Salary Cap Series - Player Rankings:
Quarterbacks
Running Backs
Wide Receivers
Kickers & Defenses


In our expanding fantasy football coverage, we have looked into the preseason values involved with salary cap league rankings.

In a salary cap league, you can’t just look at player projections. You must be able to identify the value of a player since you are forced to make hard decisions to keep your payroll under the cap. There are several things that have to be evaluated in order to discover a player’s true value in a salary cap league.

We formulated our numerical value based on two factors:

* Points Per Game projection provided by our Big Board
* Salary prices provided from Head2Head.com

We plugged those factors into our formula to produce what we like to call a “Salary Value” rating.

Our Salary Cap League Rankings have been divided by the players’ ranking by tiers in our Big Board, then ranked within that tier based off of the Salary Value ratings. It is important to find the players that will give you the most value for every million you spend on his salary. By dividing these rankings by Big Board tiers, you can identify good value at different salary and points per game levels. Our list will now help you identify these players with greater ease.


Geek’s Evaluation:
In years past you could find could productive quarterbacks at a lower salary. This year doesn’t really live up to that. The salaries fall in line pretty well with the PPG projections we ran for these quarterbacks.

The best value is at the top of the pay scale simply because there is a drop off in fantasy point production that is greater than the drop in salary.

Jake Locker might be the best guy for the money, but if you could land Zach Collaros for less than $2 million more it makes it worth your wild to just pass over Locker for Collaros. So you might be best to just stick to one of the high price QBs, then look for value players at RB and WR since there is a much larger batch of guys that can save you money there.

The interesting thing to look at is what to do with your flex roster spot? In years past it was that value QB that you would slide in to that flex spot. But it might not be worth it this year since there is far greater buying power at RB and WR.

Kirk Cousins looks to be the best value QB at a lower salary price. But when you are going to spend $15 million on a guy that we project at 18.48 PPG, you could find guys like RBs Daniel Thomas, Ryan Williams, DeMarco Murray that can produce 20 PPG for a lower price than Cousins will cost you. So resist the urge to grab a QB as your flex player UNLESS you are making trades in-season for QBs with hot match-ups.


Geek’s Favorite Salary Players:
Zach Collaros (Cincinnati) - $18.3 million
Jerrod Johnson (Texas A&M) - $20 million
Jake Locker (Washington) - $17.5 million
Christian Ponder (Florida State) - $15.9 million
Kirk Cousins (Michigan State) - $14.9 million

Report Parameters:
Player Pool:  BCS + Notre Dame