The Vacated Opportunities report

When a running back signs elsewhere or a receiver retires, the carries and targets he produced last season do not disappear. Someone on that roster inherits them. The Vacated Opportunities report shows you where the most volume is up for grabs, which is one of the strongest signals for finding this year's breakouts before the market prices them in.

It is part of the season pass, and it lives in your league's sidebar under your season section as Vacated Opportunities (football leagues only).

Reading the report

The report has two tabs, Carries and Targets, so backfield opportunity and receiving opportunity each get their own clean view. Each tab has one row per NFL team:

• Vacated Carries (or Vacated Targets) is last season's total produced by players who are no longer in the picture (see below for exactly what counts).
• % of Team Carries (or Targets) puts that total in context: 120 vacated targets means more on a team that only threw 450 times than on one that threw 650.

Sort by any column. The teams at the top are where the opportunity is.

The team drill-down

Click a team to expand it:

• Who left lists each departed player with the carries and targets he took with him, and where he went.
• In question lists players who are still on the roster but carry a status that puts their volume in doubt, such as a suspension or a physically-unable-to-perform designation. Their volume is not counted as vacated, because they are expected back, but you should know it is shaky.
• Positioned to take over lists the current players at the positions that absorb the tab's stat (backs and quarterbacks on the Carries tab, receivers, tight ends, and backs on the Targets tab), ordered by consensus ADP with our projected points and each player's own volume from last season alongside. This is where you hunt: a player whose situation just opened up but whose ADP has not moved yet is the pick the rest of your league is about to miss.

What counts as vacated

A player's last-season volume counts as vacated from a team when he is:

• on a different team now,
• unsigned, released, or retired, or
• still on the team but out for the season (injured reserve).

Two details keep the numbers honest. A player traded during last season only vacates from each team what he actually produced for that team. And a player on a returnable designation (suspension, physically unable to perform) is listed as "in question" rather than counted as vacated.

In the draft room

You do not have to leave the draft to use the report. On the players board and in the live draft room, a player listed under "positioned to take over" for any team carries a small VAC badge next to his name. Click him and the detail pane shows the numbers behind it: how much volume his team vacated, what share of the team's total that is, where that ranks across the league, and his own usage from last season. The stats shown match the position, so a back shows carries and targets while a receiver or tight end shows targets. A link on the card opens the team's full drill-down in a new tab so you never lose your place mid-draft.

Players whose team lost a meaningful share of last season's volume show the team context on the detail pane even without the badge. Teams with only routine churn show nothing.

Freshness

Rosters move every day in August, so the report recomputes every morning after the league-wide roster refresh. The "as of" date at the top of the page tells you which morning you are looking at. A player activated off injured reserve, or cut on cut-down day, shows up correctly the next day.