Best Ball Strategy. How to Construct a Best Ball Roster.

Everyone is used to filling out a starting lineup when drafting a fantasy team in a managed league, but best ball drafting is an entirely different animal.

Because we can’t make any roster moves after the draft, we must rely on our structure to not only withstand the chaos of the regular season, but also possess the upside needed to advance through the three-week playoff gauntlet and, in the case of Best Ball Mania IV, best 440 other teams in the Week 17 final.

There are all kinds of debates in the best ball space on what roster constructions are the best—Anchor RB, Zero RB, Hyperfragile RB, Elite QB/Punt QB, Elite TE/Punt TE, etc.

But the beauty of best ball is that there is no silver bullet structure you need to employ.

All of the aforementioned strategies are viable (well, almost all of them) when executed correctly. The key is to make sure that the subsequent picks you make complement that initial structure in a way that gives your team as much upside as possible.

Here are 5 simple tips for how to construct successful teams on Underdog:

1. Try to stay within these positional limits

Although you can mostly attack the beginning of the draft however you prefer, there are general guardrails for positional allocation that we know yield the best results.

We have only 18 roster spots to work with on Underdog and need to fill a weekly starting lineup of 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 FLEX, and 1 TE. There is no one hard and fast rule on how many players you should take at each position, but I generally stay within this framework:

One interesting dynamic on Underdog is the push/pull of half-point PPR scoring (devalues pass catchers relative to full point per reception) and being able to start up to 4 WRs weekly (3 WRs and a FLEX) compared to only 3 RBs (2 RBs and a FLEX).

But drafters have clearly made up their mind in 2023 as WRs are being drafted at a higher clip than ever before:

BONUS: Dwain outlined why this ADP shift is optimal in a recent piece.

It’s no surprise that the team that won the $2,000,000 top prize in Best Ball Mania III and the team that won the $1,000,000 regular season prize both selected five WRs before Round 10. That’s a good rule of thumb to keep in mind as you draft in Underdog rooms.

2. Draft like you are right

This might be the most important lesson in all of best ball drafting. A lot of noobie drafters have the tendency to worry about how things could go wrong with their early picks and then try to protect against that later in the draft (e.g., drafting Tyler Allgeier in case Bijan Robinson gets hurt).

This kind of thinking will limit your upside and drive you toward suboptimal constructions.

Instead, assume every pick you made was a total smash and let that dictate your future decisions.

Did you start your draft with three straight RBs in a hyperfragile build like I did the other day with Christian McCaffrey, Tony Pollard, and Rhamondre Stevenson?

Yes, those are some nice RBs, but I then waited to grab my fourth (and final) RB. Why? Because I used my three most valuable picks on the RB position and worked under the assumption that they will all have great seasons and cover the 2 RB and FLEX slots each and every week.

I used the rest of my picks to attack on other positions. Speaking of which…

3. Get comfortable with quality or quantity, not both

In the example above, we drafted three high-quality RBs in the first three rounds of the draft, which means we now need a small quantity of total RBs.

On the flip side, because we missed out on all of the high-quality WRs, we needed to make up for it with a large quantity.

You can apply this sliding scale across all positions depending on what you do with your first few picks.

Did you take an Elite QB early like Jalen Hurts, Josh Allen, or Patrick Mahomes? You’ll likely want to select a maximum of 2 total QBs with the assumption that Hurts, Allen, or Mahomes will be in your lineup most weeks. You also need to keep pace with your competitors who will have selected high-upside WRs and RBs while you were taking a QB.

Did you execute a Zero RB build and start your draft with six straight WRs? You’ll likely want to only take one more WR at most as you’ll need to use the rest of your roster spots to draft six, and maybe even seven, RBs.

What you do with your first few picks truly doesn’t matter. All that matters is how you build out the rest of the roster in support of those selections.

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4. Utilize one of these 3 RB draft structures

Over the years, three dominant draft structures surrounding the RB position have emerged:

Anchor RB or Double Anchor RB (one or two RBs in first three rounds) - In 2022, Liam Murphy won Best Ball Mania II with a Double Anchor RB start (Jonathan Taylor and Aaron Jones). Last year, Pat Kerrane won Best Ball Mania III with a Double Anchor RB start (Austin Ekeler and Saquon Barkley). The key when anchoring your team with an RB or two early—and this means you are passing on high upside WRs to do so—is to make sure the RB(s) you are selecting truly have a path to a legendary season, which means 1) a big workload, 2) lots of red zone opportunities, and 3) a 3-down skill set that keeps them on the field.

Zero RB (first RB taken after round 5) - Yes, the very scary, polarizing Zero RB strategy. Last year the team that won the regular season top prize didn’t select their first RB (Miles Sanders) until the 8th round. This strategy is riskier than the others, but also has the highest upside. The chaos of the season often produces league-winning RBs from the later rounds (last year featured Sanders, Josh Jacobs, and Rhamondre Stevenson) that can supercharge a team with early WRs. When executing Zero RB, it’s important to focus on the quantity of backs (6-7) instead of quality.

Hyperfragile RB (three RBs early, no more than 4 total) - The CMC/Pollard/Stevenson example I mentioned above would be considered a hyperfragile build. Justin Herzig, the winner of the first ever Best Ball Mania in 2020, employed this strategy. After taking Alvin Kamara, Chris Carson, and David Montgomery, he added only one other RB the rest of the draft (Pollard). This is essentially the inverse of Zero RB, where we focus on the quality of the RBs instead of the quantity.

5. Let the draft room dictate your construction

It’s tempting to come into a draft with a predetermined strategy you want to utilize, but we should instead keep all of these structures in our toolbelt and let our opponents funnel us to the most optimal construction for that specific draft.

As much as I prefer Zero RB builds in a vacuum, the WR thirst in Round 2 this year has pushed me to a ton of Anchor and Double Anchor RB builds, with so many discounted backs with bellcow profiles available in Rounds 2 and 3:

What if a draft room gifts you with Travis Kelce and then you decide to pair him with his QB, Patrick Mahomes? That’s a pretty fun start, but now you’ll need to catch up at WR and RB while not selecting your TE2 and QB2 for a long time because you’ve already made such a big bet at the onesie position.

Outside of taking multiple QBs, basically any positional combination start is viable through the first few rounds:

WR-WR-WR
RB-WR-RB
WR-RB-TE
WR-QB-RB

I could keep going on and on…

The key is to understand these structures and then be flexible. It’s really hard to mess up the start of your drafts—there are endless combinations of players and positions you can justifiably select—the key, though, is ensuring that those early decisions inform what you do later in the draft.

I highly recommend reading through each of Dwain’s pieces on optimal roster construction for all four positions to get more in the weeds on how to specifically attack 2023 drafts:

After that, the best way to get comfortable with roster construction is to hop into a draft on Underdog Fantasy and get some drafts under your belt.

Stay tuned for next week’s piece where we will dive into why stacking in best ball is so important.