Fantasy Football – Best Ball 101

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Have you found yourself scrolling on Fantasy Football Twitter and saw someone mentioning best ball and wonder what they were talking about? Or maybe your friend brought up their best ball league and you just nodded along like you knew what they were saying because it seemed like you should know what they were talking about. If you answered yes to either of the questions above, then this is the article for you. Below is a brief introduction to best ball, why I enjoy it, and some quick strategies to master your best ball league. Let’s dig right in with Fantasy Football – Best Ball 101.

What Is Best Ball on Underdog Fantasy?

Best Ball first and foremost is a fantasy football league just like any other league out there. At the beginning of the season, you draft a set of players from any NFL team and as they play in the real world, your fantasy team scores points based on their performance. But have you ever tried out fantasy football and then found yourself ignoring your team by Week 3, forgetting you ever started playing by Week 8, and then remembering you signed up just in time to learn your team is no longer playoff eligible? If you find yourself in too many fantasy football leagues, best ball might be a nice option to consider.

In traditional fantasy football, league managers have to check on their team periodically to set their lineup, add players from the waivers, and make trades. But not with best ball.

Lineup Settings – Set it and Forget it

That’s right, the beauty of best ball leagues is that from week to week, your total score is made up of the players who performed the best on your roster (hence the name “best” ball). Once you draft your team your roster is set. No trades. No forgetting to get on every single week to work the waiver wire. Just a simple case of “Let the best team win.”

A standard best ball draft includes 1 QB, 2 RBs, 2 WRs, 1 TE, 1 Flex, 1 Defense/Special Team, and 1 Kicker, just like in fantasy football. But instead of stressing about whether to start Trey Lance or Jimmy Garoppolo, your lineup will automatically update based on whoever scored the most points that week. Pure bliss.

What’s so Great about Underdog Fantasy?

For starters, it takes less work than other types of fantasy leagues, so you can join many leagues without adding significant time to your proverbial fantasy plate (except during draft season). But what is more exciting to me is that it provides a lower barrier to entry to get creative with your fantasy leagues.

Want to consider using individual defensive players (IDP) but don’t want to commit to months of searching the waivers and learning player names? Try best ball. Curious about the newer “Tight End Premium” leagues that everyone keeps talking about? Set up a best ball league and give it a shot.

Additionally, because your lineup is automatically set to the players with the highest score, you can be more aggressive with your draft picks, targeting that player that went off in the preseason that you know is going to go off, and in that one week he does go off, you’ll get to benefit without having to predict when it would happen. Overall, it takes some of the luck out of it and you can really show off how well you can draft.

Winning Strategies

There are two key strategies I’ve found to winning in best ball leagues.

Weekly Boom or Bust Potential

First, I like to use Tyler Lockett as an example. If you’ve ever rostered Lockett, you’ll know that his fantasy performance is inconsistent. Don’t believe me? In his last four games, he scored 27, 12.1, 6 (no that’s not a typo), and 27.2 in PPR (points per reception) leagues. Maybe you have perfect foresight and could predict that six-point performance, so feel comfortable rostering him on your fantasy team, but as for me, I tend to avoid Lockett because I prefer consistency when it comes to standard leagues.

But in best ball leagues, I’ll take Lockett because his ceiling is incredible. Sure, he may score five points in a week, but in best ball, he likely wouldn’t be my highest-scoring receiver anyways, so that performance wouldn’t harm me. Instead, he could only help, particularly on one of those weeks, he puts up 30 or 40 points.

Depth and Handcuffs

Secondly, depth is the name of the game. Remember how I said there are no adding players off the waivers? That includes if a player on your team gets injured. So if Christian McCaffrey is out for the season, you’re out of luck and cannot replace him. Because of this, best ball leagues will typically have larger benches. For example, I participated in a Faceoff staff best ball league that had a 26-round draft.

Because of this, you need backups, particularly at running back. If you draft Dalvin Cook, go ahead and grab Alexander Mattison (which you should be doing already, but that’s for another article). You can try to go for that third-string running back that you think is going to take over the top spot, but first I’d make sure to have plenty of depth to weather injuries.

And I say this from experience. In our recent Faceoff staff best ball league, I drafted seven running backs. Instead of focusing on depth, I tried to draft players I thought would get more snaps and free agents I thought would get signed.

I ended up spending several weeks with only one active and healthy running back. I was one win away from the championship game in that league. So ultimately, I would have benefited more had I targeted depth.

Best Sites to Play Best Ball on

There are several great best ball sites, including Sleeper, Yahoo, FanDuel, FFPC, Underdog, and more. On FanDuel and Underdog, you can play weekly, similar to DFS except using best ball rules. My personal favorite is Sleeper because it is user-friendly, and I love the draft board but use whatever works for you.

Thanks for reading our introduction to best ball! Feel free to reach out to us on Twitter (@FFfaceoff) anytime with questions. You can also reach me @FantasyAustin on Twitter.

Underdog is definitely one of the fastest-growing and most popular ways to play best ball leagues. Between the fantastic user interface, easy-to-use app, and how quickly and easily you can join a league, it’s really getting hard to beat it. They also have plenty of ways to deposit and withdraw your funds easily, which is a plus as well.

If you are a new user and make your first-time deposit, get a 100% deposit match of up to $100. Take advantage of this terrific offer here.