Mike Clay VS Underdog

Introduction:

This idea came to me while watching one of my favorite analysts participate in an Underdog draft. He mentioned comparing industry rankings to Underdog’s ADP to identify where certain players are being over, or undervalued. I thought this would be a fun and manageable project, so I decided to dive in.

As with the K.I.S.S. Model, I’ll be using Underdog’s ADP as the benchmark, for all the same reasons. To compare against that ADP, I chose one of my favorite analysts, and an industry titan, Mike Clay. Mike has been producing full-season NFL projections for ESPN for years, and he conveniently publishes his data annually in a PDF, making it easy to access and work with.

The stage is set: Mike Clay vs. Underdog ADP.

Why?

I find this idea both really interesting and super valuable. Like I mentioned in the K.I.S.S. project, Underdog is made up of some of the best drafters in the world, which makes it, in my opinion, the sharpest ADP out there. But it also reflects what the public as a whole thinks about these players.

Now, if you draft on Underdog, I’m not calling you out, but let’s be real, most of these analysts are professionals for a reason. They probably know a little more than both me and you. So I wanted to see how one of the best, Mike Clay, stacks up.

How This Works

I pulled together two sets of data. The first was Mike Clay’s rankings from his 2025 NFL Projection Guide. Since it came as a PDF, I couldn’t just download it as a CSV or Excel file, I had to spend some time copying, pasting, and formatting everything (with a little help from ChatGPT, of course). After a bit of work, I ended up with four spreadsheets, one each for QBs, RBs, WRs, and TEs.

The second data set was Underdog’s ADP. Thankfully, Underdog makes this super easy, you just go to their site, head to the rankings section, and download the data as a CSV. Clean and simple.

Once I had both data sets, I uploaded everything into Python using the Pandas library. I figured the best way to make sense of the comparisons was to chart things out by position, so you can get a clear visual on where Mike Clay is higher or lower on a player compared to the general public.

Quarterbacks

All of these charts follow the same format, so I’ll explain it once here. Each data point represents a player, and you’ll see a 1:1 line running through the chart to serve as a baseline. The X-axis shows the player’s Underdog positional ranking, while the Y-axis shows Mike Clay’s positional ranking.

At first, I considered using ADP on the X-axis, but that didn’t work well visually, since ADP includes all positions, it would have just clumped everyone near the top in a straight line. Instead, comparing positional rankings makes things a lot cleaner and more meaningful. Quick example: Mike Clay has Jayden Daniels as QB1, not the #1 player in all of fantasy, but #1 at his position. So this method lets us make true QB-to-QB comparisons.

When reading the chart:

Any player above the line means Mike Clay is higher on them than Underdog.
Any player below the line means he’s lower on them than the public.

Here’s the quarterback plot. One thing that stood out to me while working on this was that it’s not necessarily about who the best fantasy players are. For example, Mike may have Jayden Daniels as his QB1, but Underdog has him as QB3, not a huge gap. The more interesting differences show up in the middle-tier guys, like Jared Goff or Matthew Stafford.

Another thing to keep in mind, Mike Clay doesn’t project for injuries, because really, how could you? That becomes more noticeable with players like Tua. At this point in his career, most of us are assuming he’ll miss a few games. But Mike has him down for a full 17 game season. That likely explains why he’s higher on Tua than the public is, because we draft based on biases, gut feelings, and injury concerns. But if we knew Tua would play a full season in that Miami offense, I’m pretty sure we’d all be a little higher on him too.

Runningbacks

Again, this chart doesn’t do a whole lot for the top-tier guys, there’s usually only a one or two spot difference there. I get that it’s a bit cluttered at the top, but if you zoom in, the names are readable. I actually think the “interesting zone” for RBs is a bit higher up the rankings than it was for QBs. That clump with guys like James Conner and Breece Hall, plus the group right behind them, seems to be where the bigger differences start to show up.

The “no injury projections” approach is very noticeable here too. Mike Clay tends to be lower on a lot of the "handcuffs". For anyone unfamiliar, a handcuff is a backup running back you draft in case the starter gets injured, if that happens, the backup suddenly becomes way more valuable. Since Mike doesn’t project injuries, guys like Zach Charbonnet, Will Shipley, Keaton Mitchell, and DJ Giddens show up lower in his rankings than they do in Underdog’s ADP.

The data in this chart was fully updated as of June 18th, 2025. That’s important, because by then, players like J.K. Dobbins and Nick Chubb had already been signed. Mike is notably higher on both of them, which is interesting considering most people still see them as backups to RJ Harvey and Joe Mixon.

Wide Receivers

Yeah, this one’s even harder to read than the RBs, there’s just so much clutter. That said, the most interesting thing about this chart is how close Mike and Underdog are on most wide receivers. You really don’t see many big discrepancies until you get into the WR4/WR5 range.

The one player I do want to highlight is Brandon Aiyuk. I’ve mentioned a few times now that Mike doesn’t project injuries, but Aiyuk is an exception. He’s coming off a torn ACL, and Mike is actually baking that into his projections by expecting him to miss some time. That’s a key difference between Best Ball (like Underdog) and traditional fantasy (like Mike’s rankings).

In Best Ball, you don’t have to worry about setting your lineup each week, so you can draft a guy like Aiyuk knowing how talented he is and just let the spike weeks happen when he’s healthy. But in traditional fantasy, you do have to think about when a player will be ready, and that uncertainty could explain why Mike is significantly lower on him.

Tight Ends

Last but not least, the tight ends. For the most part, Mike and Underdog are pretty much in sync at the top of the rankings. You don’t really see any major differences until you get further down the list, and even then, it’s mostly subtle, except for the Rams’ tight ends, where Mike seems to have a clear view of who the starter is.

Specifically, he’s much higher on Tyler Higbee and much lower on Terrance Ferguson than consensus. For what it’s worth, I’m with the public on this one. Ferguson is an ultra-athletic rookie tight end that Sean McVay has been raving about all offseason, and I think there’s a real shot he carves out a role pretty quickly.

Conclusion

This project definitely didn’t reveal the stark contrasts I was expecting going in, but it was still a lot of fun to put together. The charts offer a cool visual look at where Mike Clay is higher or lower than the consensus, and even the small differences can spark interesting discussions.

I’d also love to expand this and compare more analysts in the future, either analyst against analyst, or against Underdog. If you made it this far and want to see this same breakdown done for someone else you follow, feel free to shoot me an email at jhaucone@gmail.com, or reach out on X @JasonAucone.

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