Best Ball Fantasy Strategy: Leverage Uncertainty to Win

Early best ball tournaments have become increasingly popular as best ball’s growth continues to accelerate.

While the window for early best ball has closed for 2023, it is still a good idea to discuss the advantages that can be gained by embracing uncertainty since it is human nature to avoid what we do not understand.

Best Ball Fantasy Football: Everything You Need to Know

Why We Should Embrace Uncertainty in Best Ball

Part of the answer lies in the nature of these big tournaments where the big money is all up top. Everyone is looking for leverage that will get them to the top of the leaderboard.

By embracing uncertainty rather than avoiding it, we can leverage those who do not project future landing spots as well.

Most players understand uncertainty with rookies, but the free agent window is already closed and offers a good example.

Making good assumptions about players vs. ADP can create huge advantages both in players who will rise and players who will fall.

Just take a look at the ADP of these free agent running backs from January until now.

As you can see, there are both land mines and jackpots in this group.

Therefore, while embracing uncertainty in some instances, we must use caution on older players who are going too high based on reputation.

We also need to build nice exposure to later-round players who are still in their prime.

I was able to build nice exposure on Damien Harris, D’Onta Foreman, and Rashaad Penny while almost completely avoiding Leonard Fournette, Kareem Hunt, and Jerick McKinnon.

Because that latter group still has uncertainty, they are players I am willing to take now as one of them likely will land in a good spot due to injury before the season starts.

Let’s move now to rookies.

Not everyone has success watching rookie tape and identifying talent, but I have had good success.

I “upped” my tape watching significantly this offseason, and if current ADP is a guide, have been able to gain leverage on the field by doing so.

Four players whose tape I liked more than ADP and was able to build large exposure on are Tyjae Spears, Roschon Johnson, Devon Achane, and Israel Abanikanda.

Here are the rounds the later rookie running backs were being drafted in January compared to now.

If we are able to identify talent, we are able to gain leverage both through the players we take and those we don’t.

The goal is to be more right than wrong, but being afraid to try is as bad as being wrong because avoiding these players or wildly guessing is bound to be less effective overall.

Here at Sharp Football Analysis, we do a team needs series for all 32 NFL teams led by Rich Hribar.

Rich joined the pod this week to discuss team needs as a way to gain an advantage by helping us make good assumptions rather than guessing on landing spots.

All of the top best ball players have similar processes to try to gain leverage in early best ball tourneys.

We may not know who gets a good landing spot, but identifying players who are values and assuming correctly on landing spots is a way to gain leverage through uncertainty and leverage those who are too scared or too lazy to try.

The free agents mentioned above are proof that landing spot drives ADP, and that gets us an advantage on the field in early best ball.

This is part of a best ball strategy series from expert best ball player Tod Burros.