5 Tips for Winning $200,000 in The Underdog Fantasy Big Board
It might seem crazy, even implausible, but there is a large cohort of us fantasy sickos who are already drafting best ball teams for the 2023 season. Today, Pete shares five tips you need to know to win $200,000 in Underdog’s pre-NFL Draft contest, The Big Board…
5 tips for winning $200,000 in The Big Board
The best ball space continues to grow every year, and our friends at Underdog Fantasy recently launched their first big tournament of the offseason, The Big Board.
There’s a $1,000,000 prize pool (the same size as the first-ever Best Ball Mania prize pool if you want to benchmark how quickly best ball has exploded in just four years) with a hefty $200,000 prize for first place.
If you need a refresher on all things Underdog Fantasy, check out our guide!
This contest will close prior to the NFL Draft, and it’s currently over 43% filled at the time of this writing, meaning that it will likely fill by the end of March at this current pace.
I’ve already drafted a handfuls of teams, and there are some interesting settings and quirks when it comes to strategy that you should consider before diving in. Here’s everything you need to know to draft a winning team in The Big Board!
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The rookies are here
There’s nothing better than an influx of talent to the player pool, and the incoming class of rookie players is immediately a key element to a good draft strategy.
Year after year, rookies are among the few cohorts of players who consistently outperform their ADPs. Even more importantly, rookie production generally increases as the season goes along and peaks when it matters the most during the fantasy playoffs.
Although we don’t yet know where the players in this incoming draft class will ultimately land, we can use projected draft capital and prospect profiles to make educated guesses on the upside they present at various points of the draft.
High-pedigree rookies like Bijan Robinson (overall ADP of 13.3 as of this writing) and Jaxon Smith-Njigba (56.3) don’t come cheap in Big Board drafts, but there are plenty of rookie values at later points in the draft.
I specifically like targeting rookie RB flyers after pick No. 100, which is traditionally the sweet spot in drafts for zero RB targets who can wildly outperform their costs. Tyler Allgeier and Isiah Pacheco are a couple such examples from last year.
2023 rookie RBs like Sean Tucker (137.6), Devon Achane (141.9), Tyjae Spears (153), and Tank Bigsby (172.6) all fit this mold for me.
The rookie WRs feel more efficiently priced already, so I’m proceeding with more caution there, but the rookie QBs and TEs (more on them below) also present plenty of value in drafts for those willing to embrace risk and chase upside.
Texas Longhorns running back Bijan Robinson (5) carries the ball during the Texas Longhorns game against Baylor on Friday, Nov. 25, 2022. UT Baylor Football 02614 Credit: Mikala Compton/American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK
Two extra roster spots (20-round drafts)
Unlike the post-NFL Draft contests with 18 total rounds, Underdog has given us two extra roster spots to play with for The Big Board. This contest has 20 total rounds despite the starting lineup requirements being the same as those of traditional contests:
Having two extra picks in Rounds 19 and 20 might not seem like much, but they add tremendous flexibility to the structures you can employ while drafting.
Many of the same structural principles we discussed during hot best ball summer last offseason still apply here:
- Draft as if you are right
- Get comfortable with quality or quantity, not both
- Let the draft room dictate your construction
But the difference in The Big Board contest is that you can now push structural strategies to further extremes knowing that you can paper over your weaknesses (lack of quality) with added resources (more quantity) at the end of the draft.
For example, if you go zero RB and don’t select your first RB until Round 8 or 9, you can plan to draft seven, eight, or even nine total RBs in the later rounds. And if you don’t take a QB or TE through the first 10 rounds, you can easily select three of each position late into the draft.
Just make sure to always let your early draft picks dictate what you do in the later rounds.
The more draft capital you spend on a position early on, the fewer players you need to devote to that position later on and in total, and vice versa.
Embrace uncertainty!
There is always uncertainty when it comes to drafting and forecasting in fantasy football, but the level of uncertainty is even more extreme when you're drafting in early March.
Not only do we not know how NFL free agency will play out (March 13), but we also don't know where the rookies are going to land (April 27-29) or how the NFL regular season schedule (early May) will look.
These unknowns present difficulties for many important drafting considerations:
Bye weeks
If you only draft two QBs or two TEs, there’s a chance that the two will share the same bye week. Now, concerns about bye weeks are generally overblown since taking a zero at the TE position for one week won't kill you at a position where the average score is generally low anyway. However, you should at least be cognizant of this potential landmine.
Stacking
Over the next couple of weeks, many QBs will be on the move in free agency. That will make it difficult to prioritize stacks for some teams, and stacks are a bedrock strategy for winning tournaments. While it can admittedly be fun to try and anticipate stacks ahead of time (like pairing Aaron Rodgers with your first-round selection of Davante Adams), you’ll likely be wrong more often than not. Continue to prioritize stacks we can bank on, like Ja’Marr Chase and Joe Burrow, and make peace with the fact that some of your free agent and rookie QBs will go unstacked.
Week 17 correlation
We explained in detail last summer why correlating your pieces in Week 17 is key to winning tournaments, and that’s exactly what happened, as a Bucs/Panthers stack ultimately helped bring home a $2,000,000 win in Best Ball Mania III for Pat Kerrane. However, correlating Week 17 will be nearly impossible to do in this contest with the NFL schedule not yet released. If you really want to galaxy brain, you could try to stack teams from the same division since divisional rivals often play each other in Week 17, but even that will be a long shot.
QBs are pricey now
If you haven’t drafted since last summer, you might be surprised to learn that QBs are going much, much earlier in best ball drafts so far this offseason.
Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, and Jalen Hurts are all fixtures in the second round, and the next tier of QBs like Joe Burrow, Justin Fields, Lamar Jackson, and Justin Herbert are all typically gone before pick No. 50.
I’ve experienced a bit of sticker shock with these new QB ADPs and have been electing to utilize more late-round QB builds thus far rather than chase the elite signal callers early on in drafts.
The second round of The Big Board is usually full of promising, high-upside WRs like Garrett Wilson, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Tee Higgins, and Jaylen Waddle, and I simply can’t bring myself to pass on any of these WRs for a QB, even if it's an elite option like Mahomes.
With the two extra roster spots, it's particularly attractive to punt QB and select three QBs from Rounds 9 or 10 on. Some of my favorite values at QB in the later rounds include:
- Rounds 9 to 12: Tua Tagovailoa, Trey Lance, Daniel Jones, Russell Wilson, and Kyler Murray
- Round 13 or later: Kenny Pickett, CJ Stroud, Jordan Love, Sam Howell, and Anthony Richardson
Dec 25, 2022; Miami Gardens, Florida, USA; Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa (1) throws the football during the fourth quarter against the Green Bay Packers at Hard Rock Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports
Punting TE has never been more viable
Speaking of punting a position, it’s even more viable to punt the TE position this offseason. As we all learned in 2022, it really is Travis Kelce and then everyone else.
When you punt TE, not only do you acknowledge the talent gap between Kelce and the rest of the TEs, but you can also avoid spending premium draft capital on the lowest-scoring position in your starting lineup.
Punting TE has become an even more attractive strategy this year due to the fact that there is a plethora of great late-round TE selections in 2023.
Not only do we have a great crop of sophomore TEs who should blossom in their second years, but we also have a potentially historic rookie TE class that Daniel Jeremiah recently called the best he’s seen in 10 years.
Some of my favorite targets after pick No. 130 who fit this rookie/sophomore TE mold include Greg Dulcich, Chigoziem Okonkwo, Michael Mayer, Trey McBride, Isaiah Likely, Daniel Bellinger, and Dalton Kincaid.
See ya in the lobbies.
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