Best Ball Strategy. Biggest Takeaways from the 2023 Season.
2024 best ball contests have already dropped, which means that there's no rest for the weary.
But before I dive into 2024 strategy, it's always a good idea to look back at the 2023 season first for some takeaways and lessons learned. Once you're ready to immerse yourself in 2024 best ball, be sure to check out Ian’s initial Big Board thoughts and our Top 150 rankings from both Freedman and Dwain.
Best ball is a unique beast in that each season is essentially "one slate". This means that we shouldn’t be making sweeping conclusions based on a small sample size, but at the same time, we still need to review how the season unfolded so that we can improve our play going forward.
Here are four things I’ve been thinking about with 2023 in the rearview mirror…
Aggressively target rookie WRs across the board
I was all over the top rookie WR prospects in 2023 drafts. Jaxon Smith-Njigba was my most drafted player, and there was a period of time where I never left a draft without Marvin Mims. I had a regrettable amount of Quentin Johnston, but I also drafted Jordan Addison and Zay Flowers whenever I could.
All that being said, I had a depressingly small amount of Tank Dell and Puka Nacua shares in my portfolio.
Why is that?
It wasn’t because they weren’t on my radar. In fact, I wrote about both Dell and Nacua in the Fantasy Life Newsletter way back on May 25th, which is what makes their absence in my portfolio sting even more.
I let myself get too anchored to early prospect evaluations as well as NFL Draft capital, or lack thereof. And then I compounded that mistake by not reacting to new information like the steady drumbeat of positive news from their respective training camps.
Sep 17, 2023; Denver, Colorado, USA; Denver Broncos wide receiver Marvin Mims Jr. (19) runs for a touchdown against Washington Commanders safety Percy Butler (35) after a catch in the first quarter at Empower Field at Mile High. Mandatory Credit: Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports
The biggest process error, though, was having so much Mims at a similar price point while being egregiously underweight Dell and Nacua.
We know that rookie WRs are phenomenal best ball bets across the board. However, so we shouldn’t be making massive bets on just one or two late-round rookie WRs over the rest knowing that the probability of any one rookie WR hitting from that range of the draft isn't going to be significantly greater.
TLDR: Make bets on rookie WRs regardless of cost, but mix and match them across drafts.
React quickly to new information in August
Nacua wasn’t the only Rams player I didn’t have enough of, as I had very little Kyren Williams across my portfolio.
I did a good job avoiding dead roster spots early in drafting season, which is something that Mike Leone highlighted the importance of in his terrific Best Ball Manifesto.
But the flip side of not guessing on ambiguous backfield depth charts early in drafting season is pushing your chips in on the No. 2 RB when we do eventually get clarity on these backfields. As we neared Week 1, it became very clear that Williams was the clear No. 2 RB in Los Angeles and that rookie Zach Evans was unlikely to figure into the equation.
This isn’t just results-based analysis with Cam Akers getting exiled, either. Any clear No. 2 RB in a functional offense deserves to be drafted in the later rounds, and I was too slow to react to the new information surrounding Williams's position on the depth chart.
Devin Singletary and Chuba Hubbard were two of my priority No. 2 RB targets throughout the summer, but not pivoting some of those shares to Williams, who became a stone cold league-winner, capped the ceiling of my best ball rosters in both the regular season and fantasy playoffs.
TLDR: Avoid RB risks and dead roster spots early in the offseason but get aggressive in August just before the season kicks off.
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Don’t exactly replicate what worked last year
There’s a big temptation to assume that whatever worked well last year will work again the following year. But as we mentioned in the intro, we're dealing with extremely small sample sizes in best ball.
In 2023, zero RB went mainstream, and WR avalanches were commonplace in drafts after a zero RB team won the regular season prize in Underdog Fantasy’s Best Ball Mania III contest.
That shift presented a unique drafting landscape where selecting high-upside RBs in the “dead zone” (typical Rounds 3 to 7) became a viable counter strategy.
If you were tethered to the previous year's results, your roster construction likely wouldn't have gotten you much exposure to RBs like Breece Hall, Jahmyr Gibbs, Kenneth Walker, Isiah Pacheco, David Montgomery, and a host of other RBs who delivered a nice return relative to their ADP.
Jan 7, 2024; Foxborough, Massachusetts, USA; New York Jets running back Breece Hall (20) breaks a tackle from New England Patriots safety Kyle Dugger (23) during the first half at Gillette Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brian Fluharty-USA TODAY Sports
In 2024, my hunch is that the market is going to overreact to a perceived “3QB meta” and not draft enough 2QB teams.
Last year, injuries decimated the mid tier of QBs like Aaron Rodgers, Anthony Richardson, Joe Burrow, Kirk Cousins, and Deshaun Watson. At the same time, quite a few late-round QBs emerged as viable fantasy starters, such as C.J. Stroud, Brock Purdy, Jordan Love, and Sam Howell.
Both of these dynamics are unique, and it’s especially unique that they occurred in the same year. I’m sure that I'll have plenty of 3QB teams in my 2024 portfolio, but the takeaway is to make sure that you're still allocating draft capital correctly to the QB position within each draft regardless of what occurred last year.
3QB teams make sense when you “punt” the position and wait until the final rounds to start drafting signal callers. However, it would still likely be a mistake to draft an elite QB early, take another QB in the middle rounds, and then still tack on a third QB late. Don't try to duplicate the success of 3QB from 2023 by trying to protect yourself from a boogeyman injury risk.
TLDR: Regardless of what happened last year, we still want to be drafting either quality or quantity at each position, not both.
Lean into stacks of all kinds
We all want the “clean stacks” in our drafts, namely a QB with multiple pass-catchers on his team.
But that’s not always possible, especially when uninformed drafters go rogue and take a naked QB even after you've already selected multiple pass-catchers from that team.
The benefits of stacking, though, aren't limited to just QBs with their pass-catchers. We can still get the correlation benefits of that offense exceeding expectations by taking multiple pieces from a single offense.
The winner of BBM4, AMEEN0811, said in an interview that he got sniped on his QB stacks twice during the winning draft. After taking Amon-Ra St. Brown and Sam LaPorta, he missed out on Jared Goff by one pick. Instead, he pivoted to Jordan Love and built a backdoor stack with Jayden Reed.
Even though he didn’t have Goff, he still benefited from the Lions' success in the fantasy playoffs and won the tournament thanks to the Reed selection.
It’s especially important to lean into these team-level correlations early in the offseason when we have very little information before free agency, the NFL Draft, and training camps.
TLDR: Don’t stop stacking just because you missed out on a QB.
With these four best ball lessons from 2023 in mind, let's now turn the page to the 2024 season. I’ll see you in the draft lobbies.
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