A lot has been written about best ball in the last few years, and much of it can be contentious, to say the least. At the core of many debates remains the simple fact that best ball has not and will not be solved any time soon.
Building Unique Best Ball Rosters
Best ball draws parallels to poker, much like the DFS industry does, because of the strategy aspect of it, and similarly, because of the table stakes involved at times. While poker legitimately has a limited range of outcomes, best ball does not. On any given week, many aspects are completely out of our control when it comes to fantasy sports, including weather and injuries. For these reasons, sometimes it can pay off to take a different approach to drafting from consensus thinking.
A lot has been written about best ball in the last few years, and much of it can be contentious, to say the least. At the core of many debates remains the simple fact that best ball has not and will not be solved any time soon.
Building Unique Best Ball Rosters
Best ball draws parallels to poker, much like the DFS industry does, because of the strategy aspect of it, and similarly, because of the table stakes involved at times. While poker legitimately has a limited range of outcomes, best ball does not. On any given week, many aspects are completely out of our control when it comes to fantasy sports, including weather and injuries. For these reasons, sometimes it can pay off to take a different approach to drafting from consensus thinking.
Zero RB vs. WR-Heavy Trends
We saw Zero RB hit massively in 2023, for example. The micro-strategy that involves fading the running back position for the first six rounds saw massive success rates with multiple winners across different platforms deploying this tactic to win huge cash prizes.
In 2023, there were 184 20+ point performances from wide receivers – 58 more than the running back position provided. A total of 121 of those performances (65.7%) came from wide receivers drafted within the first 72 picks, with 44% of them coming from players selected in the first three rounds.
At running back, only 33% of the 20+ point performances came from players selected inside the first three rounds. Christian McCaffrey was a top-three pick and paid off his RB1 overall draft cost in his first full season with the 49ers. Of the other seven running backs drafted inside the top 24, zero finished inside the top 10 of running backs in points per game.
Meanwhile, 14 wide receivers had an average draft position (ADP) inside the top 24, and five finished inside the top 10. The stronger hit rate on receivers, as well as massive hits at running back outside of the top 100 picks (Kyren Williams, Raheem Mostert, De’Von Achane), led drafters to become more comfortable than ever with Zero RB.
In 2024 drafts, drafters reacted to this success massively with 18 wide receivers drafted in the first 24 picks, compared to six running backs. Which, unfortunately, turned out to be a massive mistake. Wide receivers severely underperformed, with seven finishing as the WR20 or worse.
Meanwhile, four of the six running backs finished inside the top 10. The 2024 draft season turned out to be a better year to lean into the running back position with veteran running backs, particularly Derrick Henry and Saquon Barkley, available in the second or third rounds of best ball drafts, with many of the opinion that they were likely unable to pay off their costs.
If you were confident in drafters being wrong about these running backs or that they were over their skis on wide receivers, then it was very easy to zag against the trend.
It’s not necessarily just about building a unique roster compared to the crowd, though, as Henry and Barkley are drafted in every single draft, no matter how much people might have cooled on them. However, we can use those foundations to build differently, both at the top of the draft and later.
We can focus on getting combinations that many might not have early in drafts. This can come in two forms.
Adjusting the Draftboard to Suit Our Needs
Generally, ADP tends to be pretty smart at the top of draftboards with little to separate the best of the best, but drafters have a habit of falling into familiarity. If you’ve drafted more than a few best ball teams, you’ll no doubt be familiar with how similar your teams on the turn can begin to feel.
You start with the 1.01 and take a player you feel great about, only to have the same couple of players land with you at the round two/round three urn. Before you know it, you’re 60 picks into the draft and your first three picks were the same ones you made the last time you had the 1.01.
To combat this, we can either scoop value when it falls to us if a draft room is particularly cool on a player for some reason or we draft a player ahead of their ADP. This isn’t about reaching so far that it makes our fellow drafters think we’ve been at the bar all night, but instead it’s looking for a rarer combination.
In our example of picking at the 1.01, that could mean starting a draft with Ja’Marr Chase, then taking one player with an ADP in the round two/round three range and then bringing forward a player with an ADP between picks 33 to 38. These are players that live on the other side of the draftboard from Chase, typically, and who rarely get paired with him because of their ADP.
This could result in a Chase, Josh Jacobs, Lamar Jackson start, with Zay Flowers‘ fourth-round ADP also lining up perfectly for this stack. It can be uncomfortable to reach early, and there is data out there to say it’s not always conducive, but if we’re trying to beat hundreds of other teams in a final, having something different is what will help us skyrocket up draftboards.
Drafting Ignored/Overlooked Players
Once we get past pick 140, there isn’t much need to worry about reaches, ADP and staying in line with others. Underdog’s Hayden Winks laid it out well in a recent post:
The only way to get lower drafted rate players is by reaching for guys with an ADP of 200-216. Many of these players stink, so it does come with a cost. The best way to leverage this is by figuring out when players drafted in 100% of drafts don’t project that differently from those drafted in just 50% or fewer. From my research, that’s been avoiding players with a 160-180 ADP (100% drafted but not good) and scrolling down to players with a 205-212 ADP (25% drafted but still in range to have some spike weeks). These are “reaches” by definition, but the market isn’t very good with ADP this late into drafts and these are the equivalent of $1 auction values, so this is the time to know some ball.
Drafting players in this range can help you have access to players like Puka Nacua or Kyren Williams in 2023 or Jonnu Smith or Zach Ertz in 2024. There’s no consistency to this area and the types of players who pop here are dart throws, but the value in these dart throws is massive.
If you show up to a 1,000-person final and you’re one of only a handful of teams with a rookie Nacua, it becomes exponentially easier for you to climb the leaderboards towards the big prizes. Assuming Nacua has a big Week 17, of course.
We don’t need our late-round picks to be Williams or Nacua every single time, even if it would be nice. We just need them to bring in several spike weeks and give us leverage on the field who ignored them.
Building differently can take many forms, but if we adhere to these methods while still building structurally sound teams that obey other proven methods of roster construction, we can make up for reaches elsewhere.
Of course, the biggest edge you can gain is making the best picks. The best ball content at FantasyPros will always keep you on track.
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