While most best-ball leagues are standard 12-team affairs, large-field best ball tournaments have seen an explosion in popularity over the last 12 months. DRAFT has been able to manage some especially large events. The $3.5M Draft Championship with a $25 entry fee and $1,000,000 first prize has already started drafting and similar tournaments at different buy-in levels are likely to be introduced later this summer.
The draft experience in these large-field tournaments is no different than in your typical best ball league. You will be matched against 11 opponents for a 12-team snake draft. You will compete against only these 11 opponents for the first 12 weeks of the season, with the winner of each 12-team league advancing to the playoffs, which begin in Week 13.
While the draft process is identical to other best ball leagues, the optimal strategy for these tournament drafts is drastically different. The top-heavy payout structures put a huge premium on advancing deep into the playoffs. You need to assemble a team that is even better than most of the other league-winning teams and you need to do your best to assemble a team that is capable of finishing strong in the all-important four-week playoff stretch (Weeks 13-16).
In this article, we will outline some of the key strategies that can increase your chances of making a deep run in one of these large-field best ball tournaments, including:
- Stacking
- Targeting Youth
- Prioritizing Late-Season Production
- Maximizing Upside with Roster Construction
1. Stack to Win
Drafting a quarterback and at least one of his pass catchers (“stacking”) has been a popular daily fantasy strategy for years. It is also an excellent strategy in the biggest best ball tournaments. Stacking is a strong strategy not only for the playoffs but also the regular season.
The benefits in the playoffs are clear. In DRAFT’s biggest tournament, 87.5% of the remaining entries are eliminated each week from Weeks 13 to 15. The final 27 entries then face off in a Week 16 final with a top-heavy payout structure. If you are lucky enough to make the finals, a correlated lineup is more likely to post a big score than one that is not. For example, if Julio Jones has a huge fantasy week, then Matt Ryan is more likely to also have a big week compared to a random quarterback. Plus, if you have Ryan or Jones but not both, you could fall behind competitors who were able to stack the pair. Another way to think about it is that to advance in Week by finishing in the Top 3 (out of 24 teams) will likely require a 25+ point performance from both your quarterback and top receiver. Odds are better of hitting both of those benchmarks in the same week with two teammates than otherwise.
The season-long benefits to stacking might be slightly less obvious but follow a similar logic. If your pass catcher out-performs his ADP-based expectations over the course of the season, your quarterback is more likely to as well. Let’s look at an example of how stacking would have helped you in 2018:
| QB/TE Stacks | 2018 Points versus ADP |
| Patrick Mahomes II/Travis Kelce | 164 |
| Patrick Mahomes II/Rob Gronkowski | 48.3 |
| Tom Brady/Travis Kelce | 24.8 |
| Tom Brady/Rob Gronkowski | -90.9 |
Let’s imagine Player A participated in two best ball tournament drafts last season. He targeted an elite tight end early in both drafts, landing Travis Kelce in one and Rob Gronkowski in the other. However, he did not assemble a stack in either league and ended up with the Kelce/Brady combo in one league and the Mahomes/Gronkowski combo in the other. Both of these combinations exceeded ADP-based expectations but not by much. Unless Player A really crushed some of his other draft picks, he probably finished in the top half of his 12-team leagues but didn’t finish first in either and left with no money.
Player B also participated in two tournaments and made stacking a priority. He drafted Kelce early and then made sure to target Mahomes slightly ahead of ADP to complete his stack. He did the same with Gronkowski and Brady. The Patriots stack was a disaster and may have led to a last-place finish. However, in these tournaments, 12th place and 2nd place after Week 12 both lead to the same $0 payout. His Chiefs stack would have put him will on his way to winning the other league and would have also set him up well to make a deep run in the playoffs and take home a large cash prize. Over the long run and all else being equal, Player B is going to win more money than Player A with his approach to stacking offenses.
Stacking helps increase your variance, which is a great thing in these tournaments. It helps you assemble a “first or last” team as opposed to a team most likely to finish near the middle of the pack.
Stacking Targets
While stacking is a good strategy in general, it is especially attractive if you can do it with an offense that has a lot of unknowns and untapped upside. Some of the more interesting stacking opportunities for 2019 include:
- Baker Mayfield (Odell Beckham, Jarvis Landry, and/or David Njoku)
- Cam Newton (Curtis Samuel or D.J. Moore)
- Kyler Murray (Christian Kirk, Andy Isabella, and/or Larry Fitzgerald)
- Lamar Jackson (Mark Andrews or Marquise Brown)
- Jameis Winston (Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, and/or O.J. Howard)
2. Target Youth
Stacking is one way to increase variance. Targeting high-upside young players in your draft is another.
One of the biggest keys to winning a huge best ball tournament is finding a few players who massively outperform their ADP. In most cases, these players who hugely exceed expectations are younger players. Breakout fantasy seasons typically come relatively early in a player’s career. There are always a few counter-examples one can point to (Jared Cook for instance) but these are the exceptions to the rule. Aside from rare exceptions (which we will discuss below), if a player is going to emerge as a star fantasy performer, it is going to happen in the first few years of their career. In general, the more information we have about players (based upon their previous NFL performances), the more accurate their fantasy projections and ADP. Due to less information, the biggest outliers will be young players.
The theory that the home run, tournament-winning picks in best ball drafts will be young makes logical sense but can we prove it with numbers?
Looking to last season as an example and calculating each player’s true best ball value (see here for details), we can compare the true values to expected value based upon ADP and determine which players most over or under-performed expectations. For example, a player with an ADP of 114 should be expected to contribute about 40 real points above replacement level scores. George Kittle, with his ADP of 114 last season contributed 109.6 real points, substantially out-performing expectations. The positive difference between his real contribution and ADP-based expectations made him the 8th best pick in 2018 Drafts. Using this process, here were the 10 best picks in 2018 DRAFTs:
| Rank | Player | Real Points Above ADP | Age |
| 1 | James Conner | 136.6 | 23 |
| 2 | Patrick Mahomes II | 107.7 | 22 |
| 3 | Phillip Lindsay | 90.2 | 24 |
| 4 | Eric Ebron | 79.5 | 25 |
| 5 | Tyler Boyd | 76.7 | 23 |
| 6 | Christian McCaffrey | 75 | 22 |
| 7 | James White | 73.1 | 26 |
| 8 | George Kittle | 69.6 | 24 |
| 9 | Robert Woods | 68.3 | 26 |
| 10 | Jared Cook | 60 | 31 |
Looking at the ages of the players who most exceeded expectations and provided the biggest edge, we see our hypothesis is confirmed. The average age of the six players to exceed ADP expectations by 70+ real points had an average age of 23-years old and the oldest of the group, Eric Ebron, was just 25-years old.
Targeting youth looks to be especially important at the running back and wide receiver positions. Of the 17 running backs and wide receivers to exceed their ADP-based expectations by 35 points or more, only one was over the age of 26 (28-year old Adam Thielen). The vast majority were 24-years old or younger.
High-Upside Young Targets
Miles Sanders (ADP: 80) Over the last few seasons, it has become common-place for rookie running backs to quickly emerge as fantasy stars. Its notable that the success hasn’t been limited the first-round backs like Saquon Barkley and Ezekiel Elliott. Recent 2nd and 3rd-round rookies like Kareem Hunt, Alvin Kamara, and Nick Chubb also starred. Sanders could follow in their footsteps.
Christian Kirk (ADP: 76) There is a wide range of possible outcomes when it comes to this Arizona offense. Not only is Kyler Murray a potentially unique talent with the ability to make those around him better, but we also have a former college coach who has spent most of the past 20 years quarterbacking or coaching the fantasy-friendly Air Raid offense. Kirk is just 22-years old and should make a step forward in his second season. We have no idea how big that step will be, which exactly makes him such an intriguing target.
Curtis Samuel (ADP: 95) If you’re looking for the next Tyler Boyd (third-year breakout), Samuel might be your guy. While he is entering his third season, Samuel won’t turn 23 years old until mid-August. Unlike some of the veteran receivers going off the board in the mid-rounds, we don’t know Samuel’s ceiling and this wide range of potential outcomes is appealing for tournaments.
Deebo Samuel (ADP: 175) Calvin Ridley was the 23rd-best pick in last year’s best ball drafts, easily outperforming his 11th-round ADP. Ridley was drafted 26th overall in the 2018 draft and entered the NFL as one of the older rookies in the class, at 23 years old. This year, Samuel will also enter the NFL as a 23-year old rookie after being drafted 36th overall. By all accounts, Samuel has locked down a starting job and will compete with fellow 23-year old Dante Pettis to be the WR1 for the 49ers. Samuel is just one example of the type of high-upside young players we want to target with some of our late round picks.
3. Prioritize Late-Season Production
The biggest difference between a typical best ball league and a large tournament is the outsized importance of fantasy scoring in the final 4 weeks versus the first 12 weeks when it comes to increasing the Expected Value (“EV”) of your entry. If you buy the premise and don’t care to see any of the math behind it, skip ahead to the next section where we discuss how we can attempt to backload our fantasy scoring to maximize the chances our team is peaking late in the season.
It can be illuminating to try to put numbers on vague ideas like the importance of one playoff week versus on regular season week. In doing so, we find that a boost in fantasy scoring in any one of the three playoff weeks before the final (Weeks 13-15) is more than 7x as valuable as a boost in scoring in one of the regular season weeks.
We can easily quantify how much our EV changes based upon the specific payout structure of any tournament based upon different assumptions about our odds of advancing. For example, let’s look below at how much our EV changes in two scenarios when applied to DRAFT’s $25 Best Ball Championship.
| Scenario | Make Playoffs | Adv to Week 14 | Adv to Week 15 | Adv to Finals | EV |
| Base | 8.50% | 12.50% | 12.50% | 12.50% | ($3.48) |
| Cumulative Base | 8.50% | 1.063% | 0.133% | 0.017% | |
| Scenario 1 (10% boost during regular season) | 9.41% | 12.50% | 12.50% | 12.50% | ($1.19) |
| Cumulative 1 | 9.41% | 1.176% | 0.15% | 0.01837% | |
| Scenario 2 (10% boost during playoffs) | 8.50% | 13.75% | 13.75% | 13.75% | $0.62 |
| Cumulative 2 | 8.50% | 1.169% | 0.16% | 0.02210% | |
| Expected Winnings Base | $6.32 | $3.19 | $1.58 | $10.43 | $21.52 |
| Expected Winnings with 10% boost W1-12 | $6.99 | $3.53 | $1.75 | $11.54 | $23.81 |
| Expected Winnings with 10% boost W13-15 | $6.32 | $3.51 | $1.91 | $13.89 | $25.62 |
In scenario 1, we assume that we can increase our odds of winning our 12-team league by 10% and keep all else unchanged.
In scenario 2, we assume we can increase our odds of advancing in the playoffs by 10% (Weeks 13-15) and keep all else unchanged.
In short, improving our odds of making the playoffs by 10% adds $2.29 to the EV of our entry. The alternative, improving our odds of advancing in the playoffs, adds $4.10 to the EV of our entry. Given that the second boost is over a period of just 3 weeks, compared to the 12 weeks of scenario 1, the importance of those three weeks is even more pronounced.
Back-Loading
Building a team more likely to put up big scores later in the season is easier said than done. However, there are a few steps we can take to try to maximize our chances that our team is peaking if it makes it to the fantasy playoffs.
1. Take the discount on suspended/injured stars. Last season, Julian Edelman (4-game suspension) and Alshon Jeffery (early injury) fell a couple of rounds further in best ball drafts than they might have had they been available Week 1. Their big fantasy playoff performances more than made up for any negatives that came from their early absences.
In 2019, Tyreek Hill looks like a prime candidate if looking for a potentially elite playoff performer outside of the first few rounds of the draft. Even if his expected suspension slightly decreases your chances of making the playoffs, your better odds of advancing with him on your roster in the fantasy playoffs should more than make up for it based on the outsized importance of those late weeks in the tournament format. Emmanuel Sanders, Chris Herndon, Kareem Hunt, Derrius Guice, and others also come at a slight discou
