I hear it every year. “Man, this class isn’t great, so I’m trying to move my current picks into next year’s draft class. Haven’t you heard? It’s loaded!” Or, “Oh man, I’m trying to buy everything I can this year. Next year’s class doesn’t look so hot, so I don’t mind burning those picks to get more now.” 

It sounds smart. It feels smart. You’re buying into a better product, right? More talent, more depth, more upside. The fantasy media agrees. The mock drafts confirm it. Everyone knows the 2027 class is loaded. I mean, c’mon, Jeremiah Smith and Arch Manning and Dante Moore, oh my!

So, because I’m me, I decided to test it. I collected 6,194 real Superflex rookie draft picks from 334 MyFantasyLeague (MFL) dynasty leagues across six draft classes (2018-2023) and matched every pick to that player’s actual fantasy production over their first three NFL seasons. Half-PPR scoring. Real leagues, real picks, real outcomes. Why that sample? It’s the first class where I can derive strength, and limiting it to 2023 allows every class studied for at least 3 years to mature.

The question was simple: when you trade your pick into the class the market considers stronger, do you actually come out ahead? You can probably guess where I’m going with this, but I’m gonna save that for later.

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1. How the Market Sees Draft Classes

First, some quick homework. I measured how the dynasty market perceived each class before the NFL draft, using Superflex rookie ADP data from May of each year. Why Superflex? In short, it’s more indicative. 1QB leagues don’t give us a signal in either direction (trust me, I looked), but player quality doesn’t change between Superflex and 1QB. Each class gets a “deviation” score: a positive score means the market thought the class was strong leading up to that year’s draft; a negative score means they thought it was weak. The bigger the number, the stronger the consensus. 

OK, done with the homework? Good. Because here’s what actually happened.

2. What the Players Actually Produced

I measured total Half-PPR fantasy points across each player’s first three NFL seasons (Y1+Y2+Y3). Then I sorted the classes by actual production. Not what the market predicted. What the players did on the field.

Read that again. It’s OK, I’ll wait. The two classes the market was most excited about, 2018 and 2022, finished in the bottom two slots in actual fantasy production. The class nobody wanted (2023, the “Bijan or bust” class) finished first.

That’s not a quirk. That’s 6,194 draft picks across 334 leagues telling you the same thing: The market is wrong about draft class quality, and it’s wrong in a predictable direction.

3. The Swap Test

OK, but maybe the classes just happened to produce differently. Maybe it’s not about the hype. So I ran an actual trade simulation. “How on Earth did you do that?” I’m so glad you asked!

For every consecutive pair of classes, I asked: if you traded your pick out of the “weaker” class and into the “stronger” one (as the market defined them), did you gain or lose fantasy points? I tested this across five pairs.

Record: 1- 4. The one win? Trading from 2019 (WEAK) into 2020, which was only an “average” class, not a hyped one. Every single trade into a genuinely STRONG class lost. The average loss across all five swaps was −43.8 fantasy points.

Remember how I said you could probably guess where I was going with this, and I would get to it? Well, time for the payoff

Trading into the class the market loves is a losing bet. The stronger the hype, the worse the outcome.

4. The Realistic Scenario

Am I being unfair, though? After all, nobody trades their early first this year for a late first next year, right? The realistic trade looks like this: you’re a middle-of-the-pack team, you trade your mid-first (picks 5-8) in the “weak” class for what you think will be a mid-first in the “strong” class. Maybe your team improves a little, and the pick lands in the mid-to-late range (picks 5-12).

Even in this more generous framing, the results are ugly:

The two wins are small, and one isn’t even statistically significant. Even worse, the losses are absolutely catastrophic. Trading your 2021 mid-first into 2022 cost you 123 fantasy points. Trading your 2023 mid-first into 2022 cost you 232 fantasy points. That’s the difference between drafting Jahmyr Gibbs and drafting Jameson Williams. I know, teammate on teammate violence.

5. The Draft Slot Breakdown

I promise, the homework is almost done, only one more layer. I checked whether this effect was the same across the first round or concentrated in specific early/mid/late slots.

The hype tax is real, and it’s biggest at the top of the draft. That makes sense, right? We know the names at the very top; those are the guys we get excited about. The Bijan Robinson, Ja’Marr Chase, and Breece Halls. In a “strong” class, picks 1-4 are the most overvalued because that’s where the consensus top guys get inflated. In a “weak” class, picks 1-4 often contain genuinely great players who just happened to be born in the wrong year.

6. The Dynasty Cheat Sheet

“But Lou, I don’t want to memorize correlation coefficients.” You know what? I don’t blame you. I don’t either! Heck, I forget them pretty much the moment I’m done with a study. So let me give you a little cheat sheet.

🟩  HOLD / BUY Signals

Your pick in a class the market hates – “Weak” classes have produced the best actual outcomes in this dataset. The 2023 class (moderately negative) outproduced every “strong” class by 100+ fantasy points per Rd1 pick. Be like William Wallace in Braveheart and hold. Keep your pick and draft your guy.

A mid-round pick in an “average” class – The 2020 class (+2.23, roughly average) finished second in production. Average perception means fair pricing, and fair pricing means your pick buys exactly what it should.

🟥  SELL / AVOID Signals

Don’t trade your current pick for a future “stronger class” pick – This strategy went 1- 4 in our dataset. Even then, the one win was small. The losses were devastating. The stronger the consensus, the worse the trade. If the entire dynasty community agrees that a future class is elite, that’s your signal to stay put.

If someone in your league wants to trade into the hyped class, let them – You’re on the right side of the trade. Take their “weak class” pick, smile, and wait for the results.

Important Caveats!

This doesn’t mean individual picks can’t hit in strong classes – Breece Hall (2022) has been great. Saquon Barkley (2018) was the 1.01 for a reason. The finding is about the class as a whole, not the top pick. It’s the guys going 1.05 through 1.12 who are overvalued in hyped classes.

We have six mature classes – That’s enough to see a strong, consistent pattern, but it’s not 50 years of data. The correlation will get more precise as new classes mature (2024 becomes testable in early 2027). But we have to make decisions based on unideal datasets all the time, so I’m not losing sleep over the direction. The practical results (1- 4 record, −43.8 fantasy points average) speak for themselves.

7. So What Do We Do Right Now?

Ok, now the real payoff. What to do right NOW, in 2026.

If you’re playing dynasty in today, you’ve already heard the pitch. “The 2027 class is going to be SPECIAL. Trade into it now before the price goes up. Pay a premium if you have to!” It’s everywhere. Podcasts, BlueSky, your league’s group chat, your horoscope, everywhere. Everyone agrees.

And that should terrify you. 

Because we can measure exactly how much everyone agrees. Using cross-year trade data from MFL Superflex leagues, I track how the market values future picks relative to current ones. I know, kinda wild, right? So each class gets a “deviation” score based on the premium managers are paying to trade into it compared to the time of year it is, because there’s a premium based on the time of year (but more on that another time). Here’s where 2026 and 2027 sit right now:

Let that sink in. It’s OK, I’ll wait. You ready to keep going? OK! 

The 2022 class had a deviation of +4.83, the highest positive of any class in our dataset, and produced the worst outcomes of any class we studied. Dead last. The 2027 class is currently sitting at +14.57; three times the hype of the worst-performing class in our dataset!

Now, does that guarantee 2027 will bust?

Absolutely not. Past performance does not guarantee future results and blah blah blah. This is six classes of data, not a crystal ball. Maybe 2027 really is the best class in a decade, and the hype is justified for the first time ever. It’s possible.

That said, here’s what we know for certain: the dynasty market is paying a massive premium to get into the 2027 class. Managers are trading current-year firsts, established players, and future capital to move into it. That premium is three times larger than any premium we’ve ever measured. And every previous time the market paid a premium this enthusiastically, they lost.

Meanwhile, 2026 sits at +2.55, which is roughly average. Nobody’s excited about it. Nobody’s writing breathless articles about the 2026 class depth. Not even the players at the top. It’s Jeremiyah Love, and that’s about it. And that’s exactly the kind of class that has historically produced the best outcomes in this study. Average perception means fair pricing. Fair pricing means your pick buys exactly what it’s worth.

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The single best dynasty edge from this research: when the market agrees a future class is “stronger,” that consensus is a contrarian indicator, not a buying signal. Every dollar of hype is a dollar of overpricing. Hold your pick in the boring class.

GUTS Dynasty Projection Engine | Class Swap Study

Data: 2018-2023 (6,194 draft picks, 334 leagues, era-matched to Y1-Y3 HPPR production) | April 2026

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Lou Brunson serves as a Senior Analyst and designer of the projection systems used across Optimus Fantasy. His dynasty insights can be found here and at draftbuddy.com.