Best Ball Draft Mistakes

We’ve spent a lot of time covering different best ball strategies to best optimize your drafts. However, there are mistakes that happen far too often by both casuals and experts in this space. Although it’s still early in the offseason, best ball drafts are already in full swing, making it critical to have a full understanding of what not to do to maximize your results.

Reaching

One of the best ways to extrapolate the most value in drafts is to avoid reaching or going too far away from ADP. We all have players we feel are undervalued and should be going earlier, but taking them too early puts you at a significant disadvantage against the field if others can select the same player at a cheaper cost. If you’re trying to complete a stack and/or only drafting a handful of teams, reaching to “get your guys” is more acceptable, as long as you don’t go beyond a round and a half away from ADP. Reaching becomes a lot more viable at the end of drafts, when most of the players available are essentially dart-throws with a wide range of outcomes.

Overstacking

Stacking is critical for best ball tournaments. It helps limit the things you need to “get right” and creates correlation within your roster. However, overstacking or selecting too many players from the same team and/or a single-game environment actually limits your ceiling and should be avoided. 

Dead Roster Spots

The easiest way to set yourself up for success is to avoid dead roster spots or players that carry a high risk of being a complete zero throughout the season. This often happens early in the offseason, especially before free agency and the actual NFL draft. Veterans in ambiguous situations or rookies without guaranteed draft capital are okay to sprinkle in here and there. However, it’s best to play it safe until we get closer to the start of the season and prioritize players we feel confident will at least be on the field.

Prioritizing Week 17

Outside of cumulative scoring contests, the big money is won in Week 17, where the last remaining teams are paid out based on their finish in the final game of the fantasy season. Although making it to Week 17 should be the end goal, looking too far ahead is more likely to hurt you than help you. Drafting players based on their Week 17 matchup is fine to use as a tiebreaker, but it should never be the priority. Without an actual schedule, stacking for Week 17 isn’t possible, but something to keep in mind later in the offseason.