Here at Fantasy Life, we LOVE best ball. You’ll catch our team in the Underdog draft lobbies every day.
You can also watch our team draft and talk strategy on YouTube and use our best ball hub to analyze your own portfolio of teams. So yeah, we really love best ball.
Now that we have been drafting for a few months, we wanted to take a look at who we have been selecting most often in our best ball drafts.
We crunched the numbers from more than 550 completed drafts to find who Fantasy Life’s favorite player through the first half of drafts has been.
So without further ado, Fantasy Life’s most drafted player is…Saints rookie RB Kendre Miller.
Miller has already been drafted more than 90 times by our team this summer. Although he is part of a crowded backfield, the third round rookie has multiple paths to delivering value. He is talented enough to force his way onto the field, he is versatile enough to fill in for multiple roles if there is an injury ahead of him, and there is still the possibility of an Alvin Kamara suspension.
With an ADP in the 12th round (pick 138), our team clearly likes the cost-adjusted bet that Miller represents. I personally have 16% Miller in my best ball portfolio, and I often feel like he is the last available player of the tier of high-upside RBs in uncertain backfields.
But Miller isn’t the only rookie we like. I looked at the numbers for every position and there were rookies popping up left and right.
A few of those players even feature on the list of our most drafted players at every position, which I have now deemed The All Fantasy Life Team.
This group of players provides some interesting insights into how our team is approaching drafts.
We’ve got the rookie fever
Among the other notable rookies that didn’t make the All Fantasy Life team are Anthony Richardson (our second most drafted QB), Roschon Johnson, Zach Charbonnet, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and Jayden Reed, who are all being drafted at a high clip by our team.
June 14, 2023; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Indianapolis Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson (5) gives a high-five to Colts running back Jonathan Taylor (28) on Wednesday, June 14, 2023, during mandatory minicamp at the Indiana Farm Bureau Football Center in Indianapolis. Mandatory Credit: Mykal McEldowney-USA TODAY Sports
We know rookies tend to peak late in the season when we need it most for best ball, and our team clearly believes the 2023 class will deliver some league winners.
Still waiting for a dip in elite QB prices
Our team is generally avoiding the most expensive QBs in favor of the mid-to-late-round upside bets like Richardson and Love.
Rounding out our top 5 most-drafted at the position are Dak Prescott, Tua Tagovailoa, and Daniel Jones, who all go in a similar range of drafts (rounds 8-10) when the talent at WR really dries up.
A clear favorite anchor RB
Tony Pollard is a bit of an outlier because he is the only highly-priced RB to crack our top 40 most-drafted players, checking in at our second most-drafted player overall. Given his second-round ADP, this makes Pollard the most significant stand our team is taking early in drafts.
We don’t want to miss the boat on elite TE
Lastly, our team really likes the end of the tier for TEs with elite season-long upside. Dallas Goedert, Kyle Pitts, and Darren Waller rank as three of our most frequently drafted TEs.
It’s no coincidence that this group comes off the board as the TEs 5-7 and are among the last guys that can comfortably be drafted as the first TE on a two-TE team. Waiting much longer to grab your first TE usually means you will need to take a third, which comes at the cost of depth elsewhere.
Special thanks to Pete, Geoff, Joe, Jake, James, and Jordan for contributing their player exposures to this analysis.
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