Best Ball leagues are a perfect past-time while everyone is on lockdown. Giving you as many drafts as you want, with no in-season work!
What Is A Best Ball League
Best Ball is a draft-only format that requires you to do the best bit of fantasy football (the draft) and nothing else. You draft your team and there is nothing else to do. No waivers, no trades, no lineup decisions. Instead, your lineup is selected for you after the games are played each week.
That gives a certain level of freedom too for players. You don’t need to agonize over a decision. No longer will you have benched your WR because he matches up against Jalen Ramsey or Patrick Peterson- just for him to blow up. Or miss on those two goal-line TDs that an RB had when he was on your bench.
For example, if you drafted Patrick Mahomes and Kirk Cousins at QB and they score 17 and 21 points in Week 1 then Kirk Cousins would be in your lineup for that week. Then in Week 2, they score 30 and 18, then Patrick Mahomes would be selected automatically. It is the same for each of the positions of your team.
For this reason, it’s all about the draft. Nothing else matters. In regular leagues, you can miss the draft and still have a good season with effective waiver pickups. Here if your player gets injured and is out for the season, loses a position battle or is underperforming then that’s tough- you don’t have the option of making an adjustment.
In the vast majority of leagues, you matchup against the whole league, removing head-to-head matchups. The ultimate winner is the team that has the most total points at the end of the season (Week 16)
Why you should try Best Ball Leagues
The reason I love best ball drafts (other than I just like drafting) us that it helps get prepared for the regular season.
If you play in a lot of season-long leagues, then you will know what the value of mock drafts. There are lots of sites that you are able to draft against a computer. That isn’t quite as valuable as drafting against a person though.
So while there are tools where you can draft against other users. Sometimes you have a long wait and one of the other people just quit after the first few rounds. Making the exercise useless.
How Do I play in Best Ball Leagues?
Playing is as simple as a normal league, find some friends who want to play and set up a draft. There are a number of sites that offer best ball, but cater for US customers.
The most popular sites are FFPC, Best Ball 10s, or DRAFT where you typically have to put up an entry fee to play. Or there is My Fantasy League and Fantrax where you are able to play for free.
If you are struggling to get enough people together for a league, please contact us (we want to bring good owners together). You can find us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Or jump into our Discord server.
Image credit- Timothy T. Ludwig-USA TODAY Sports
