For those of you who truly live the fantasy life, you've likely already drafted a bunch of teams for 2024.

We started yapping about drafting strategies and player targets around here before the ink had barely dried on the 2023 season.

With the advent of the best ball format, it's never been easier to eat, drink, and sleep fantasy football year-round. You can draft as many teams as you please while not worrying about any of the pesky in-season time commitments (waivers, start/sits, trades, etc.).

But no amount of best ball teams can ever serve as a one-for-one replacement for YOUR MAIN LEAGUE.

You know the one I'm talking about. It could be with your high school buddies. It could be the Scott Fish Bowl (speaking of…make sure you check out the Scott Fish Bowl tool!). It could be the lone high-stakes entry you pony up for to compete against the big boys.

Answers may vary, but there's nothing quite like gearing up for the redraft-managed league you care about the most. 

But if you've been drafting tens (or hundreds…or thousands) of best ball teams this summer, it can be tricky to swap out your best ball brain for a redraft one.

Sure, we are still drafting from the same player pool, but the format, scoring, and roster settings differ to a degree that requires a strategic shift.

Here's how to make the transition from best ball to redraft a seamless one…

The Great Best Ball/Redraft Divide

I recently wrote about the growing divide between the worlds of best ball and redraft and the examples continue to pop up.

Earlier this week I chuckled when noticing the ADP differences for Bills rookie WR Keon Coleman on ESPN/Yahoo compared to Underdog.

Then a day later, I spotted the differences in ADP for Browns RB Nick Chubb across those same sites–albeit in a different direction. 

If I had to reduce the differences between best ball and redraft ADP to a few bullet points, it would look something like this…

Best Ball Bros:

  • Upside over everything
  • Late-season production is all that matters
  • WRs go brrr
  • Rookies go brrr

Redraft Bros:

  • Median projection over everything
  • Who is the starter Week 1?
  • RBs are strong, powerful individual
  • Rookies are unproven, shaky bets

Obviously that's over-simplistic, but it's directionally accurate. If you want to explore the differences yourself, our ADP tool shows the price for each player across a bunch of different sites:

ADP

The Key Shifts To Make For Redraft

Get off to a fast start

In best ball, it doesn't really matter when the regular season points come. Your team can fend off a slow start from your RBs if De'Von Achane drops a couple of 30-burgers in Weeks 10 and 13 because those points are cumulative across all fourteen regular season weeks.

But in redraft, where you are likely playing head-to-head against a new opponent each week, a slow start means a poor record. And no amount of 30-burgers late in the season can save a team that started with a 2-8 record.

This means that we need to prioritize getting off to a fast start. We can't just load our roster with rookies and handcuff RBs. If you do target those players–and you should still be mixing them in–you need to balance it out with players who can buoy your team until their upside takes form.

Players like DeMario Douglas, Chuba Hubbard, Cade Otton, and Derek Carr are unsexy examples of cheap players across each position who can provide your teams with early-season production.

Optimize your starting lineup

One other way to get off to a fast start is to get top-tier talent at each position. In best ball, we often have the incentive to go hard on extreme strategies like Zero RB at the expense of other positions, but there's no better way to rack up wins early than to have firepower at every position.

Using our Draft Champion tool, I simulated a redraft league with ESPN settings. Something along the lines of what Team 11 "did" here would be an ideal way to implement this strategy:

Draft Champion

After five rounds, this team secured two WRs who can be their team's WR1 in A.J. Brown and Drake London, and RB1 in Jahmyr Gibbs, a QB1 in Lamar Jackson, and a TE1 in Dalton Kincaid.

Not every draft will break perfectly for this strategy, but if it falls favorably, pounce on it.

A smaller player pool

In best ball, almost every player can make sense for a roster at a certain price. Because we are trying to balance so many roster construction goals and don't have to guess when a player is going to score their points, more players are justifiable selections depending on how a draft is going.

But in redraft-managed leagues, I want to be much pickier.

Take Dontayvion Wicks for an example, who is a best ball darling right now among both touts and drafters alike. The case for Wicks is simple–he was efficient as a rookie and the ambiguous, spread-out nature of the Packers offense makes it savvy to target the cheaper piece (Jayden Reed, Christian Watson, and Romeo Doubs are all more expensive).

But in redraft, knowing when to start Wicks is going to be a nightmare. Sure, he has the upside to score 20+ in the right game environment, but he also has the chance to bagel with so many other weapons available to catch balls in Green Bay.

We can then juxtapose Wicks with some of the rookie WRs going in his range like Ja'Lynn Polk or Xavier Legette.

While we don't have confirmation that those guys can play at the NFL level like Wicks, we know they have very little target competition and could immediately ascend to the top of their team's WR depth chart if they are good.

And guess what? If they aren't, you can cut them and look for the next shiny thing on the waiver wire. But a player like Wicks can easily end up a "roster clogger" (i.e. a player who isn't good enough to start but not bad enough to cut). 

Understand your scoring settings

This one is simple. The Underdog ADP is largely driven by the tournament structures (all the prize money is won in Week 17) and settings (you can start up to 4WRs as opposed to only 3RBs). 

Get intimately familiar with your league's scoring settings. If you are unsure how it impacts ranks, you can use our Draft Champion tool to get customizable rankings after syncing your league settings:

Draft Champion

What We All Can Agree On

Despite all of these differences, there are a couple of things that are universal to both best ball and redraft leagues, although perhaps for different reasons. 

In both formats, we still need our rosters to peak in the fantasy playoffs.

Limping into the playoffs with a team that doesn't have the requisite firepower to rip off three straight good weeks is not helpful when these best ball tournaments and home leagues are paying out the champion in the playoffs.

Best ball drafters take high upside swings on rookies and contingent-based bets because they need the perfect team to beat out hundreds of thousands of rosters to win millions of dollars.

Redraft-managed league drafters should similarly take high upside swings on rookies and contingent-based bets because if they are wrong they have the safety net of the waiver wire and trade partners to patch over their holes or rebalance their team entirely.

So while the way to get to the promised land might be different, ultimately the best ball and redraft bros are trying to arrive at the same location.