2018 Football Draft Kit: Best-Ball Draft Strategy

Various sites offer best-ball formats, with a wide range of entry fees and payouts. I play in best-ball leagues offered by MyFantasyLeague on Sportshubtech.com. MFLs are 12-team, 20-round drafts that start a QB, 2 RBs, 3 WRs, a TE, a Flex (RB/WR/TE) and D/ST each week. They cost as little as $10 per entry (hence the term MFL10s, though higher-stakes leagues are available), so fantasy degenerates like me – I drafted more than 100 best-ball leagues each of the last two summers – can enjoy the fun of drafting at minimal
expense.

Also, the slow-draft format (allowing four or eight hours per pick) ensures you can draft at your leisure without having to find 12 owners to get together at the same time. Live drafts are offered as well.

Not yet convinced you should give best ball a whirl? One underrated aspect of the format is that it helps you prepare for other, more important leagues later in summer by forcing you to learn the player pool. Do 15 or 20 of these by the end of July and not only will you learn all the offseason transactions, but you'll know the depth chart of every NFL team inside and out.

Drafting a lot of teams also forces you to truly understand your own player evaluations. Putting names on a cheatsheet is well and good, but there's nothing quite like making choices on players when the bullets are flying in a draft room with real dollars at stake. For example, you might think you like Leonard Fournette this year, but if you keep passing on him at the 1-2 turn, you're never actually going to own him. Or you might think you want to start your draft

WR-WR, but draft a few leagues that way and you'll realize your running backs resemble something from a horror film – a tough pill to swallow in a league with no transactions.

OK, enough background. These are money leagues; can one actually win money? Like most best-ball sites, the MFLs I play have a rake (12 owners at $10 apiece wind up competing for $105, not $120), but sure, money can be made. Begin by deciding on a format. Do you like high-risk, high-reward games, e.g. GPPs in daily fantasy? Try a "classic" league – it pays nearly everything to first place. Are you more conservative, preferring cash games in DFS? Try a "50/50," where the top five teams double their money.

ROSTER CONSTRUCTION

Format aside, how can you actually win? Well, aside from avoiding injuries (remember, there are no transactions, so if a player goes on injured reserve in Week 1, you're stuck with him all year), the biggest key is roster construction. At the end of 20 rounds, your team should look something like: 2-3 QBs, 5-6 RBs, 6-8 WRs, 2-3 TEs, 2-3 defenses.

How do you decide on two quarterbacks or three? Six wide receivers or eight? My general approach: when you miss out on quality at a given position, you better make up for it with quantity.

For example, if you pay up for Aaron Rodgers and Cam Newton, then it's probably best to avoid drafting a third quarterback, as you'll be weak at other positions and will need the depth at those spots. Conversely, if you bypassed the top quarterbacks and instead paired Andrew Luck (and his balky shoulder) with Mitchell Trubisky, then you'll need to draft a quarterback like Joe Flacco (welp!) in the late rounds. Over a 16-game season, Flacco isn't likely to be your highest-scoring QB more than once or twice if you have Rodgers and Newton, but he could crack the lineup quite a few times if you have Luck and Trubisky.

That said, I am careful to avoid being too wedded to any particular formula. Last year, I recall several drafts where my team was strong at receiver (and weak at other positions), but I still drafted Chris Hogan as my eighth wideout because he fell to Round 19 or 20. So, yes, roster construction matters a ton, but don't let it stop you from drafting good players if they fall too far. It's all about balance – the right balance of good players and roster construction.

In standard leagues, zero-RB might be a viable strategy because you can improve at that position during the season via free agents or trades. In best ball, no such transactions are possible, so zero-RB is not a viable approach. Try it and you'll find yourself drafting six or seven lottery tickets and hoping for injuries – a fine approach when transactions are possible, but not so much when you are stuck with those players all year.

My ideal team has 1-2 QBs, 2-3 RBs, 3-4 WRs and 1-2 TEs at the conclusion of Round 10. This approach ensures I have good players (and lesser ones) at each position, and it enables me to keep taking the "best player available" later in a draft. Trust me, it is awful starting WR, WR, WR, WR, then feeling like you have to pass on a good receiver who fell because you are already loaded at the position.

INJURIES

In a format like this, should you avoid drafting oft-injured players altogether? Maybe. But as 2017 Keenan Allen showed, the talented but oft-injured player can sometimes win you all the money.

In best ball, the decision on pulling the trigger on a player like this might be a matter of format. In a winner-take-all league, you might need to take a risk or two and have it pan out to finish first. In that format, for example, I can justify taking Luck in the middle rounds, knowing there's some chance my pick ends up a total waste. I'd especially like that approach if T.Y. Hilton had already fallen to me in Round 3 or 4.

After all, you already bet on Luck's health when you selected Hilton, and a poor season from your third-round pick could make it difficult to finish in first place anyway. It makes sense to double down, hoping that Luck plays 16 games and elevates Hilton to a top-five WR – a potential league-winning combination.

Of course, my approach would be completely different in a 50/50. In that format, I'd bump a player like Luck down a few notches, and if I drafted him, I'd avoid pairing him with any Colts. To profit in a 50/50, I'm not trying to hit 450-foot home runs with each pick, I'm simply trying to hit line drives up the middle.

Format aside, the concept of targeting "boom or bust" players because it's best ball (think DeSean Jackson) is overrated. All players have week-to-week variance. Just look at the weekly scoring output for Antonio Brown in 2017: 29, 11, 27, 7, 25, 29, 16, 12, 7, 42, 38, 25, 32, 4. For lesser players, the weekly variance is similar. So if you like Robby Anderson, fire him up in Round 9 or 10, but don't reach just because it's best ball.

DRAFT TIMING

Another significant yet vastly underrated component of best-ball leagues: the time of year you draft. Ahh, so many nuances. Let's give two examples.

Example 1 – Jonathan Williams. Remember him? Williams was thought to be the Bills' backup running back heading into 2017, occupying a fantasy-viable position in a run-dominated offense behind an oft-injured LeSean McCoy. Many MFLers invested an 11th- or 12th-round pick in Williams, hoping he'd duplicate Mike Gillislee's production from the previous year. Yet as the preseason rolled around, the Bills cut Williams from the roster, and those who drafted him got a zero from that spot all season.

Example 2 –Chris Hogan. I was all over 2017 Hogan in early drafts because he cost nothing – he was going in Round 20 regularly – and if an injury struck a fellow wideout during preseason, he'd be in a feature role for a high-scoring offense. Players drafted this late typically do nothing at all, but, as luck would have it, Julian Edelman tore his ACL in preseason and Hogan turned into a league-winning pick.

These look like two vastly different examples, but they're both part of an important theme: the earlier in summer you draft, the less defined each team's depth chart is, and with less definition comes more risk.

Maybe the backup you're eyeing in June or July gets waived before the season even starts (Williams), or maybe he winds up in a starting role on a high-scoring team (Hogan). The earlier in preseason you draft, the more time there is for injuries and roster moves, so the more pronounced these risks/rewards are. In a winner-take-all format, many of these risks could make sense, whereas those same players might not be worth it in a 50/50.

Generally, I lean toward boring, steady players. In the Falcons' receiving corps, for example, I'd take the security/floor of Mohamed Sanu (ADP: 124) – who is likely to get me something decent during the course of the year – rather than the theoretical upside but scary floor of rookie Calvin Ridley (ADP: 130). After all, neither player is likely to win a league by himself, but if Ridley performs like most rookie receivers have in recent years (think Laquon Treadwell or John Ross), he could lose it for you. That said, there are no hard-and-fast rules, only that we tend to know more about players' roles in early September than we do in June or July, and that disparate knowledge should impact your best-ball drafting.

DEFENSE

As you think about injuries, depth charts and uncertainty, here's one fact worth noting: defenses never get cut and never miss games. As a result, I'm more inclined to pay up for a good defense and/or to draft a third defense early in summer than I am later in preseason. In early September, we have a better concept of players' roles and playing time, so it's easier to make solid picks in the late rounds than it is in June/July, when many late-round selections can feel like a crapshoot.

So ... that's my take, friends. Best-ball leagues are open for business, they're cheap and they're fun. Get in the action, and maybe I'll see you – my username is "Stopa" – in an MFL draft this summer.

This article appears in the 2018 RotoWire Fantasy Football magazine. Order the magazine now.