What is Best Ball?

What is NFL Best Ball?

Best ball leagues are focused entirely on the draft as you get one shot to build your team, and after that, there is no team management allowed or required. Whatever website you draft your best ball team on, they will automatically set your top scoring roster at all the required positions from your 18-20 player team. No waiver wire, trades, adds, drops, or other types of in-season management is required or allowed.

Best Ball is similar in some ways to regular redraft fantasy leagues regarding the draft itself. Often you will be in 10- or 12-team leagues that are 18 or 20 rounds in length, and you draft from a player pool that includes quarterback, running back, wide receiver, and the tight end position. There is also a flex position that you can use with one of your running back, wide receiver, and tight end positions. The standard starting roster requirement for most of the best ball sites is starting one quarterback, two running backs, three wide receivers, one tight end, and one flex spot.

What makes best ball different?

Quickly, here are the two major differences between Best Ball compared to traditional fantasy league:

• There is no player movement after the draft (no trades, free agency, drops, etc.)
• You don't have to set a weekly lineup (your best possible lineup is automatically started)

We all love the draft portion of fantasy football as it allows you to build a team of players you believe in at that moment. We often will draft mock drafts to prepare for our big redraft leagues to help us prepare. Best ball now has taken the place of the mock draft as you can draft in leagues for as little as a dollar and into the thousands of dollars. You can draft a single best ball team, five, 50, 200, or even thousands. There are cash game types of leagues where the top three out of 12 teams would win cash prizes, and there are also big tournaments where hundreds or even thousands are aiming for the top prize. You can choose how you want to play in the best ball world. But starting slow is always the best way to learn and understand the game theory of it.

You always have to remember that whatever player you draft in a best ball draft will be on your team all year, regardless if they get hurt in Week 1, suspended, quit, or just don't score points for you. There is no turning back on the players you draft, but at the same time, you don't have to make the hard decisions on who to start each week, as the site you are playing on will automatically just populate your roster each week with the highest scoring players at each position requirement.

Best Ball sites General Roster Requirements

The current options for platforms to play on right now are Underdog Fantasy, DraftKings, FFPC, Drafters, Yahoo, BestBall10s, and FanDuel.

Platform Structures, Features, and Options

With the seven best ball platforms, they each have different cash games or tournament options and a variety of league sizes.

10 Drafting Tips and Tricks for Tournaments

When you first learn how to play best ball, I recommend taking it slow and sticking to the smaller buy-in cash games. After you have done a few cash games and understand the best ball game and process, you might be tempted to dip your toes into the tournaments, and with that, you go from beginner level to a whole new level where the stacks are much higher. I outlined some tips and tricks this summer that I like to use personally when drafting tournament teams and also wanted to share them here. This is more specific to Underdog Fantasy's big BBM3 tournament, but it also translates to all the best ball platforms that offer tournaments.

1. Roster Construction - You get 18 total shots to build your Best Ball team, so now you need to know how to best use each of those 18 selections. When people first start playing Best Ball, this is often a step that goes overlooked. We can only start 1 QB, 2 RBs, 3 WRs, 1 TE, and 1 Flex, so we want to be able to find every small edge we can find in how we construct our team. The default ideal build for me in these 18-round drafts is a 2QB/6RB/8WR/2TE build with taking a quarterback and tight end earlier in the draft so I can look in more upside points at both the onesie positions. In a tournament like BBM3, the prize structure is very top-heavy, so you want to play it for ceiling and risk more with each build. I also like 2/5/8/3 builds if I feel good about my quarterbacks and running backs and punt the tight end position until the end of the draft. 3/5/8/2 build if you go tight end early and wait at quarterback. Those are the three builds I play with in most of my drafting.
   
   
2. Stacking - After roster construction, it will be stacking that you will hear the most about when it comes to playing Best Ball. This is even more important in a tournament such as BBM3 where you will need to score so many points each week in the playoffs. Stacking generally means to most is stacking your quarterback with his wide receivers and tight end. It could also mean including the team's running back with the quarterback. Stacking could also include looking at better teams and trying to stack only players from those teams. Each draft room is filled with different drafters so getting your stack (or stacks) is a game inside the game as you will have to adjust on the fly as stacking requires lack of sniping and maybe more of taking players ahead of ADP.
   
   
3. Rankings and ADP - I firmly believe in setting my player rankings on Underdog regardless of whether I use them 100 percent. I feel like I have an edge versus ADP, so I want to be able to have an updated set of my rankings that I have set and am ready to use when drafting. While setting your rankings, you can also set your position limits, another must-do on Underdog. You can just set those position limits at 2/6/8/2 or whatever you like. I like to set rankings and limits because the 30-second draft clocks move fast, you get distracted, the site crashes, and various other reasons. Things happen quickly during the draft, so having those set, if you auto-draft an entire team or partial team, you will still end up with a decent build at the end. You should also get familiar with the queue as I like always to add some names there when I am not on the clock to help me be prepared for when I am on the clock.
   
   
4. Better in Best Ball - You want to look for players who can give you spike weeks along the way, especially in the playoffs. Those are the higher ceiling type of players and maybe even those players that only touch the ball a handful of times but have the potential to score with a single opportunity. Having a player that can score 20+ fantasy points for two or three weeks is more valuable than having a player that scores 7-8 fantasy points for you every week. The goal in Best Ball is to maximize your score each week, and spike-week type of players are ways to help us accomplish that.
   
   
5. Understand the Tournament Structure - When a tournament is over 450,000 entries, you want to know every angle of the format and structure to help you have every advantage possible. BBM3 is built on the fact that you need a strong team in Weeks 15, 16, and 17 if you want a chance to win a big prize. I see Week 16 as the absolute key to this contest as it is the week that you will need to be perfect as you have to finish in first place out of your 16-person group to move on to the finals. Looking ahead to the schedule for Week 16 will be a big deal in this tournament as you will want to figure out what game stack to target or what players stand out for their matchups that week. You want to tell yourself a story with every team you draft and set yourself up for success later in the season with stronger teams near the end of the NFL season.
   
   
6. Have Fun and Don't Be Afraid to Try New Strategies - With the growth of Best Ball over the past few seasons, we have seen more industry information come in to help us draft. There are more podcasts, articles, data, rankings, strategies, and just more people playing in general, so we will have more general ideas on how to play Best Ball. It is good to consume some of this information, but at the same time, you have to be the one that makes the end decisions on how you build and construct your team. Last year we saw wide receiver ADP shoot way up, and others say we should keep our rosters thin at running back as it was the best strategy for these types of tournaments. The fact is that there is no clear-cut strategy to win at Best Ball as it is a new game that looks not to be solved just yet. Will it ever be solved? I don't think it will, as situations change every season. Whatever the flavor of the week type of strategy and approach with these tournament builds, think it through, be different, and have fun. If people want only to draft wide receivers to start drafts, push back, scoop up the values at the other positions, and look to find those better in Best Ball-type wide receivers later. Again, there is no exact science on how to draft a Best Ball team, and that is the beauty of why this game is so fun right now.
   
   
7. Be Bold and Don't Draft Scared - Oftentimes, when you spend a hefty $25 entry fee to play in BBM3, you want to be careful with how you draft to ensure you are not just throwing away your money. This is a hard rule to break as you get tied to ADP and specific roster construction with the best win rates. It is easy just to follow others' rankings or stay close to ADP and just put together a standard 2/6/8/2 build without putting much thought into it. With this type of thinking, you probably will have teams that are not very unique and don't give you the best shot at finding their way into the tournament's final rounds. You want to build a team that has everything. You want floor type of players, higher ceiling players, stacks, young breakout type of players, and better in Best Ball type of players. Don't settle for the safe pick in every round of your draft, be bold and be different in your drafting style to help you build a team that can survive in all the rounds of a tournament like BBM3.
   
   
8. Have a Draft Plan You Can Easily Adapt as You Draft Each Round - With a 30-second timer, these drafts move fast. Having a set plan will probably never work out for you. You can have a goal on how you want your team to look, what type of players you want, what teams you want players from, general roster construction, and when to target specific positions in each round. You must be ready to adapt and adjust as you draft, as you will get sniped on your players throughout these. When that happens, you act quickly, re-adjust, and make a new plan. Each round or two, you can look over your team and tell yourself a story about how you want the next couple of rounds to look. The more you draft, the better you will become at this; it will almost become a natural process.
   
   
9. Track Your Player Roster Percentages - One of my favorite parts of Best Ball is tracking how many shares I have of each player. I like to draft a high volume of Best Ball teams each year, and the reason I like to do this is that I like to build a portfolio of players that I like and that I can track their roster percentage throughout the drafting season and also have some good data to look at during the season. Last season I drafted over 2000 Best Ball teams and used the roster percentage tool to be less risk-averse. I had Robert Woods ranked over Cooper Kupp, but when I saw Woods at 15% and Kupp at 5%, I swapped them in my rankings and tried to get them to be around 10-12% each. Little things like that can help you create a stronger portfolio for the season and give you more shots at hitting on the breakout players. Injuries are also a huge reason why ownership is so important. Injuries are going to happen, and in Best Ball, that is a problem because once you draft a player, there is no turning back as it doesn't matter if they get drafted and injured before the season even starts they will be on your roster for the season. My general rule is to limit myself to players I like and keep drafting to about 20-25% ownership. Last year, for example, I made a mistake here where I was high on J.K. Dobbins and Cam Akers and had them at around 30-35% owned, and they were injured before the season even started.
   
   
10. Try to Understand Your Draft Room - A few tips can help you when you first enter a draft. You can look for red or black shields, which lets you know that those drafters have experience in at least 500 or 1000 total drafts. You will often see usernames you know from Twitter in the fantasy community. After a few rounds, you will quickly see how each drafter will approach the draft, and you can adjust for yourself on how you want to attack that draft. With sharper drafts, you will likely have to be more aggressive when you draft certain players, but also, most will be looking to build out their own stacks, so there is a chance the stacks you are working on will fall to you. If you are in a draft that isn't as sharp, be prepared for an unpredictable draft room and one that you will find values but also one that you might have to work harder for your stacks.

I have been playing Best Ball for five-plus years and have learned valuable lessons along the way. I want to share that knowledge with our customers at Footballguys.com. My name is James Brimacombe, and my username on Underdog Fantasy and around the various Best Ball and DFS sites is "Eaglezzz". I will be honest with you each week as I try to help guide you on your own Best Ball journey in 2022. I have made mistakes over the years and done a few things correctly. I will always give you my knowledge from both angles. You can always follow me on Twitter as I share my Best Ball thoughts daily and am always happy to answer questions via replies or DMs. You can follow along here @JamesBrimacombe.

Be sure to check out Underdog Fantasy. You can join their Best Ball Mania III contest here. Being a Footballguys subscriber, you'll get a 100% deposit match up to $100 if you're a first-time depositor. Have fun, and see you in the lobby!