Tiers

Tiers are NovaPredict's groupings of players by real drop-offs in value, so you can see where a position falls off a cliff. Players inside the same tier are close enough in value that the difference is mostly noise; the gaps between tiers are where value actually changes.

A flat ranking hides this. The distance between the 4th and 5th ranked receiver might be tiny while the distance between the 8th and 9th is enormous. Tiers make those cliffs visible. They are drawn from Nova's value estimates, not from round numbers or neat groups of five.

How to Use It

Tiers turn draft-day panic into a plan.

• Draft the tier break, not the name. If six players sit in the same tier and four will still be there at your next pick, you can safely take another position now. If a tier has one player left, that is urgency.
• Break ties inside a tier with your own preferences: upside, safety, bye weeks, team stacks. Within a tier, Nova considers the value difference small enough that fit can decide.
• Spot positional cliffs before they hit. When a run starts at a position, check the tier board. If the current tier is deep, relax. If the cliff is one pick away, move.

The same logic works in trades. Swapping two players from the same tier is a fair value trade on talent; what you should be getting paid for is crossing a tier boundary.

What It Is Not

Tiers are not arbitrary groups of equal size, and a tier break is not a small step down. Some tiers hold two players and some hold ten, because the groupings follow actual gaps in value. Do not read "Tier 3" as a grade of the player; it is a statement about who else is close to him in value right now.

For the ranking that tiers are built on, see Nova Rank.

Watch tiers update live as players come off the board in the Draft War Room.