Fantasy football without the grind of setting a bunch of lineups? That has to be the dream. This past offseason I decided to try some paid best ball contests to see if I could make myself a more well-rounded fantasy player. At Dynasty Football Factory, we believe that every aspect of fantasy football bleeds into the others, and thus, I had my motivation to jump in. Plus…it certainly didn’t hurt that drafting is an addiction. Being new to the format, I decided to track all the data I possibly could on my performance/selections. This way, I could maybe help or inspire others who may be new to the format in the future.
My strategy going in
- Diversify my ownership through the first few rounds, capping each individual player at 25%.
- No limit on late-round values. This is supposedly where the money is made.
- Keep entries small, and voluminous.
- Make sure that I didn’t pass on “value drops” even when trying to diversify.
- Keep within roster build ranges- Two to three QBs, five to seven RBs, six to eight WRs, two to three TEs.
In a perfect world where I execute the above well, this ends up in a low chance of losing money, and a low chance of gaining a lot of money, but a high likelihood of breaking even or making more money than my initial investment.
The results
I entered 30 contests, primarily at $1 levels. If all entries were equal, I would have finished winning $36.60 on a $30.00 investment. 122% return on investment (ROI) would not be too bad, but as I’ll say a lot in this piece I wish I stayed true to my strategy.
[Narrator Voice]
He didn’t!
Given that I entered three contests at a $5 level, and bombed all three, I got $36.60 back on $42.00 investment (87% ROI). I will mention that while losing that amount far from broke me, it’s a good lesson to only play with money you can stand to lose. If you put down $1,000 and put up an 87% ROI you’d be losing $130, which would be a lot for me to stomach.
Let’s take a look at what players were on the most winning rosters and which were on the most losing rosters.
The Winners
It should be no surprise to see Christian McCaffrey at the top of the list. He all but made fantasy leagues unfair this past season.
The other names were in the winner zone for various reasons.
Winston is there because he was a really good value for a mid to low tier draft cost QB.
Greg Olsen was a good TE for his cost.
Kittle is a beast.
Marvin Jones had a couple of monster games at his low cost that almost surely provided more than enough value.
The only one that doesn’t make sense in this list is Zay Jones. I looked back at the rosters where he made his appearances, and it seemed he was purely a passenger in the metaphorical car. He had virtually no good weeks. Plus his low cost ensured that he had little leverage in tanking squads.
It just goes to show that late picks can’t break you, but they sure can line your pocketbook.
The Losers
These players all seemed like fairly good values during draft season, but they all failed to meet expectations. Most missed a lot or all of the regular season due to injury, like Coleman, Funchess, Njoku, and Reed. Health matters a lot in best ball, especially in the positions it’s common to roster few players at (QB/TE).
Let’s say you drafted three TEs. One injury to the positional group and a bye week for one of the other two, and you have only one option to score points in a given week. If you roster only two, one injury to the group and on the other player’s bye week, you’re taking a zero. Each week’s point total matters so the concept of a zero in any given week for a position wasn’t one I was willing to take often. I’m told that this strategy is like wearing sunscreen while indoors, but I would rather know that I narrowed my range of possibilities than risked a big loss.
Keep posted for part two of my adventure where we can go over my most owned players and success for each specific roster positional build for a better picture of the advantages and disadvantages!
Thank you all for taking the time to read my work. Hit me up on Twitter @DFF_Mike2 and let’s talk about why I’m probably wrong!
