Best Ball Draft Strategies | Fantasy In Frames

While the wonderful staff at Fantasy In Frames is providing great content on IDP, Dynasty, and Redraft in prep for the start of the 2022 Fantasy Football Season, Joe Matz and I of the Daily Fix Podcast are back this summer to talk about Best Ball Draft Strategies!

If you are someone who wants to join in on the fun of fantasy football but cringes thinking about the work and time needed to compete, Best Ball fantasy football is for you. Over the next month, this article and the subsequent podcast episodes on The Daily Fix Podcast will comprise our Best Ball coverage this summer that will range from teaching you the basic strategies for playing, to informing you of the players we think you should try to target during your drafts!

Let’s kick things off with the basics!

Basic Overview and Rules for Best Ball

The draft is everything in Best Ball Leagues. It’s literally the only thing to do, due to the fact there are no waiver wire moves, trades, etc. allowed during the season. When it comes to Best Ball, in the words of Eminem “you only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow”, once your draft is over those are the only players on your roster all season long.

Depending on the site you play on (we recommend Underdog Fantasy), you will draft 18-28 players. You must start 1 QB, 2 RB, 2-3 WR, 1-2 Flex, and 1 TE. Most, if not all sites will not require having a kicker or team defense on your roster. This will leave you with between 10-18 bench roster spots. You will need at least 2 extra bench players at each starting position to account for potential injuries, byes, or a player being a bust.

Following the draft, every week your chosen platform will automatically put your highest possible scoring combination of players (optimal lineup) for the positions mentioned above as the starters on your roster. It really is as simple as it sounds. Therefore, just like in high school or college when you took a class and your entire grade was depending on one test or paper to pass your class, you need to draft with the same prep you would that test or paper because a bad draft in Best Ball can make for a long miserable season.

Strategies

Quarterbacks:

Quarterback is the one position that you do not need a lot of depth at, particularly if you take one of the Top 5 NFL QBs in the league on teams with potent offenses. If you use the necessary capital to get a Top 5 QB, you only need to grab one other QB later in the draft as a weekly fill-in and then you can go back to dominating at the position week in and week out.

Another strategy with QBs is to wait until later in the draft to select your 1st QB for your team. Maybe you wait and take a QB with huge upside like a Justin Fields or Trevor Lawrence, or maybe you roll the dice on a player like Deshaun Watson who we know has QB1 potential, despite his uncertain availability due to his legal issues. Either way, going with this method you’ll need to snatch up another QB soon after your first one to help spread out the risk at the position in terms of performance when not having a Top 5 producing QB on your roster. I, personally, don’t hate having 3 sure starters drafting this way. Waiting to select your first QB last year could have led to taking a Derek Carr or Joe Burrow. Each season there are multiple QBs in the Top 10 at the end of the season who are not predicted to be there at the start.

Running Backs:

In many ways, the strategy to filling out your running backs mirrors what we just discussed with QBs. Many believe it’s most prudent to take two true lead-backs early in the draft, then sprinkle in some water cuts backs later in the draft. Others are moving to a strategy of no backs until midway thru the draft. Over the last 4-5 seasons the running back position has seen the most busts from the first 5-10 consensus picks each season. With the combination of more teams moving away from a lead-back-led running game, instead relying on 2 or more backs to share the workload, and the emergence of more running backs being used in the passing game, you can see why this philosophy makes sense. Outside of the Top 5-10 scoring backs each year, the next 30-40 running backs, in terms of points scored, are fairly close in points per game average. Because of the reasons above, I like the second philosophy for running backs and finishing my draft with 5-6 backs overall, targeting in middle to late rounds guys with high upside, handcuffs, and pass-catching specialists.

Wide Receivers:

I’ve shifted the way I draft my fantasy teams over the last 4-5 years, particularly in PPR formats. With the way the NFL has moved to more pass-happy offenses, wide receivers are now more consistent in scoring and more valuable in your drafts. It’s far less likely for a wide receiver to be a bust that is projected as a 1st or 2nd round pick when compared to running backs. I try to take 2 wide receivers in my first 3 selections in every draft I participate. If a running back is available that has great capital at that position, I’m not saying to automatically still select a receiver, but I lead towards that decision in most instances.

Of the Top 25 scorers in PPR leagues last season, 8 of the Top 25 were wide receivers, compared to 4 runnings backs, 1 tight end, and the remaining 12 players were all QBs. Of the preseason rankings for 2021, per PFF, the first 7 running backs in projected points in the preseason did not finish the season in the Top 25, compared to wide receivers where 4 of the Top 5 in projected points, finished the season in the Top 25 in scoring. In my opinion, it’s much less likely for a top receiver to be a bust compared to running backs.

Because of the reasons above, I would go WR, WR, QB in whatever order with my first 3 picks of a Best Ball draft. The only exception to this for me would be if a running back you love, who is below their projected draft spot is available…aka shows to be more of a value pick. To further back this point up, in PPR leagues per Fantasy Pros, 4 of the 5 players rostered on the most championship teams in fantasy football were wide receivers. Mark Andrews was the only non-wide receiver to finish in the Top 5.

Tight Ends

With the exception of Travis Kelce, Mark Andrews, Darren Waller, and Kyle Pitts, I would wait until the middle to late rounds to address my tight end position in a Best Ball draft. Kelce and Andrews will be the number one receiving options on high-caliber offenses. Pitts and Waller might not be the number one option for receptions on their teams with the Raiders adding Davante Adams and the Falcons drafting Drake London, but both will still receive enough targets game to game to be a class above the rest of the tight ends in the league. You could make an argument that the addition of other impact wide receivers could help their scoring numbers in 2022, due to less attention from opposing defenses.

If you draft one of these four tight ends, you should fill the rest of your roster at this position very similarly to the way we discussed Quarterbacks. Meaning if you get one of these top elite guys, only add one or two at the most other tight ends to your roster in later rounds. If you do not select one of these four stud tight ends (you need to have a minimum of 3 tight ends on your roster, preferably two that are fairly consistent in scoring points week in and week out), I would round out my three tight ends by selecting those players fairly close to each other in the later rounds that possess high upside. An example would be to look at a team like the Colts, who have thrown to tight ends a lot during the Frank Reich era, and now have a starter in Matt Ryan that loves throwing to tight ends. Pick a TE like that!

Due to the format of Best Ball leagues, it is vital to nail your draft and I think these tips will help you do so. Remember to have a plan, try to follow it, but don’t be afraid to adjust on the fly if the draft is moving a certain way. My final bit of advice on Best Ball drafts is in the early rounds I would not veer too far from projections of players…aka I would trust the evaluation process of players. After the 8th round, you should select guys you are high on at each position in terms of upside.