Hi there! I am Steven Mullen writing my 1st blog for BDGE!
It's Best Ball season! This is my favorite format of fantasy football I'm addicted to drafting! I love drafting you love drafting we all love drafting. Have you had a ton of success in your seasonal leagues but not quite doing as well in best ball? Here is a look at what's different about best ball.
Roster Construction
Every week in best ball your entire roster of 18 players plays. The DRAFT system then pulls out your top performers and that becomes your line up for the week. On DRAFT the roster spots that score are QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, WR, TE, Flex. Keep in mind that everyone on your roster has potential to score every week. This makes handcuffs, suspended and injured players worse then in season long. The base roster construction most people seem to follow going into 2018 was 3 QB, 6 RB, 6 WR, 3 TE. Looking at the rosters that qualified for the DRAFT best ball championship in 2018 we see that the best roster construction is the following.
Quarterback 2/3 (49% of qualified teams with 2 QBs)/(48% of qualified teams had 3 QBs)
Running Back 6 (51.5% of qualified teams) 22.7% better then any other # of RBs.
Wide Receiver 7 (44.7% of qualified teams) 17.4% better then any other # of
WRs.
Tight End 2/3 (47% of qualified teams with 2 TEs)/(48% of qualified teams with 3 TEs)
This data says we should be going with 6 running backs, 7 wide receivers, and choosing between QB and TE 3 of one position and 2 of the other position.
Bye Weeks/Injuries
Injury history/Bye weeks matter. In seasonal leagues I never care about bye weeks load em up! I don't even look at them. I know I'll make 6 trades 2 guys will be hurt and I'll have added 5 guys from waivers during the season. The reason why this matters so much in Best Ball is obviously you can't use trades and waivers to adjust on the fly. Because of this I will keep my ownership % lower on players with big injury histories. I also work to stagger bye weeks as early as round 2 while keeping tier rankings in mind. Do not break a tier to stagger bye weeks unless you have to. I will not own more then 2 WR or more then 2 RBs with the same bye week. I will not own more then 1 QB or 1 TE with the same bye week.
Stacking
If you do DFS you already know to do this. If you have Juju as your WR1 you should be taking Big Ben over QBs in his tier. If you have Hunter Henry and Mike Williams you should be looking to add Rivers over QBs in his tier. Below is an example of a well stacked team of mine. Juju with Ben, and a Wilson stack with Moore and Dissly. Keep in mind you want to stack a maximum of 2 WR/TE with your QB once you hit 3 pass catchers it will negatively effect your win %. Stacking Deep Dive Blog available here 6/24/19.
Good Luck!
Steve
