Best Ball - Underdog Fantasy

Photo: Brace Hemmelgarn, USA Today Sports

Best Ball drafts on Underdog Fantasy have changed the way I now play fantasy football. They offer up all the aspects that we all love about the great game of fantasy football. We have the chance to draft a team in the offseason up until kickoff in September and can draft as many teams that we can fit in during that time frame. The beautiful thing about best ball is that we don't have to manage our rosters once the season kicks off as the Underdog site does it for us, inserting our top scoring players at the eight different positions each week:

• QB
• RB1
• RB2
• WR1
• WR2
• WR3
• TE
• Flex

Underdog uses 0.5 PPR scoring and you have to draft 18 total players which your top eight scoring players each week will automatically be started. Underdog offers all sorts of different types of ways to draft as you can play in 3-man, 6-man, or 12-man. They also offer FAST drafts which are on a 30-second timer in between picks and SLOW drafts which are on an 8-hour timer. For this particular article, I want to focus primarily on the 12-man FAST draft which is in the lobby for $3 and pays out the top 3 spots at the end of the season.

I have currently drafted 170 completed and 10 ongoing drafts for 2020 best ball for a total of 180 drafts on Underdog alone. I have used a lot of the data in my personal drafts to construct some of the main points on how to draft the perfect 12-man team.

The goal is to place in the top three in these 12-man leagues to win money. In the $3 Fast 10-man drafts in the lobby the prize pool is $32 total with prizes as such:

• 1st = $20.00
• 2nd = $9.00
• 3rd = $3.00

Underdog also has a $5 entry GPP called the Bubble and a $25 GPP called Best Ball Mania that you can use all of these strategies for the same way you would the $3 12-man leagues.

Draft, Draft, and Draft Some More

The best way to really know how to beat the 12-man is to practice your drafting skills and to enter a few leagues just to get the hang of it and to learn how the draft room works, get familiar with ADP, know what players might fall a round or two or get drafted a round or two early. My suggestion would be to invest $21-$30 and enter 7-10 drafts without an initial expectation to win all the leagues you enter. You are essentially just trying to try out a few strategies and become familiar with the format.

Here are 10 teams of my own that I have drafted over the past week for $3 each in the 12-team fast drafts in the lobby. I handpicked 10 different teams all with different starting points to give you a sample of where players and positions are being drafted.

Observations:

• In eight out of 10 of these teams, I stuck with the 3/6/7/2 roster construction - my personal favorite build.
• I started the first round with a running back nine out of ten times and starting the first two rounds with running back six out of ten times.
• By round six I had at least two running backs and two wide receivers in eight out of ten drafts.
• In these 18 player rounds, I made it a point to stick to only two tight ends on each team. Always make sure the two have different bye weeks.
• I drafted a quarterback by round seven in nine out of ten of these drafts. Not something I have done in years past but trying to get a high ceiling QB with two decent floor quarterbacks later in the draft.
• Getting a later draft slot allow you to combo up running backs. (Examples: Cook/Jones, Mixon/Drake, Henry/Chubb)

Roster Construction

Roster construction can be different for every player and there is no perfect way to go about it. Looking at 2018 leagues we can find trends in what roster constructions had the higher winning percentages. The ideal build will consist of two or three quarterbacks, five or six running backs, seven or eight wide receivers, and two or three tight ends. A build of 3/6/7/2 is my favorite out of the bunch, but at the start of draft, it is hard to just assume that is the build you will end up with. I like that build best if I can get a top tight end in Kelce, Kittle, Ertz, or Andrews or a combination of two of the Top 12 tight ends at ADP.

Looking at the 2018 win rate chart the ideal build is 2-3 quarterbacks, 5-6 running backs, 7-8 wide receivers, and 2-3 tight ends.

Understand ADP and How to Use It to Your Advantage

With over 180 drafts to evaluate and grab data from I like to do ten or so drafts and look back on who I picked in those drafts at what round and ADP and if I can spot any values or players maybe I have drafted on multiple teams. If I see I am getting the same player on 50% of my teams I want to bump that player down some in my rankings as I can probably get him a round later. It is a constant cycle for me looking at ADP and how others value players and trying to handpick some players that I am higher on than others. This is where volume drafting helps you along with drafting throughout the entire offseason.

This year, Underdog has done such a good job at updating ADP as the window to find value on a player who is hitting the news cycle might only last for a day. You can download Underdog's rankings via CSV here, and sort it out by ADP.

Set and Adjust Your Personal Rankings Daily

The best feature of the Underdog product is its ease of use and availability with its App. You can pull up the app on your phone at any time and switch your player rankings with ease. If you are like most of the players entering these types of tournaments you love football and follow it thoroughly on a daily basis. The news moves quickly during Training Camp and Preseason and in best ball, you only get one chance with every pick you make. If you pick a player that gets injured, suspended, or a depth chart casualty you are already at a major disadvantage.

I like to adjust my rankings on a daily basis as the news comes in. Podcasts, Twitter, Rotoworld, and the Footballguys daily email can quickly give you player updates and help you to draw your own conclusions of where to rank players.

The Queue is Your Best Friend

This is a FAST draft and what that means is that you have 30 seconds to make your pick once you are on the clock. You want to make sure you have the players in your queue that you feel comfortable drafting even if you somehow were to miss your pick. Treat this as your backup plan just in case you have to step away from your computer or phone you will be covered for a few picks. Usually the first few rounds you are okay if you get auto-drafted as you will get the top players in your rankings if you didn't have your queued players set. It is later in the draft, let's say Rounds 6-14 where you can make or break your team if you get auto-drafted. Even though you have sound personal player rankings set on the site it doesn't take into account how many players at each position you already have on your roster and how many players you want at each position. We have all been in these drafts where you see a team take six quarterbacks because of a situation like this.

Don't let this happen to you. When entering these drafts you will need every edge and angle that you can come by and the queue is one of those. Let's say you are seven rounds into your draft and have had no distractions and have a team with four running backs, two wide receivers, and a tight end. You are in good shape at this point but let's say you have to suddenly step away from your draft and your next 15 players in your rankings are quarterbacks. Well, chances are your next five picks will probably be quarterbacks. If you had players in the queue you could avoid this type of situation and it wouldn't completely destroy your team. These drafts move quickly and you don't want to be caught off guard and the queue will help you avoid those types of situations and buy you a few extra seconds to make the pick you want each round all while having a safety net behind you in case of an error.

Practice with $3 DRAFTs

The $3 draft is the new free mock draft. For $3 you can play against 2-11 other owners that have money on the line and even with it being as little as just $3 the competition is real as are the rankings and ADP. You get a perfect sense of how these drafts can go and where you will have to take certain players. It will allow you to practice with roster construction, the queue, rankings, 30-second timer, and the draft format.

Be Aware of Bye Weeks

As simple as this sounds there are still many best ball drafters that space this concept and might roster two quarterbacks or two tight ends that both have the same bye week. In best ball - particularly in this format where you have to finish in first place to move on, you can't afford to take a zero at any position any week. Another example is if you are drafting five total running backs, try to make it so all five have different bye weeks. This will help you in a couple of ways as it will always give you at least four players in play during bye weeks, and if one or even two were to get injured or demoted on the depth chart you still will have a couple of others that will score you points every single week.

10 Additional Tips and Tricks

1. Understand - scoring, roster requirements, payouts, rules, and interface.
   
   
2. Stacking - This comes more into play in Underdog's Bubble and Best Ball Mania tournaments but still a nice option to help you break ties when drafting.
   
   
3. Strength of Schedule - Another tool better to use for the Bubble and Best Ball Mania.
   
   
4. AutoPilot Drafting is now available. When you go to set your rankings there is a "Limits" tab which you can now put maximums for each position. My go-to here:
   
   
   • 3 QB
   • 6 RB
   • 7 WR
   • 2 TE
     
     You have to adjust your rankings accordingly though. For example, I like to only draft two tight ends, so I am very aggressive in where I rank those tight ends to make sure I get my guys.
     
     
5. Injuries, Suspensions, Retirement - Remember that once your draft is completed you are stuck with those 18 players. If you drafted a player that might retire, get suspended, is already hurt, well you are out of luck and are stuck with that player for the entire season even if they don't play a single game.
   
   
6. Teams Depth Charts - Get to know this as in best ball the news moves fast and you might find an edge on your competition.
   
   
7. Spike Weeks - I will be doing articles at each position looking at this very thing over the next couple of months. If you can find some players that can give your spike weeks (multiple touchdowns weekly) this will help vault your team to the top of the league.
   
   
8. Age and Experience - This one is actually a similar concept to injuries/suspensions/retirement. You want to utilize every single one of your 18 best ball picks with the assumption that they won't miss a single game during the season.
   
   
9. Floor and Ceiling Players - You want to have a good mix of both guys that can score you a set amount of points regardless but at the same time if you can get that in a player that also has the chance to go off for big weeks every other week that player is much more valuable.
   
   
10. Twitter - A simple search of bestball on twitter daily can help you stay on top of some key pieces of news and data that you might miss elsewhere. Make friends in the best ball community on Twitter and be a voice. Share your work, share your ideas, comment on other's work, and build the product.

Have Fun and Try Your Own Strategies

If you are planning to enter 20+ best ball drafts this year be sure to try different strategies along the way. Maybe you get one of the top running backs so you want to use your second- and third-round picks on a combo of Zach Ertz and George Kittle to lock up the position and to block others from having one of the top options at the position. Another strategy could be to try drafting eight or nine wide receivers who all have different bye weeks. Maybe try a few teams with only four running backs, try super stacking your quarterback with the running back and top wide receiver. Try to think outside of the box as you want to try to have that one different team that will be unique and vault you to the top of the league.

Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter with any questions. Happy Drafting!