In some fields of fantasy football, championship teams aren’t made on draft day, but in the roster moves and trades you make after the draft. In best ball, it couldn’t be further from the truth, and as any housing developer will tell you, the foundations are of the utmost importance. So in best ball, the first third of the draft can either set you up for success or see you start to sink below the surface.

This article will be the first part of three articles looking at how to approach each third of the draft. Each article will provide strategy advice, positional allocation nuggets, and potential builds for different roster slots.

The beginning of the draft is always filled with optimism and opportunities. While the counter ticks down to the start of the draft, every single micro-strategy is available to you. Perhaps you go “Zero RB?” Or does “Hero RB” feel more like your cup of tea? Or maybe you’re a “Zero WR” masochist who enjoys burning money…but I digress. The draft board is open, and before that first pick, your mindset should be to stay fluid.

The Start

Because of the way our drafts slots are randomized in best ball, many people advocate taking a balanced approach to the first round. For instance, in theory, we stand an 8.3 percent chance of being allocated each draft slot. In years where there is a consensus 1.01 pick, such as Jonathan Taylor this year and Christian McCaffrey in 2021, it can be hard to be overweight on them if you’re intending on doing a lot of drafts simply because the 1.01 doesn’t fall to us that often. Meanwhile, a player like Alvin Kamara or Joe Mixon, who goes closer to the back end of round one, is in a position where we might see people reach a few spots, or the player might even fall into round two. That type of player becomes much easier to take an overweight stand on.

Some years the first round becomes very heavily running back orientated, which in turn pushes up second-round running backs as people start to feel the fear of missing out and start reaching. This year, however, with the likes of Cooper Kupp, Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase firmly entrenched in the first round, as well as question marks over Christian McCaffrey and Derrick Henry‘s health, we’ll see a first round with a nice level of variance. If you plan to draft just a handful of teams, stick close to FantasyPros best ball rankings, or try not to reach far from ADP while getting the player you like best in that range is a sensible approach to the first round.

If you’re planning on drafting a portfolio of best ball teams, then tracking your player exposures and balancing out your first-round exposure will help mitigate against injuries. Typically I don’t like to fade more than one or two players in these first rounds, as all it takes is one big Derrick Henry season, and your foundations are looking a little shaky. It can be sensible to aim to keep your exposure below 15 percent for these players and try to keep any players you’ve decided not to fade above five percent when possible.

Following your round one pick, we reach an inflection point of our draft. Following up a wide receiver pick with another, or doing the same with the running back position, will force our rosters into certain roster constructions that we must remain mindful of. The table below shows us 2021 data for how teams faired after the first two rounds, based upon the most common builds using these strategies. While FFPC’s TE Premium full PPR format made most starts viable, Underdog’s half PPR format saw rosters require a running back in the first two picks to have a good chance of success.

What next?

Now that we’re two picks in, we’ve laid the first bricks, and while being aware of what others are doing and if any players are slipping, it’s time to be thinking of the strategies that can help us have the best chances of success. For example, if we started RB-RB on Underdog, it might be easy to think we were onto a winner. But in 2021, despite teams who started RB-RB having a 21.70 percent advance rate, that number cratered if the drafter selected another running back before round five (Robust RB). Therefore, the advance rate dropped to 15.2 percent, which is below the average advance rate.

Regardless of whether you’ve started running back heavy or not, we’re now edging towards the running back dead zone. And while every year’s crop of dead zone running backs are different, what’s reliable is the fact that wide receivers normally outscore running backs in this area of the draft. The chart below shows grouped positional averages (i.e., RB1-4) and their PPR points per game.

When the dead zone creeps up on us, it’s best to take a cautious approach. If I need a running back and one starts to fall, I’m not against drafting them, but generally, I’m starting to consider the tight ends and perhaps an elite quarterback if the wide receivers aren’t appealing. Chasing an elite quarterback doesn’t always pay off, though. The table below shows every quarterback drafted inside the top five rounds on FFPC Classic leagues dating back to 2017. The win rates are disappointing, to say the least.

*Data via Rotoviz FFPC Roster Construction Explorer*

The potential payoff of an elite quarterback who can go on to be the QB1 is worth chasing as part of a portfolio, but it shouldn’t be viewed as the skeleton key to drafting because of the opportunity cost of taking one.

The last big decision of the early third of the draft is whether you decide to shoot for a premium tight end or run the gauntlet of “this could be his year” type of guy. In Underdog (non-SuperFlex) drafts, you’ll likely see two to three tight ends taken in the first three rounds. Still, if you play on FFPC’s TE Premium format, where tight ends pick up an extra half-point per reception, you’ll likely see as many as six tight ends drafted inside the first three rounds. As you can see in the chart below, in tight end premium, a failure to get a tight end early can spell bad news for your team.

*Data via Rotoviz FFPC Roster Construction Explorer*

On Underdog’s half PPR format, a surprisingly large amount of tight ends were difference makers in 2021, with fifteen having an above-average advance rate of 16.7 percent or greater. While Mark Andrews was a clear league winner in 2021, drafting a tight end earlier in the draft hasn’t provided a sure answer over the last two years.

In 2020 Travis Kelce dominated, but only two of the six tight ends drafted inside the first six rounds went on to have a positive advance rate. And in 2021, that number slightly increased to three of six but was mainly made up of Mark Andrews and T.J Hockenson, who were towards the back end of those rounds. While elite tight ends can be huge difference-makers, it still makes little sense to reach for a player who doesn’t fit that category in order to have one early. Instead, in formats that aren’t tight end premium, we should be waiting and taking a quantity over quality approach. More on that as we reach the later rounds.

My ideal approach for the first six rounds of drafts is to work from the outlines below while always remembering to treat each draft differently depending on how things fall. For example, if a first-round running back fell to the back end of the second or into the third, I’d be happy to stray away from my preferred method.

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