
RB	43.39	60.47	0.51	269
WR	31.90	43.78	0.57	426
TE	23.79	33.35	0.56	223

When the model and ADP disagree strongly, it flags sleepers (model rank better than ADP) and busts (ADP rank better than model).

Handcuff Alerts

A handcuff is a backup RB on the same NFL team as your starting RB. If your starter gets injured, their backup typically takes over the starting role and inherits most of the carries — making them extremely valuable as insurance.

Why it matters: If you drafted Saquon Barkley in the 1st round and he goes down in Week 3, his backup (who you can draft in the last round for almost nothing) suddenly becomes a top-15 RB. Without the handcuff, you're scrambling on waivers.

Handcuff Type	Description	Priority
Must Handcuff	Your RB1's backup — protect your 1st/2nd round investment	High — draft in late rounds
Consider	Your RB2/RB3's backup — nice insurance but less critical	Medium — if bench space allows
Available	Other backup RBs still on the board	Low — only if you have empty bench slots

Strategy: Draft your stud RB's handcuff with one of your last picks. It's like buying insurance — you hope you never need it, but if you do, it saves your season. The Handcuff Alerts panel shows you which backups are still available for RBs already on your roster.

Model Architecture

OverADP currently runs tuned CatBoost models per position, selected after walk-forward experiments against simpler baselines. The production models use per-position feature sets, temporal sample weighting (more recent seasons matter more), and leakage-controlled lag features so current-season outcomes never feed their own predictions.

80%-target projection ranges come from a parallel split-conformal quantile regression pipeline (see Projection Range section above).

Model	Role
CatBoost (production)	Ordered boosting for the QB/RB/WR/TE projection models.
Target Intel	Opportunity-cost next-pick scoring for live draft recommendations.
ADP Baseline	Held out as the market comparison, not used as a target leak.
Conformal Quantiles	Parallel interval pipeline for 80%-target projection ranges.
K/DEF	Current depth-chart starters ranked for Weeks 1–3 by market-implied scoring, opponent, venue, and a backtested late-round streaming policy.

Key Features (August 2026)

• Current roster overlay — Sleeper roster/depth data keeps teams, bye weeks, and post-draft movement aligned with the board.
• Current availability overlay — nflverse's daily GitHub roster release, reviewed preseason return outlooks for fantasy-relevant injuries, and official weekly Q/D/O data when available.
• Target / carry competition — Sum of teammate prior-year production on current roster. Captures FA moves and scheme shifts directly.
• College & draft pipeline — Draft capital, draft-pick value, combine athleticism, college per-game production, Power 5 flags, and rookie interaction features.
• Injury-adjusted regression — Separates injury-driven declines from talent-driven declines; flags bounce-back candidates.
• Contract signals — Prior-year contract context helps capture role stability, especially in WR/TE experiments.
• Conformal 80% target ranges — Split-calibrated on 2025 rows; marginal target, not an individual guarantee.
• ADP matching — Robust via football_name (handles apostrophes, suffixes, nicknames).

Data Sources

• nflverse (via nfl_data_py) — Seasonal stats, rosters, team stats, OL metrics, snap counts, injuries, depth charts
• Fantasy Football Calculator — ADP (half-PPR) and bye weeks
• FantasyPros — K and DEF projections (ML is not reliable for these; we use consensus instead)
• Pro-Football-Reference — Combine data, draft capital, college production stats

Accuracy (Walk-Forward Validated)

Point models were trained on earlier seasons and tested on the next season, using 2024 and 2025 as held-out folds. Metrics are player-weighted across both folds. CQR uses 2025 as the final split-calibration season. Numbers refreshed August 2026 after the latest validated projection export.

Position	MAE	RMSE	R²	Held-Out N
QB	57.15	72.43	0.61	134
RB	43.39	60.47	0.51	269
WR	31.90	43.78	0.57	426
TE	23.79	33.35	0.56	223
Player-Weighted Summary	36.34	51.14	0.56	1,052

The summary MAE and R² are weighted by held-out player count; summary RMSE is pooled from squared position RMSE values. ADP improvement claims are intentionally omitted because the 2025 market feature is a preseason-rank proxy.

Support

Questions about your account, purchase, or the War Room? Visit OverADP Support or email overadp@gmail.com.