Underdog Fantasy - Staying ahead of the trend

When playing on Underdog Fantasy you are playing on the website with the sharpest ADP. As the platform that is all the rave on social media platforms, you have more sharp drafters chasing million-dollar top prizes here than anywhere else. This means the ADP is accurate, as it moves quickly, and people are applying intelligent, data-backed, strategies. Here are a few tips for staying ahead of the trends and drafting good teams on Underdog Fantasy.

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Best Ball Strategy – Fantasy Football 2021

A look at some of the ways to stay ahead of the trend while drafting with Underdog Fantasy this year.

Use the Clock – React to News

Slow drafts give you eight hours to draft and you should take as much of it as possible, especially during the day when teams are practicing. News breaks and if you are on the clock, you have the advantage of being the first to react to it. Cam Akers tore his Achilles and if you were in the middle rounds and on the clock when that happened, you were able to get Darrell Henderson, whose ADP has since climbed 60 spots. Michael Thomas is out for weeks, Carson Wentz is out for 5-12 weeks, DeVonta Smith has an MCL sprain, Aaron Rodgers is back, and just Tuesday Kenny Golladay left the field grabbing his leg. People want to rush you, but you are doing slow drafts for a reason – take advantage of it.

Know your draft type

So much content and talk on Twitter are based around the best ball mania or The Puppy Tournament on Underdog Fantasy. Those are massive tournaments where you don’t have to just win your league, but also have to try to finish top three in each week of the playoffs in order to advance to the million-dollar finals. This creates the need to build around win rates and top one percent rates. When you are drafting in a standard 12 team league, you want to ignore some of the noise and avoid hyper fragility. You don’t get extra points for beating your opponents by more and the risk vs. reward factor in going hyper fragile simply isn’t there. You don’t play with the same DFS strategy in cash as you do in the Milly Maker on DraftKings, so why would you do it in best ball?

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When to draft running backs in fantasy football

I love starting the draft with a workhorse back, or two, but once that is done, I am waiting until after the run of all the other positions before I go back to the well in double-digit rounds (excluding when someone of value falls drastically). The theory is pretty simple, as Tom Moore said it best. Jon Gruden asked Tom Moore, Indianapolis’ longtime offensive coordinator and the architect of the Colts offense, why Peyton Manning was the only quarterback practicing. “Fellas, if 18 [Manning] goes down, we’re fucked,” Moore said. “And we don’t practice fucked.” If I draft two workhorse backs and they don’t get the job done, the team isn’t likely to go anywhere. I can load up on backs to embrace for injuries, but that is a waste of roster space and caps my upside. Be like Tom Moore when entering best ball tournaments – play for first and don’t hedge rosters during the draft.

Now, if you don’t draft a running back early, which is all the rage right now, that works as well, but you need to press your advantage. Running back health is fickle and zero-RB embraces the variance at the position. To make it work, you really have to press the advantage. You don’t start off taking three receivers and come back to a Mike Davis in Round 4 – you want to continue to load up on receivers and tight ends to start your draft. Have the advantage against the rest of your league in those positions – while adding running backs post-dead zone – in Rounds 8+. I am looking for running backs with pass-catching roles that are an injury away from a major role in the offense in this area.

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Zig while others zag

While the strategy of zero-RB has been proven effective, producing higher than average win rates for five straight years, it is not required. The more teams you do, the more strategies you should try. The biggest thing for me is knowing when to execute it. If you are in a league and it is clear everyone is trying to go zero-RB, they are destroying their contrarian angle that gave the expected value to begin with. The goal of zero-RB is to create a team that is different and being unique naturally gives you an advantage. Simple math dictates you can’t be unique if everyone else in the league is trying to do the same thing. These are the teams you go outside the box and build a unique roster, especially in large-field tournaments.

Embracing variance – Going hyper fragile

What is hyper fragile? It is defined exactly as “extremely easily broken.” In best ball, this means you are drafting below the norm positional requirements to create advantages with the rest of your team. It could be one quarterback if you draft Patrick Mahomes, one tight end if you draft Travis Kelce or Darren Waller, only three or four running backs if you add them early, or six or fewer receivers. On the surface, this makes people uncomfortable, as an injury to Mahomes in this situation would sink your team. But best ball, especially large-field tournaments, is to be played like you are Ricky Bobby. Creating these roster types make people uncomfortable, which leads to them not doing it and that is exactly what creates the advantage.

This is a strategy that worked for last year’s champion, as he only drafted four running backs and 10 receivers, creating unique roster builds gives you an advantage in playoff weeks. The win rate for these teams is not higher – in fact, it is often lower – however, the top 1% rate is nearly four times higher with teams like this. You have to embrace the game type you are in if you are going to be hyper fragile, it is for large-field tournaments only.