Many individual parts come together to help a best ball roster win a competition, but one that consistently appears in well-performing rosters is their overall roster construction.
Year to year, average draft position (ADP) shifts dramatically, following what worked in previous years above all else. While we might not want to push back against that, it’s best to remember how much roster construction can bolster a roster’s chances.
Best Ball Roster Construction
Pick Allocation
Aside from Underdog, most platforms allow 20 picks per roster. A typical starting lineup consists of QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, WR, TE, FLEX, and then your remaining spots filling out your bench. On Underdog, most contests have 18 roster spots, which makes life a little trickier with less leeway.
Many individual parts come together to help a best ball roster win a competition, but one that consistently appears in well-performing rosters is their overall roster construction.
Year to year, average draft position (ADP) shifts dramatically, following what worked in previous years above all else. While we might not want to push back against that, it’s best to remember how much roster construction can bolster a roster’s chances.
Best Ball Roster Construction
Pick Allocation
Aside from Underdog, most platforms allow 20 picks per roster. A typical starting lineup consists of QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, WR, TE, FLEX, and then your remaining spots filling out your bench. On Underdog, most contests have 18 roster spots, which makes life a little trickier with less leeway.
Quarterback
We continue to see Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen lead the way when it comes to quarterback scoring, with a second tier of Jayden Daniels and Jalen Hurts forming behind them. Daniels and Jackson accumulate more rushing yards while Allen and Hurts rush for more touchdowns. These quarterbacks are simply difference-makers on every level and can easily separate from pocket passers like Joe Burrow and Baker Mayfield, who are also top-eight selections.
Throughout the Underdog era of best ball, which has come to define the game in the last few years, it’s been consistently best to draft two or three quarterbacks. With 16.6% being the base rate for advancing into the tournament section of Best Ball Mania, 2-QB teams have advanced at a rate of 16.7%, and 3-QB teams at a rate of 16.9%. Year to year, we see fluctuations favoring certain builds, but we’re best off working with one or the other of these choices.
Generally speaking, if you select a quarterback before pick 72, we can be tempted to stick with two signal-callers, particularly if the second one comes before pick 140, which is six spots after where the QB20 currently goes off the board. Any later and we should go for a safety in numbers approach and get to three.
Last season was the first year where selecting four quarterbacks paid off in non-Superflex best ball drafts, boasting a 17.7% advance rate. Typically, that number has been closer to 13%, and it would be difficult to read too much into it, apart from the best success came when drafters took their first quarterback in the ninth round or later.
Running Back
In 2024, seven different running backs were inside the top two rounds of ADP on Underdog, with four inside the first round. Currently, four are inside the first round, and 11 go inside the top 24. This is in part because 2024 was a disappointing year for the wide receiver position, with many of the early selections getting injured or not living up to their potential, along with Saquon Barkley and Derrick Henry having incredible seasons. The running back position is back in fashion, to an extent, and you’ll need to consider that when you start your draft.
As Mike Leone wrote in his 2023 Best Ball Manifesto, you can draft a lot of running backs, or you can draft running backs early. You can’t do both.
Even in 2024, when wide receivers underperformed and running backs had a renaissance, most winning rosters in best ball tournaments were still Hero RB builds (one running back in the first two rounds) or, at most, Dual RB starts (two running backs in the first three rounds). Because of our roster requirements, which lean heavier towards wide receivers than running backs, it’s hard to ignore that wide receiver is more important when it comes to volume.
With that said, because of the wide receiver-heavy drafts that were happening in 2024, there were incredible values at the running back position, and that led to contrarian tactics becoming very valuable. In Best Ball Mania, if you drafted four running backs before the 10th round and didn’t draft any more, you had an advance rate of 25.5%, which is over 50% more than the average rate of 16.6%. While the selections of Henry and Barkley were no doubt part of this to an extent, even if you waited until round five to select your first running back and then stopped at four total before round 10, your advance rate was a massive 19.9%.
In 2025, however, with running backs back in fashion, this is less likely to be repeatable and instead is a nod towards zigging when others zag and trying to scoop up different and unique teams that others aren’t seeing the value in.
Typically, we want one or two running backs inside the first six rounds, and then end up with five to six total, or we ignore the position and go Zero RB until round six and then end up with a volume-based approach and seven in total. It can be easier to assign volume to the running back position if we’re going lighter at quarterback or tight end than the typical allocations of three.
Wide Receiver
The reason people went so crazy for wide receivers in 2024 is that we were coming off a year where Zero RB rosters won drafters millions of dollars. This, combined with the fact that we start at least three wide receivers weekly, as well as a potential fourth in the Flex, outweighs the running back position, where only two, or three if they start at Flex, ever hit our lineup.
Some of the top receivers failed to produce last season. Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson both finished as the top two receivers, but many other high picks didn’t do as well. Values were found in Brian Thomas Jr., Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Terry McLaurin, Courtland Sutton, Mike Evans and Ladd McConkey, who all were taken outside the top two rounds, but before round 10. This combination made going with a wide receiver-heavy approach a difficult choice in 2024, with teams that selected their WR3 before round seven seeing negative advance rates that averaged 15.5%. It might not be time to pivot, though, with both the previous years seeing rates above 17% for the same tactic.
Over the years, more often than not, it has paid off to have four or five wide receivers by the 10th round, and it shouldn’t be surprising to see that be a positive this year once again. In total, having seven or eight wide receivers generally works best.
Tight End
Tight end is a simple position that never fails to disappoint. Brock Bowers and Trey McBride are the only tight ends with an ADP in the top 24. Then there’s a big drop to George Kittle in the mid-50s range in ADP. Last year’s “disappointments,” Mark Andrews and Travis Kelce, find themselves much further down the board. It also seems that 2025 is the year people are finally done drafting Kyle Pitts.
Elite tight ends can be contest-winners in best ball, with very few non-elite options proving able to have sufficiently massive spike weeks to be difference-makers in tournaments. However, the cost of taking an elite tight end who fails to produce can be very detrimental to your roster.
Typically, we want to take either two tight ends within the first 120 picks (TE1-TE10 range) or take a volume-based approach and select three overall.
Rookies
Rookie classes change so heavily year to year that it can be difficult to give a one-size-fits-all approach to drafting them, but one thing is for sure: We don’t want to ignore them. Last year alone, we saw Malik Nabers, Brian Thomas Jr., Brock Bowers, Bucky Irving, Jayden Daniels, Bo Nix and Tyrone Tracy Jr. all pay off their cost handsomely.
Rookie draft picks can be either a massive hit when they outplay their production or a complete lack of anything meaningful if you get hit with someone like Skyy Moore. Finding the balance is tricky. Generally, three to five rookies per draft can be a nice balance if paired with players assured of early-season production while we wait for rookies to grow into their roles.
Ideal Roster Construction
- QBs: 2-3 — Two with an early quarterback build, three if waiting.
- RBs: 4-6 — Four if drafting running backs early and then stopping. Five or six is a typical build.
- WRs: 6-8 — Rarely will you want to stray out of these, but if you go light on running backs, nine or 10 receivers makes sense.
- TEs: 2-3 — Similar to quarterback, two if you’re selecting them both early, otherwise three.
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