RADIO
The FFPC 'Never-Too-Early' Best Ball Tournament is here! It may seem as if March is too far removed from the regular season to be a meaningful time to draft, but that's not the case. In fact, this is the perfect chance to use your wealth of fantasy knowledge (and the information provided below) to take home some prize money.
We will be covering fantasy football best ball strategy all offseason long, including our tiered rankings analysis at each position. The majority of our content will be geared toward FFPC leagues because it is the destination for serious best ball managers and the best place to test your skills.
You can find the most recent ADP for FFPC leagues, including best ball, right here on RotoBaller. Now, let's prepare for the Never-Too-Early tournament.
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Rules
The tournament will follow Best Ball Slim rules with a 14-week regular season and single-week elimination playoffs from weeks 15-17 before a champion is crowned at the end of Week 17. For just $125 per team, a max of 1,152 teams will battle for the $25,000 grand prize with a $133,100 prize pool!
Like most best-ball leagues, total points are scored from the best possible lineup each week. In this tournament, however, the twist is a three-week playoff bracket where the top-two teams from each league advance to the postseason with a chance to proceed all the way to a Week 17 showdown among the top 12 teams.
No waivers, no trades, no kickers or defense (phew), and no lineups to set. Just draft the best possible team and watch it rack up points!
So, how do you create a team that can take home the $25K prize? Keeping in mind the specific details of the FFPC format and rankings, here are some helpful tips.
Roster Construction
The art of constructing a winning roster for best-ball leagues deserves a full article unto itself, if not an entire series. For the uninitiated to FFPC Best-Ball Slims, here are the key strategies to bear in mind when drafting.
- Target TE early and often. Rosters with four tight ends posted the highest win rates in 2021 and that holds true for teams drafted in February and March. The tight-end premium of 1.5 PPR for the position shouldn't be overlooked. In 2021, Mark Andrews was the fourth-highest point scorer behind only Cooper Kupp, Jonathan Taylor, and Austin Ekeler. Travis Kelce, in a "down" year, finished eighth - ahead of Ja'Marr Chase and Tyreek Hill. Guys who were afterthoughts like Dalton Schultz and Dawson Knox wound up being a valuable part of winning rosters at a very late draft slot.
- Take more receivers than running backs. Although the running back position is more volatile and prone to turnover, piling them up on your roster isn't the answer as it usually just leads to more wasted picks. In a Best-Ball Slim tourney, you can't afford too many mistakes. If your top four RBs aren't good enough to carry your roster, your chances of winning aren't going to increase based on your Round 19 and 20 fliers at the position. The highest win rates were builds with eight WRs and five RBs.
- Stop drafting Pat Mahomes. Seriously, just because he checks in as the top-ranked QB on the platform and most others, doesn't mean he will lead a best-ball team to victory. That goes for any other signal-caller drafted too soon. Teams that settled for boring veterans like Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, or Matthew Stafford around pick 90 vastly outperformed the Mahomes-led squads in 2021. Once again, Kirk Cousins was the best value pick at QB. It will be awfully tempting to secure Josh Allen but that means foregoing a top scorer at another position where the drop-off is much greater. It's a best-ball league, so just grab two reliable QBs in the middle rounds and focus on other positions instead.
How to Approach Rookies
Believe it or not, this is the time to be aggressive with rookies. It may feel awkward picking players who aren't officially in the league yet, especially when it comes to running backs since landing spot can make a world of difference. Still, the post-draft boom will make many of these college athletes vastly overvalued as the hype builds.
Right now, you can get the near-consensus WR1 from the 2022 rookie class, Treylon Burks, at 72 overall. He may not be the next Ja'Marr Chase but we have seen rookie wideouts perform at a high level in recent years. Of course, the year before Chase's historic season, Justin Jefferson had just established the rookie receiving record and CeeDee Lamb finished as a top-24 receiver. Back in 2019, A.J. Brown was a top-20 receiver. Burks, who says he tries to mimic Deebo Samuel on the field, is the WR30 on early FFPC draft boards. There's a good chance he provides a positive return on investment, if not a massive one.
Treylon Burks says he can “play inside receiver, outside receiver, running back…” #NFLCombine pic.twitter.com/IY643YMX6O
— Ryan McDowell (@RyanMc23) March 2, 2022
The rookie running back waters are murkier but a smart (and lucky) prospector could unearth a gem even after filling out a starting roster. Many publications, including PFF, have Kenneth Walker III as the top back in this class, at least before the NFL Combine. The FFPC rankings have him 95th overall and 32nd among running backs. There is no guarantee he'll land in a favorable spot or pan out as a pro, but when deciding between someone like him or the other running backs going in the same range like A.J. Dillon, Tony Pollard, or Rhamondre Stevenson, give me the upside of a potential feature back every time.
The tight end premium seemingly makes it worth taking a flier or two on a rookie but drafters might better off stashing another RB instead. First off, there is no Kyle Pitts in this class. That's a good thing because nobody will be outrageously overpriced as he was. The win rate for Pitts' owners in FFPC Best-Ball Slims last year according to RotoViz was... not good.
By year's end, drafting Pitts produced a below-average win rate of 8.2% which was tied with Cole Kmet and barely above T.J. Hockenson's 8.1%, despite Hockenson missing five games with injury. This was mainly tied to his ADP of 35.8 which necessitated passing on a WR1 in order to acquire Pitts instead.
Pat Freiermuth, however, ended up with the fifth-highest win rate among all tight ends at 13.7%, higher than even Travis Kelce! After those two, no other rookie tight end even registered in the top-30 at the position. Each class is different, so while those two players stood out among the rest in 2021, there isn't that same high-end caliber of talent in the 2022 draft class. It may run a little deeper though.
Moral of the story: don't spend too a draft pick on Trey McBride. Do take a chance on someone like Isaiah Likely, Jalen Wydermyer, or Jake Ferguson as your TE3 or TE4. You did remember that you're supposed to take a fourth TE, right?
Compete With the Best
If you've never joined a high-stakes fantasy football contest before, this is the best time to take advantage of shifting ADP for rookies and free agents, especially now that you have a leg up on the competition with the above-mentioned strategies.
Follow along here with my in-progress draft for an idea of how things might play out in your own league.
Sign up now to try FFPC, the destination for the most competitive and rewarding best-ball leagues in the industry!
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