VBD Cheat Sheet Generator (Value Based Drafting Spreadsheet)

How it works: VBD 101

Value Based Drafting starts from one idea: a player's value is not his point total — it's how many points he scores above the player you could have had for free. The freely available player is called the replacement, and the formula is one line:

VBD = player's points − replacement baseline at his position

Raw points lie to you because positions score on different scales. In a 12-team half-PPR league on 2025 numbers, Josh Allen scored 364.6 points — within one point of Christian McCaffrey's 365.6. Same value? Not close. The best QB left after all twelve starters are drafted — QB13 — scored 241.6, so Allen's VBD is 123. The replacement RB scored just 142.8, so McCaffrey's VBD is 222.8 — nearly double. That gap, not the point totals, is why elite RBs and WRs go first in 1-QB drafts while quarterbacks wait.

Where the baseline comes from: the fill simulation

Most VBD write-ups hand-wave the baseline ("QB12", "RB24"). This tool actually simulates your league filling its starting lineups, because flex seats move the line:

1. Sort every position by 2025 points at your scoring.
2. Fill the dedicated slots: teams × starters at each position. A 12-team, 2-RB league rosters the top 24 RBs.
3. Fill teams × flex W/R/T seats with the best players still on the board, whatever position they play. If you run superflex, one more round of seats opens with QBs eligible.
4. The baseline at each position is the best player left unrostered — the guy on waivers after every lineup is legally full.

Worked example (12 teams, 1QB/2RB/2WR/1TE + 1 flex, half-PPR, 2025 actuals): the dedicated slots take 12 QBs, 24 RBs, 24 WRs, and 12 TEs. The 12 flex seats then go to the best leftovers — that works out to 9 more WRs and 3 more RBs, because the WR33 outscored the RB28. The best unrostered players are now QB13 at 241.6, RB28 at 142.8, WR34 at 142.2, and TE13 at 133.0 — those four numbers are the baselines, and every player's VBD is his points minus his position's line.

Why league size and flex count change everything

FantasyPros' free cheat sheet is locked to a 12-team default — but the baseline is a function of your league, and it moves a lot. On the same 2025 data, the replacement RB scores 162.8 in an 8-team league and just 110.4 in a 16-team league — a 52-point swing in every RB's VBD before you've changed a single ranking. Add a second flex and the RB/WR/TE lines all drop again, because more of the pool gets rostered.

Superflex is the dramatic case: adding one QB-eligible seat pulls roughly a dozen more QBs into lineups, dropping the QB baseline from 241.6 to 160.7 in that same 12-team league. Josh Allen's VBD jumps from 123 to 203.9 — from fringe first-round value to the No. 2 player on the entire sheet. You don't need a special "superflex ranking"; the baseline math produces it naturally.

What this sheet is — and isn't

Everything here is computed from 2025 regular-season actuals (player counting stats via nflverse, CC-BY 4.0), rescored at your format from the reception identity: standard points + reception value × catches, plus your TE premium per TE catch. That makes it an honest draft-prep baseline — who returned value at your settings last year — not a projection of 2026. No fake tiers are drawn on the sheet either: tier breaks belong to projections, and pretending last year's points carry them would be theater. Kickers and team defenses are left off — their scoring isn't in this dataset, and their spread above replacement is small enough that late-round is the answer regardless.

Related tools: turn your draft slot into actual pick numbers with the snake draft pick calculator, or price your keepers against ADP with the keeper value calculator.