No player produces in a vacuum. The offense he plays in, the coach calling the plays, and the contract the team gave him all shape how much opportunity he will actually see. These rules read a player's surrounding context — the parts of his outlook that have nothing to do with his own talent and everything to do with his situation.
Fires when a player changed teams in the offseason.
Moving teams introduces uncertainty that projections tend to underweight. A player has to learn a new scheme, build timing with a new quarterback or new receivers, and earn a role that was never guaranteed the way it was on his old team. Even talented players frequently take time to settle, and the first season in a new system is where the surprises — good and bad — cluster. AutoTiers applies a 10% penalty to reflect that transition risk.
Fires when a player's team hired a new head coach.
A coaching change is a system change. A new head coach usually brings a new offensive philosophy, new personnel preferences, and a new distribution of touches — and last season's usage becomes a less reliable guide to next season's. The uncertainty is smaller than changing teams outright (the player at least keeps his building and teammates), so the penalty is a lighter 7%. It captures the general fog around an offense in transition rather than any specific prediction about who wins or loses touches.
Fires when a skill player is on a team ranked in the bottom eight by three-year average points scored.
Chronically weak offenses cap the fantasy ceiling of everyone in them. Fewer scoring drives means fewer touchdowns and fewer high-value touches to go around, and a single-season slump can be noise — so this rule uses a three-year average to isolate teams with structural, persistent problems rather than one down year. Quarterbacks, running backs, receivers, and tight ends on those bottom-eight offenses take a 7% penalty for the suppressed environment around them.
Fires when a player is on an above-market contract (cap hit more than 1.5× the position median).
Coaches feed the players they are paid to feed. When a team commits real money — a cap hit well above the positional median — it has a strong incentive to justify the investment with touches, targets, and snaps. Money is a public, hard-to-fake signal of how a team values a player and intends to use him, which is exactly the opportunity logic behind the rookie draft-capital rules, applied to veterans through contracts instead of draft slot. AutoTiers adds 5%.
Fires when a veteran has more than three years of experience — a rough proxy for players who may be playing for their next deal.
This rule changes no scores; it is a label. The "contract-year push" — the idea that players elevate their game with a payday on the line — is a popular but genuinely contested effect, so AutoTiers surfaces it as information rather than baking a number in. The flag is a broad heuristic based on experience, not a verified contract lookup, so treat it as a prompt to check the player's actual situation, not a conclusion.
Fires when you have marked a player — or his team — as a favorite.
This one is honest about what it is: a personalization layer, not a statistical claim. If you want your board to lean toward players or teams you are targeting, favoriting them nudges them up 5%. It exists so the tool bends to your preferences when you want it to, clearly separated from the evidence-based rules so you always know which is which.