26-27 Player
Trends

What is a player's move on the trends board?

The difference between what we project for him now and what we projected before the season, in the format you have chosen: fantasy points a game under the default scoring of ESPN, Fantrax, Sleeper or Yahoo, whichever you pick behind the Points toggle, or his value across the categories your app plays by default, the nine on Fantrax and Yahoo and ESPN's eight without turnovers. Pro members can measure it under a synced league's own scoring, or with categories punted, instead. Our projections move every morning with the box scores, so the move is the season's own verdict on the preseason line, not a hot take. The ranks beside it are per game too, so a player who misses games ranks higher here than on the projections page, which opens on the season's total.

What do the readings mean?

We project a player's minutes and his production per minute separately, so a move can be told apart. More minutes or fewer minutes means most of the move is a change in his role, which moves the whole line the night it happens; fewer minutes is called only where a drop that size has held, and a bench player's smaller drop, which has mostly come back, reads as a minutes dip. Filling in means most of the move is the minutes a teammate's absence hands him. Heater means he is producing above even the raised line, and the model expects the run to cool. Slump is the mirror of that. Rate means most of the move is what he does with his minutes, which the model believes a little more each night. Steady means he is within two fantasy points a game of his preseason line over his first fifteen games and within one after that. Injured marks a player who is out, whose per-game line the absence does not move.

Why does the board not overreact to one big night?

Because each stat is pulled toward the preseason line by a measured number of pseudo-games, fitted by replaying the 2025-26 season game by game. A fifty-point night moves a line by a point or so, and only a genuine change keeps moving it. Minutes are read off the last ten games in which the coach chose to play or sit him, so a role change shows up quickly while an injury absence does not count against him.

Why is a player not on the board yet?

A player joins once he has played three games, and the board opens once twenty of the thirty teams have played three, which this season's schedule puts at about the morning of Monday 26 October. Replaying last season, a three-game board was as reliable as a five-game one once most of the league had played; before that, a list of early movers is a list of who had one big night.

Are the player trends free?

The twenty-five biggest moves each way, risers and fallers, are free to anyone, with no account, along with every reading and the market line beside each player. Pro shows every projected player on the board, and the projections themselves are on the projections page.