NFL BEST BALL STRATEGIES
UNDERDOG FANTASY BEST BALL TOURNAMENT
Hey everybody, we are officially popping the top on our NFL content. I’ve sign on a new writer to put out some weekly DFS content. His name is John Carlson, so we have a real Jon ___son naming thing going on here. He’s a seasoned DFS player and has a lot to contribute. Premium members will get DraftKings content from him covering:
Thursday Night Showdown
Sunday main slate
Monday Night Showdown
and maybe even some more stuff if he wants! He is a big Best Ball player as well and was anxious to get started, so he’s provided us with a quick intro the game of Best Ball as well as some strategy and his top ranks. Check it out below, and give John a follow on Twitter! Here it is!
NFL BEST BALL
Football is almost here! What a beautiful sight. While we all enjoy rooting for our favorite team, and our favorite players, I think some of us may agree that we enjoy rooting for our fantasy football teams even more. In this article, I will be discussing strategies for the up-and-coming fantasy football phenomenon of Best Ball Tournaments. If you're not familiar with Best Ball Tournaments and how they work, I will go into depth on them here as well. If you're familiar with the Best Ball format, feel free to skip ahead.
Best Ball formats allow you the freedom to draft your team, and not have to manage it all year. The highest scoring position players for each position on your team each week will automatically be entered into your lineup for that week. This removes the weekly debate of “who to start, who to sit”. Another feature of these formats is that there is no waiver wire to add/drop players. With that being said, it is very important that we draft depth at each position to account for injuries and bye weeks. Depending on the site you play on, each format for scoring may be a little different, some are half PPR while others are full PPR. The roster constructions may differ as well, so pay attention to that.
The three main sites that offer some great Best Ball Tournaments of all sizes and structures are DraftKings, Underdog, and Drafters. The site I will be discussing today is “Underdog Fantasy”. This site offers numerous contests for Best Ball tournaments, including a 451,200 entry tournament with $10 million in total prizes, and $2 million for first place! Yes, $10 Million… Now of course for these “lottery” style tournaments with so many entries it is going to take a lot of luck to come out on top. However, they also take a lot of skill and understanding of roster construction. Each draft is made up of 12 entries that are snake draft format for a total of 18 rounds. This creates 37,600 12-person groups for round 1. Round 1 scoring is weeks 1-14 cumulative scoring, and the top 2 finishers from each 12-team group will move on to the next round. Round 2 is then made up of 7,520 10-person groups and the top scorer from each group in week 15 will move on, and so forth until the final in week 17 made up of 470 finalists. The scoring format is half PPR, with a starting roster each week featuring;
1 QB / 2 RB / 3 WR / 1 TE / 1 FLX
With the ability to possibly start 4 WRs each week, or 3 RBs each week including your FLX spot, I tend to lean to draft more WR-heavy in the early rounds. Past year’s data also suggests this way of drafting as overall, WRs score more than RBs week in and week out. In this format, the data also suggests that drafting an “elite” TE and QB in the first 8 rounds also tends to lead to higher advance rates. With knowing this information, we can look to gain an edge on our opponents by selecting one of the top 6-7 QBs or TEs early in our drafts, and finding value throughout the draft to load up on RBs and WRs later on before ever having to worry about drafting backup TEs or QB’s. The optimal roster construction in my eyes is either;
2 QB / 5 RB / 9 WR / 2 TE
OR
2 QB / 6 RB / 8 WR / 2 TE
These constructions of course all depend on your early picks. If you start your draft for example with 2 RBs in the first 3 rounds. You are making a big bet on those 2 RB and we shouldn’t be drafting many more after that. If either of those RBs get hurt or don't live up to their draft value, then more than likely our team is “dead” anyways, and we shouldn’t be drafting to “save” ourselves or protect our lineups. We want to draft as if these players will stay healthy and smash their draft position value. On the other side, if we start our draft with say 3 WRs or 2 WRs and an elite TE. Then we want to focus on drafting 3-4 mid-round RBs that give us usable weeks, with large upside if someone else in their backfield were to get injured. Depending on your starting draft position, and who falls to you at each pick in the first 3 rounds, this really will set up your draft the rest of the way. Now, of course with the way we are drafting, we want to take a QB and TE early, and make a big bet on that player and their offense. For example, if we draft Patrick Mahomes in the 4th or 5th round, we then want to be targeting his pass catchers later in the draft, since if he succeeds, more than likely so will his pass catchers. This is also known as “stacking”. Now of course we don’t want to roster the whole Chiefs team in our lineup, but we do want to create stacks throughout and bet on certain offenses. We want our lineup to “tell a story”. With using an early pick on TE or QB, we then don’t want to be taking another one until much later in the draft. Again using the same mindset of, if this QB or TE does not live up to their draft value, then more than likely neither is our team after investing such high draft capital at those positions. We want to be targeting players with high ceilings to acquire those “spike weeks” throughout the year.
I hope this brief strategy write-up was helpful. I'm more than happy to answer any questions you may have. I will be posting more of these up until the season on trends that I am seeing, and other opportunities where I believe we can gain an advantage on the field. Come season time, I will be posting weekly NFL DFS articles for both Main slates and showdown. Feel free to reach me on Twitter @JohnnyC1993
Below, behind the Paywall, I will give my top 10 players at each position to hopefully help you out early in your drafts while exploiting the consensus draft positions of other players. My next article coming later this week will feature my favorite value/sleeper options later in the draft, which I think are extremely undervalued. Good luck to everyone.
TOP 10 PLAYERS AT EACH POSITION
Quarterback
J. ALLEN
L. JACKSON
P. MAHOMES
J. HERBERT
J. HURTS
K. MURRAY
T. LANCE
T. BRADY
J. BURROW
D. PRESCOTT
Running Back
C. MCCAFFREY
J. TAYLOR
A. EKELER
D. COOK
D. SWIFT
S. BARKLEY
D. HENRY
N. HARRIS
A. JONES
J. MIXON
Wide Receiver
C. KUPP
J. JEFFERSON
J. CHASE
S. DIGGS
D. ADAMS
C. LAMB
M. EVANS
T. HILL
T. HIGGINS
D. SAMUEL
Tight End
T. KELCE
M. ANDREWS
K. PITTS
G. KITTLE
D. SCHULTZ
D. WALLER
D. GOEDERT
T. HOCKENSON
D. KNOX
Z. ERTZ
That’s it, best of luck!