Best Ball Zero RB Strategy & Recap
Best Ball is the perfect way to kick start your fantasy football draft season, allowing you to learn the player pool and practice navigating yourself through drafts without the commitment of managing the teams all year long. While it’s very quick and easy to draft a ton of Best Ball teams, there is more complexity and strategy to the format than you might think. It’s important to consider things such as roster construction, stacking, positional value, and fantasy playoff matchups while drafting a team if you want to maximize your shot at coming out on top. Not only do you need to focus on winning your 12-man league through the first 14 weeks, but you also need to build your team to maximize its playoff potential, especially for Week 17 which represents the final round with all of the big prizes. I’ll walk you through my thought process of a recent draft I did on Underdog Fantasy, where I undertook a zero RB approach from draft slot number 3.
Rounds 1-6
Drafts for best ball will look a lot different than your typical season-long drafts, especially when it comes to how wide receivers and running backs are prioritized. Since you’re trying to maximize your total point output and your best scores automatically count every week, wide receivers are pushed way up draft boards. They typically have much higher single-game ceilings than running backs, and are also less likely to get injured, which would quickly ruin a best ball team where there are no transactions. This makes the zero RB strategy a very strong option, and it’s exactly what I did here, not taking a single running back with my first six picks. Ceedee Lamb was an easy choice at third overall, as was Chris Olave in round 2, who I like more than Kupp, Collins, Nabers, and Waddle who all went before him. In round 3, I was given the perfect opportunity to start building out a week 17 game stack, with Devonta Smith and the Eagles set to face off against Lamb and the Cowboys that week. In round 4 I simply took my highest-ranked WR left on the board, Tee Higgins, and followed it up with Dalton Kincaid in round 5. I like taking a top-five tight end whenever possible because it allows you to get away with drafting two tight ends instead of three, giving you an extra roster spot for a running back or receiver. In round 6, I once again went with the best receiver available, which at the time was Diontae Johnson. It may seem counterintuitive to draft a fifth wide receiver before any QB or RB since in any given week you can only start four receivers between the 3 WR and 1 FLEX spots. However, having five high-end receivers will give you access to all five of their potential ceiling weeks and protects you from bye weeks and potential down weeks from any of the five.
Rounds 7-12
The middle rounds are where I see the best value for running backs, and it’s where you want to draft the majority of your team’s rushers if you go with the zero RB approach. That’s why I started with Alvin Kamara, who isn’t too far removed from being an elite fantasy player in his own right. Choosing your quarterbacks in best ball is all about building stacks and correlation, without having to reach for it. This worked out perfectly, as I drafted Dak Prescott to pair with Lamb at pick 94, just one spot before his ADP of 95.4. In round 9 I drafted Zack Moss, who has a role on an explosive offense but his workload is ambiguous at this point. He and teammate Chase Brown figure to split the work, but either one of them could end up running away with the main job. At the next turn of picks, I took my third and fourth rushers, Devin Singletary and Gus Edwards. Since my RB2 is in an unclear playing time situation, I wanted to emphasize guaranteed volume with my next rushers. Singletary and Edwards both are in line to have guaranteed roles to start the season, and I especially like Edwards in what figures to be a run-first Chargers offense. With my 12th pick, I dipped my toe back into the WR pool, drafting Mike Williams. I think he can become a reliable WR2 for the Jets, and it sets me up to potentially draft Rodgers as my QB2 to form another stack.
Rounds 13-18
As I just mentioned, I drafted Williams to open the door for a potential selection of Aaron Rodgers, which I managed to do at pick 147. I once again avoided having to reach to gain correlation, as he was clearly the best QB available at the time I took him. I followed him up with Rashod Bateman, in round 14, who is one of my favorite late sleepers this season. At the 15/16 turn, I wanted to round out my group of running backs, taking Elijah Mitchell and Dameon Pierce. Both don’t figure to contribute much early on, but they could both be thrust into jobs in elite offenses if McCaffrey or Mixon get injured. Next, I got my third QB in Bryce Young, who pairs with WR Diontae Johnson, and I finished things off with TE2 Chig Okonkwo.
Review
Overall, I like how my team turned out. I stacked what should be a high-scoring Week 17 game between the Cowboys and Eagles with Prescott/Lamb/Smith, which will be huge if this team makes it to the final round. I also managed to pair up Rodgers/Williams and Young/Johnson. Besides the stacks, I have 5 extremely trustworthy wide receivers with two of my favorite sleepers at the position. At tight end, I am relying on Dalton Kincaid to carry the load, and I trust him to do that coming off of one of the best rookie seasons ever for a tight end. Running back is obviously the weak point in a zero RB build, but I’m confident that taking the top two scores out of Kamara/Moss/Singletary/Edwards every week will be enough for this team to compete.
