Playoff best ball is BACK, and Jonathan is here to break down the strategies that you need to know!
First we'll hit you with the general Macro Strategy, and then we'll DIVE DEEP into the players and teams that you need to stack with some Micro Strategy!
Playoff Best Ball Macro Strategy
Playoff best ball is a fantastic game that packs all of the draft strategy, game theory, and player evaluation of season-long best ball into the NFL playoffs. There are a variety of different contests available from many of the major fantasy platforms. Today we are going to primarily focus on the contests offered by Underdog Fantasy, but a lot of these strategy lessons apply to other formats as well.
What is best ball?
Best ball is a season-long fantasy football format that allows you to focus on the best part of fantasy football – the draft. Best ball involves zero in-season management and is all about draft strategy. Roster sizes and scoring often mimic what you’d see in a regular season-long fantasy football league with the exception that you generally are awarded a few extra bench spots.
Since you are not allowed to make trades, waiver pickups or set lineups, once you have drafted your lineup for the year is set. With no ability to compensate for injuries or other factors, proper position allocation when drafting is crucial. If you allocate too many picks to one position, you risk limiting your upside in other areas.
Scoring in best ball is simple. Once the season begins, the top scorers from each position on your roster will count towards your point total for that week. The scoring is done automatically and any player on your roster, regardless of when they were taken, is eligible to count as long as they are active and scoring points.
Differences between Playoff best ball & Season Long
The biggest difference between season long best ball contests on Underdog and playoff best ball is the elimination factor. Since playoff best ball involves a round-by-round format that goes up to and includes the Super Bowl, once a team is eliminated from the playoffs the players you draft from that team will no longer be eligible to gain you points.
That means a large part of the strategy in playoff best ball involves loading up on players from teams who have a good shot at staying alive into the deeper rounds.
This can also lead to different types of draft strategies, which include being overweight on teams who are big underdogs in the early playoff rounds. Player’s from those teams will likely be very lowly rostered – and potentially not even drafted. With lots of top heavy payouts throughout the industry, taking a high risk, high reward strategy can often be a worthwhile and statistically correct gamble.
There are other key differences between the two formats as well. Smaller roster sizes in playoff best ball (10 roster spots vs 18 in season long) means we don’t have the luxury of having a deep bench to potentially bail us out if one of our stars gets injured or has a poor week.
While the starting lineups are also smaller (see below) every pick in playoff best ball will be crucial as even one lost roster spot due to injury or a team being eliminated could kill a team’s chance at advancing.
Know your format
The first and most important step to winning in playoff best ball is to understand your contest format. The contests on Underdog involve drafting a 10-player roster in a 6-team draft with a knockout structure that eliminates teams in each round of the NFL playoffs. For example, in the Gauntlet contest, you have to win your group (6 teams Rd 1-2, 8 teams Rd 3) in each round to advance. Other sites may use different formats such as cumulative scoring or multipliers for each round, be sure to read and understand the rules to make sure you are playing optimally.
On Underdog, we have to fill a 5-player starting roster each week consisting of 1 QB, 1 RB, 2 WR/TE, and 1 FLEX.
These contests are top-heavy tournaments, with the majority of prize money going to just a few teams. This means we need to make sure we are thinking about potential Super Bowl matchups and drafting teams that actually have a path to fielding a full roster when the big money is won.
In practice, this means balancing exposures to each conference, thinking through playoff probabilities, potential matchups, and ADP values to build teams that can survive and advance through multiple rounds. Now let’s take a closer look at the concepts that will help us achieve this.
Roster Construction
If you were with us through hot best ball summer you are familiar with the concept of roster construction. In addition to thinking about how many players to draft at each position, we also have to pay attention to how many players from each team and each conference we are drafting.
Since we know there will only be one team left from each conference it wouldn’t make sense to take 8 AFC players from 4 different teams. My general rule is to take 4-6 players from each conference, split across 1-3 teams in each conference.
I also always want to make sure I have at least 6 players who are playing in Round 1 of the playoffs so that my team has a shot at advancing.
Positionally, you want to draft 1-2 QBs, 2-3 RBs, and 5-7 WRs, depending on your approach to each draft.
The only major mistake you can make while sticking to these guidelines would be drafting one QB and having them be on bye in Round 1. So if you are drafting before playoff seeding is set, you need to be aware of the potential seeding scenarios.
If you are fortunate enough to draft Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes, you need to give serious thought to whether or not you draft a second QB. I like to take risks when drafting before we know the full playoff picture, but it wouldn’t be wrong to take a second QB until we know who has the bye.
I have drafted every variety of team from 5-5 (5 players from one NFC team, 5 players from one AFC team) to 4-2-2-2 (4 players from one team, then two players from three separate teams in the other conference) and everything in between.
Part of the fun of these contests is coming up with unique team structures that could pay off in different scenarios. It may seem tempting to just draft Chiefs, Bills, and Eagles players, but we must remember the chaos of the NFL. Just last season, the Super Bowl featured the #4 seeds from each conference. If the 2022 season ended today, that would be the Buccaneers and Jaguars, which is not a matchup I have heard anyone predict.
Team Stacking
Team stacking is even more important in playoff best ball than regular season best ball. I always want to make sure I have 2-3 other players from the same team as each QB that I draft. Since the goal is making it to the final round and fielding a full roster in the Super Bowl, you can’t draft to win without stacking. It is also much more viable to stack QB-RB in playoff best ball, even if the RB doesn’t catch passes.
We can also incorporate more matchup-specific information. I will usually try to avoid drafting players on teams who face each other in Round 1 because it guarantees a portion of my roster will be eliminated in the first round. However, I am absolutely willing to break that for a great ADP value or a player combination that I think gives me an excellent chance to advance from that first round.
Understand ADP Values
Another advantage we can get on our opponents is looking for teams that are under drafted relative to their playoff odds.
Personally, I like to reference the FiveThirtyEight Playoff Probabilities and BetMGM odds for Super Bowl and Division winners.
The second part of understanding ADP values is being familiar with which player combinations are easier to get vs which ones are rare.
Players who go in the first round, like Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce are nearly impossible to pair together, while a combo such as Jalen Hurts and AJ Brown is possible but not always available. Understanding how draft boards usually play out is extremely valuable so you can recognize and capitalize on unique situations when they do occur.
One of the more difficult parts of drafting for playoff best ball tournaments is deciding at what point you draft a better player over one who is a better structural fit.
While I usually favor the structural drafting side, there is a point at which a player with a high ceiling for Round 1 is more valuable than a deep-depth piece on a team that I am stacking. For example, rotational wide receivers on great teams like Isaiah McKenzie and Quez Watkins are drafted in a similar range to stud WRs on teams that don’t appear to be Super Bowl contenders, such as Chris Godwin and Mike Evans.
Aug 25, 2022; Kansas City, Missouri, USA; Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes (left) and tight end Travis Kelce (right) talk with former NFL receiver Steve Smith (center) before a preseason game against the Green Bay Packers at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports
The correct answer on who to take late in drafts comes down to the rest of your roster and whether a unique, correlated piece for the later rounds is more valuable than a one-off player who is just there to help you advance from Round 1.
Ultimately, many of the high-level strategies that we use for season-long best ball still apply to the playoff contests; we just have to think about them a little bit differently.
As long as you stick to the strategies discussed in this article, you are giving yourself a chance to draft a big winner.
