If you are starting out in best ball, it can be a bit daunting- which is why we wanted to give six tips to get you up and running. While it is still fantasy football, there are a few differences you need to be aware of.
Remember, you can find all of our best ball articles, including our introduction to the game type here.
Six Tips for Best Ball #1 Streaming
Streaming? You can’t do that! So why is it a tip? Regardless of the fact you can’t make roster adjustments in-season, you can apply the same principle.
Streaming just requires you to find serviceable players to fill gaps throughout the season. In best ball, you just need to draft the same type of player.
At QB for example, you can still wait until you draft one, just grab three later. Multiple QBs will give you injury cover and bye week fill ins.
Six Tips for Best Ball #2 Injuries
Injuries happen as part of football. Every player regardless of their history has the chance of picking up a season-ending injury. Since there are no adjustments in best ball, you need to think about getting depth pieces.
While you need a backup plan in place for all of your positions. If you use a high selection on players that have had injury concerns, you need to have extra depth at those positions to fill the void.
Six Tips for Best Ball #3 Bye Weeks
Unlike injuries, you will know when a players bye week is going to be at the start of the season. While bye week replacements aren’t the most important thing in your draft, you need to be aware of them.
For example, avoid drafting too many QBs with the same bye week. The more players that share a bye week, the more roster spots you have to use to cover the positions.
Also, early in the draft remember if you combine your two leading RBs or WRs bye weeks, then you are going to struggle for production when that week rolls by.
Six Tips for Best Ball #4 Consistency vs Variance
This is the biggest difference between redraft/ dynasty formats and best ball. In redraft or dynasty formats, you need to get consistent production. In best ball, it is important, but you are able to expose yourself to boom and bust players.
The type of consistent player you want on your roster is only available at the very start of any draft. The best, most consistent leaders at their position. You don’t want to pick up too many players that are going to consistently catch five passes for 40 yards. That is going to kill your team.
So after the elite options have been scooped up, start looking at high variance options. If a player has 3 week-winning games in a season, you don’t need to worry about them being on your bench.
Six Tips for Best Ball #5 Quality or Quantity
When constructing your roster, there is a balance in filling your roster with options and not taking too many spots up for one position.
If you have committed early draft capital to one position, you likely have some of the better options at that position. That means that if you have selected the likes of DeAndre Hopkins and Davante Adams at receiver, you don’t need as many WR options. In that case, you probably don’t have a sure thing at running back- so you would need to load up with options at that position.
Six Tips for Best Ball #6 Overexposure
Some offenses are just potent. Stacking your roster with players from that type of offense can be the key to a championship. Grabbing top tier talent like Patrick Mahomes, Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce is great.
However, adding too many players from a team that might take a step up should be avoided- that’s too much exposure to an offense that could fail.
That’s it! Those tips should help you get up and running with a best ball league- getting you to winning in no time!
Best Ball Tool
Our mission is to bring best ball to the UK, so we developed our Best Ball tool. It allows you to draft on Sleeper (widely used in the UK) and then determines the score each week in Google Sheets automatically. The sheet only needs to be purchased by one of the league members, and they can share it with the league to use.
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.
Image Credit: Shane Roper, USA TODAY Sports
