Best Ball Strategy: The Marathon

Underdog Fantasy recently launched the second part of “Hot Best Ball Summer,” featuring a brand new contest format known as “The Marathon.”

The Marathon is a cumulative scoring tournament where each week counts the same, with no playoffs. At the end of the fantasy regular season, the top 23,000 teams out of 150,000 total entries get paid out, based on the total points accumulated in Weeks 1-17. In this article, I’m going to break down how my strategy differs in this particular tournament compared to Best Ball Mania.

Best Ball Strategy — The Marathon

Stacking

Each week is equally important, making game stacking a less viable strategy. There are no playoffs in the Marathon, which means the points scored in Week 1 hold just as much weight as the points scored in Week 17. You may choose to stack divisions, considering most teams will play each other twice in the fantasy regular season (Weeks 1-17), but placing too much emphasis on the schedule is more likely to hurt you than help you. My preferred approach is to simply focus on player takes and rankings, while still stacking individual teams. Like Best Ball Mania, team stacking is critical in this format, correlating the weekly points scored across your roster, and limiting the things you need to get right. When a team does well or exceeds expectations, the individual players are also getting carried on for the ride and are more likely outperform their average draft position.

Rookies

Rookies are being drafted earlier and earlier, especially on Underdog, but they should not be valued nearly the same in a cumulative scoring format. The main appeal for rookies is backloaded/late-season production, setting up your team for the playoffs. Because there are no playoffs in the Marathon, loading up on first-year players may get you in a hole early, unable to make up enough points once the rookies finally hit their stride. That isn’t to say that we should completely ignore rookies, but keep in mind the risk you’re taking when selecting a player who has yet to step on an NFL field. My preference is to attack rookies later in the draft, where the capital spent is less likely to hurt you, and still gives you upside in the back half of the season.

Injuries & Suspensions

Like rookies, players who are set to miss time or have a slow start to the season as a result of an injury or suspension hurt you much more in this format and should be pushed further down the board. A few players who currently stand out are Rashee Rice and Nick Chubb, who I’m often passing outside of stacks, until receiving further clarity on the situation.

Bye Weeks Taking a zero on your roster is never a good thing, but it’s definitely not something you can afford in a cumulative scoring format. In Best Ball Mania, when you spend a premium on an elite onesie position (quarterback/tight end), taking a zero on a bye week isn’t the end of the world and something you can make up when needing to finish top two in a 12-person lobby. This is not the case in the Marathon, where there are no lobbies after the draft is completed, with an end goal to score the most points possible each week.