Era-adjusted fantasy football rankings: Greatest players for every NFL team (2024)

This month celebrates the 60th anniversary of the birth of fantasy football, so it’s a perfect time look back and find out who are greatest players in fantasy football history.

This analysis could go the route of looking at players since 1962, when Bill Winkenbach and company put together the first set of fantasy football rules, but why leave out most of the careers of players like Jim Brown or Johnny Unitas, or exclude the dominant players from the first half-century of NFL history? Why not go all the way back to the beginning of the NFL and give everyone a shot at making it on this list?

It’s an ambitious mindset that is well worth the effort, but it does require putting together an equitable system that can standardize fantasy scoring performance and measure players in comparison with their era. This era-adjusted scoring setup is the only way that fantasy candidates who played fewer games and did so in less offensive-friendly eras can be given a reasonable chance to compete against contemporary players in today’s wide-open era.

Career points

Because we’re measuring fantasy performance, the system must have a truly fantasy-centric approach, so players are rewarded with a career point if their season-long point total made them a fantasy starter (era-adjusted, see below). They also receive bonus career points for being a quality starter (one of the better players at their respective position), an impact starter (think QB1-caliber, WR1-caliber, etc.), or an elite starter (one of the great seasons of all-time).

Players get one career point for posting a starter-caliber season. They get another career point for a quality-starter season. An impact-starter campaign lands 1.5 career points, while an elite season grants an additional two career points. Players are measured both in non-PPR and full-PPR scoring systems and thus get two chances at career points.

The career points also stack, so a player posting an elite season will get a career point for being a starter, a career point for having a quality starter campaign, 1.5 career points for being an impact starter, and two career points for an elite season, or 5.5 career points total for that point performance (or 11 if they do it in both non-PPR and PPR in a single year).

These career point totals will be illustrated in each of the greatest players’ reviews, as illustrated below with Jerry Rice’s career point totals in each category.

(Note: Pro Football Reference deserves a huge shout out for this, as its Stathead tool was instrumental in putting this analysis together).

Fantasy starter and positional guidelines over the years

Another factor in gauging historical fantasy scoring is that the number of teams in the NFL has changed quite a lot over the years. A lower volume of teams would result in smaller starting squads in fantasy football as well, so here is a quick guideline of how the system gauged the number of fantasy starters in earlier eras.

From 1920-49, the NFL was largely a two-platoon setup, meaning players started on both offense and defense. Even as the league started to move, there was very little positional consistency with how players were listed in the box scores. Had fantasy football existed back in that era, every player likely would have been listed as a flex candidate and fantasy teams would have likely had around five players per team, so this system gauges fantasy performance using this structure.

The combination of the addition of the All-America Football Conference as a rival league to the NFL in 1946-49 and some positional variation in the box scores would have allowed fantasy football managers back then to field a league of 10 teams with a QB, two RBs, two ends, and one flex position, although the team volume drops to eight from 1950-59.

That general starting lineup holds in this system from 1962 (to present), when there were enough players listed as tight ends to consider the addition of that position. At that point, a standard fantasy team would contain a QB, two RBs, two WRs, one TE, and one flex, with the end position being eliminated following the positional split between wide receivers and tight ends.

The start of the AFL in 1960 vaulted the number of fantasy teams in a standard league to 12.

No kickers or D/ST

With all due respect to kickers, this review will take a Jake Ciely-like approach and not include them, as kickers are afterthoughts. D/STs have been excluded for similar reasons.

The greatest fantasy football players for every team

AFC East

Buffalo Bills
Miami Dolphins
New England Patriots
New York Jets

AFC North

Baltimore Ravens
Cincinnati Bengals
Cleveland Browns
Pittsburgh Steelers

AFC South

Houston Texans
Indianapolis Colts
Jacksonville Jaguars
Tennessee Titans

AFC West

Denver Broncos
Kansas City Chiefs
Las Vegas Raiders
Los Angeles Chargers

NFC East

Dallas Cowboys
New York Giants
Philadelphia Eagles
Washington Commanders

NFC North

Chicago Bears
Detroit Lions
Green Bay Packers
Minnesota Vikings

NFC South

Atlanta Falcons
Carolina Panthers
New Orleans Saints
Tampa Bay Buccaneers

NFC West

Arizona Cardinals
Los Angeles Rams
San Francisco 49ers
Seattle Seahawks

(Top photo: Focus on Sport via Getty Images)

KC Joyner is a contributor to The Athletic covering fantasy football and betting. Before joining The Athletic, KC was a senior writer for ESPN, and he has run TheFootballScientist.com since 2004. He is the author of the "Scientific Football" book series and "Blindsided: Why the Left Tackle Is Overrated and Other Contrarian Football Thoughts." KC is a native Michigander. He attended the University of Michigan but moved to the warmer climate of Florida over 30 years ago. Follow KC on Twitter @KCJoynerTFS