Context Is Everything
As with any league, the context is everything. Your author shares this brief disclaimer as both a reminder for your own best interest as an owner and as a primer to start this article. There are many important questions you need to know the answer to in order to correctly utilize actionable advice. Is the league redraft or dynasty? Are there 10 owners, 12 owners, 14 owners, 16 owners, or is it a multi-copy league? How many roster spots are there? Is it SuperFlex or TE Premium or tiered PPR? Is it an IDP league? How many starters are in the lineup? Is the draft third-round reversal? Do you have taxi squads?
Each of these questions plays a vital role in analysis within the realm of fantasy football. Before you boldly and blindly follow advice from a website or analyst, make certain you know the context with which the advice is shared.
What is BestBall?
BestBall leagues are leagues in which the platform or website that hosts your league automatically sets and locks the optimal scoring lineup from your roster of players for you; you do not need to set lineups. Another way to think of it is the host platform or website scores every game of each week by a team’s great potential points. It is truly a test of which owner put together the best team in terms of the number of fantasy points scored, on a week-to-week basis.
No longer do you have to suffer from the tweaked soft muscle injury on the first drive of the game or the pre-game post-National Anthem scratch of a player that goes unannounced until halftime! In a traditional lineup-setting league, those are situations that most likely render you a losing ticket for the week. In BestBall, you are protected against this! Your highest scoring players for the week will automatically be your starters.
Types of BestBall Leagues
Within the realm of BestBall leagues, there are three primary styles: frozen, limited, and operational. Frozen BestBall leagues are draft-only leagues. You draft your team and watch the season play out. There are no waivers or adds or drops, and no way to acquire or change any of the players on your roster throughout the season.
Limited BestBall leagues allow trading and also have occasional waivers. In a limited BestBall league, there might be two or three or four waiver runs throughout an entire season, or if it is a dynasty league, throughout an entire calendar year. The limited BestBall leagues allow owners to alter their rosters throughout the season and address needs. It is still low-maintenance, but there are still some actions owners can take throughout the year.
The third kind of league is an operational BestBall league. An operational BestBall league has weekly waivers and can even include post-waiver add/drops each week. Operational BestBall leagues function exactly the same as a conventional fantasy football league except that the host platform or website still sets the optimal scoring lineup for each owner.
Why Would You Want To Play In A BestBall League?
While Superflex dynasty leagues have taken over the dynasty community the past few years as the en vogue format, other niches of leagues like Devy and IDP still exist. BestBall is just another one of those niches. In a BestBall league, you are not required to constantly scan lineups or scour waivers. You do still get to compete against other owners and see how good the team you build is. It allows a lower-maintenance style of play that allows owners the freedom to join more leagues if they choose to since the maintenance time in a BestBall league post-draft is not as consuming as in a conventional league.
Additionally, BestBall offers slightly different styles of strategies to be employed that owners can use to win, distinct from most conventional leagues. Most importantly, you play in a BestBall league because you love playing fantasy football and you want another challenge and a new style and opportunity for beating your peers (as well as more opportunities to draft!).
Redraft BestBall
The months of May, June, and July are ordinarily the “BestBall Season” for fantasy owners who join multiple leagues and manage multiple teams. On the Twitter machine, charity BestBall leagues and charity BestBall eliminators abound. Redraft BestBall leagues are appealing because it combines two of the best parts of playing fantasy football. These are, of course, drafting and seeing the results of your work.
The maintenance and attention required of a redraft BestBall league are greatly reduced compared to a conventional fantasy league. Redraft BestBall leagues allow owners to still draft and compete without completely tying up all their time within the football season. For this reason, often, you will see owners privy to BestBall leagues in a large number of leagues.
You might be wondering, “Why not just mock draft?” Well, you must understand that, to a BestBall fantasy player, mock drafting does not allow you to compete or view the fruits of your labor at the end of the season. Mock drafting does not fill that competitive itch that a BestBall league will fill. Additionally, most multi-league fantasy owners want to be able to have a little skin in the game and play for money.
Dynasty BestBall
Proponents of dynasty BestBall leagues will argue that it “takes the luck out of the game” and allows the actual best team and best team owner to win. They want to see who is best at putting a roster together. A lot of fantasy owners who don’t have experience with BestBall just assume that it is trying to draft stud RB handcuffs late and speed WRs that will occasionally blow up with one or two long TD receptions. However, as the BestBall truthers proclaim, the depth of your roster is tested weekly in BestBall leagues and the best teams do win.
Depending on the number of starters in the lineup, having a balanced team with depth is more valuable than possessing a roster with a few top-three studs at their positions and just filling out the rest of the lineup the best you can. If it is only a start-9 or start-10 league, however, then having a few top-three studs at their positions can certainly put even a BestBall roster over the top. But in normal or deeper BestBall leagues with more starters, the depth becomes more important. In the end, the best TEAM wins, as opposed to the best lineup (as in a conventional lineup-setting league).
BestBall Strategy
As your author has proclaimed many times before, context is everything. Make sure you read over your league settings in terms of scoring per position, roster limits, number of starters per position, and so on. Once you have identified whether SF, tiered PPR, TE premium, or all of the above, you can erect your plan.
The Early Rounds
Typically, the top-tier QBs and TEs tend to be consistent from year to year in scoring. You see more volatility from the RB and WR positions. Knowing this, in an SF league, your author would try to secure a good, young, reliable starter or two in the first few rounds. Similarly, the same argument can be made for landing one of the top-three or top-four TEs. If possible, try to land both. Your author never shies away from taking QBs and TEs in the first three rounds of BestBall leagues if the league is SF and TE premium. Most of your author’s BestBall drafts find him not selecting an RB or WR until round four or later. Round four is your “crossroads,” where you need to decide if you want the weaker area of your team to be RB or WR.
The Middle Rounds
By nature of the NFL’s ever-evolving game to more pass-happy offenses recently, the WR position is deeper than any other offensive position. For this reason, in BestBall leagues, your author will forgo WR in lieu of drafting RBs at the “crossroads.” Try to find the RB tied to the most potential for touches whenever possible. The next best determining criteria for the round four and round five RBs is finding an efficient offense that projects to score a lot of points or be in the red zone often. When you have secured yourself two or three RBs in the middle rounds, then you can look to bolster those WRs. As always, if the value is screaming to take a WR in those middle rounds, don’t be afraid to pull the trigger!
Rounds Seven through Through Early Teens
The WR position is the best position to make up value later in the draft. BestBall leagues are the perfect format to pull the trigger on younger WRs and/or WRs that have yet to have a breakout season that you feel good about individually. WRs yet to break out that are tied to a good passing offense like Kansas City or Buffalo are nice targets. Also, WRs that have high draft capital or flashed, but maybe did not break out during their rookie or second season are good grabs (think Michael Pittman, Jalen Reagor, Darnell Mooney, Marquise Brown, or Parris Campbell). These are the types of players you can find just before the tenth or sometimes even the double-digit rounds of your drafts. Always take the sure-fire bets first. If guys like Cooper Kupp, Julio Jones, Tyler Boyd, or Brandin Cooks are dropping too far, scoop them up.
The Rest of the Way
Traditionally, there are several weeks throughout the NFL season in which fantasy owners are mad that the backup RB and/or bench TE scores the TD they desperately needed. For this reason, building depth at the RB and TE positions can occur late in the draft. If you landed a top-tier TE in the first three rounds, finding a few TEs that will occasionally produce and score a TD here or there is totally sufficient. Think about players like O.J. Howard, Dawson Knox, Will Dissly, or Mo Alie-Cox. These types of players can be taken late in drafts and provide sufficient production and depth behind a top-tier TE.
When it comes to RB depth, find those committee backfields and handcuff backs that play behind oft-injured players. This particular season, players like Darrell Henderson, Jeff Wilson Jr. (be patient with his return from injury), Darrel Williams, and Phillip Lindsay appear to be nice BestBall depth RB targets that can be obtained in later double-digit rounds.
In the end, you want to build a team with players you like. For your author, starting a BestBall team with two consistent, young QBs between rounds one to three, a top-tier TE in the first three rounds, the best remaining starting RBs based around volume-opportunity and effective team offense in the middle rounds, and rapid-firing on WRs that have fallen to close the first ten rounds has proven to be the best strategy. But of course, you have to find the strategy that you like the best for yourself!
Where to Play BestBall Leagues?
Most of your traditional redraft websites like Yahoo will allow you to run BestBall leagues for free. MyFantasyLeague.com also allows free seasonal BestBall leagues, but there is a platform fee for dynasty BestBall leagues. Underdog Fantasy has been all of the rage the past few months. Your author prefers MFL for his leagues, but several platforms will allow you to dive into BestBall and see the benefits of this unique style of fantasy football!
While your author plays in five or six dynasty BestBall leagues and typically a handful of redraft charity BestBall leagues each season, he does play primarily in conventional lineup-setting leagues. You are encouraged to try BestBall out if you haven’t already! It is a different style of game that allows you to use different strategies, build the best and most complete roster, and enjoy the additional free time from reduced in-season maintenance!
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