In-Draft Adjustments and Fluidity in Best Ball Drafts

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This article is taken from the 2023 Footballguys Best Ball Guide. To download the full 60+ page guide for free, click here.

Draft rooms will always look different, and heading into a draft with a strategy in mind will not always work in your favor. You can't just load up a draft and say, "Hey, I want this draft to be an elite QB/TE build." Oftentimes when you do something like that, you will get sniped left and right on your player targets throughout the draft. You have to learn how the draft room works and adapt as you go. Don't lock yourself onto one or two specific strategies or a handful of players you must have. Have an open mind and be ready to think ahead, and enjoy the process of the draft room and how quickly it can change for you.

You also never know what draft slot you will get in each draft, and that makes a big deal in how you can set up your draft board and construct your team. If you get a top-two pick, it is easy to go with Justin Jefferson or Ja'marr Chase and build out a team from there. If you get the 1.11 or 1.12, your strategy vastly changes, and you have to wait as you see the players you like go off the board in front of you. Picking at the turn can be a big advantage or a disadvantage, depending on how you use your picks and see the draft board ahead of you. Oftentimes picking at the turn can help with stacks, help you hit position runs, or just grab two best players available if you are chasing value. At the same time, it can have the opposite effect, and you can get sniped on all the above and get frustrated and ruin the rest of your draft.

I am in the camp that there never will be a perfect draft room or a perfect draft that you will put together. If you think there is, often those are the teams that will finish fourth or fifth in your 12-man league, as teams that look great on paper are often the middle-of-the-pack type of teams. To offset some of the unexpected things in the draft room, you want to be quick on your toes, especially with a 30-second timer. Be familiar with all the tools that Underdog has to offer in the likes of rankings, roster limits, queue, your opponents, your opponents' roster constructions, position tiers, ADP, etc. I think it is foolish not to have your own set of rankings uploaded and even more foolish not to have roster limits set. This is an easy thing to do as it allows you to drop players in rankings that you are wanting to fade and raise players that you like and think are values. The position limit tool is just smart because, in fast drafts, things can come up, and the clock can run out on you. So why not just set a standard 3/5/7/3 type of limit just to protect yourself?