Building a Champion Pt.1

Last week, I did a quick introduction to best ball along with some quick details about how the format works.

This week, we will be diving 🤿 into one of the most foundational pieces of best ball: roster construction. A poorly constructed roster won’t lead you to a title. Spend any time looking at this subject on social media and you’re sure to come across teams with bad construction. Usually, it’s from teams that are overloaded at a specific position, usually at the “onesie positions”: quarterback and tight end.

While Underdog has introduced Superflex formats in 2023, and will likely do so again in 2024, their bread and butter is single QB, single TE leagues. If you draft Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, and later Matthew Stafford you have an unrivaled quarterback room. The problem is only one of them can score points for you at a time. You might have the best QBs in the league, but a terrible team 🤢 because of the lack of depth elsewhere. The same can happen with tight ends.

So what exactly is the 🥇 best roster construction for best ball? How many of each position should you grab? We’ll get to that and cover QB and TE draft strategy, even though our main topic next week is draft strategies (that’s because the main strategies usually revolve around RB and WR).

What better place to look than at Underdog data itself? All the data in the post below comes from their Best Ball Mania IV Round 3 Advancement data, which is publicly available. Further on in our series, I’ll likely pull from other sources for other topics, but for now, let’s dive in!

Best Ball Roster Construction

Of the teams that made it into the championship round in BBMIV, from what I can surmise are 441 teams (a bit of an odd number, right? 🤔 ), here is a quick table of how many of each position every team drafted:

As you can tell, the primary avenues for getting deep into the best ball playoffs utilized rosters of 2-3 QBs, 5-6 RBs, 7-8 WRs, and 2-3 TE.

It was nearly impossible to advance that far if you had only a single QB or TE, or if you drafted only three running backs (or nine of them!), or four receivers. The same could be said about the other end of the spectrum: drafting too many. Some teams got away with four quarterbacks, but it’s clear that your best chance is drafting 2 or 3.

As I had mentioned earlier, spend enough time looking at best ball on social media and you’re bound to see some crazy rosters, even from some analysts. Wide receivers I’m the most lenient on, I’m ok with drafting anywhere from 6 to 9. Even then you can’t just draft any wide receivers, you have to do it right. But that is for another time, we’ll get there I promise. 😉

The reason you see crazy rosters is people often try to get different. They try to set their team apart and do something very unique. In doing so, more often than not they also hurt their chances of winning. (Quick side note: every draft is unique, so adding uniqueness on top of uniqueness is just another level that may not need to be done. It’s fine to get crazy for things like DFS, but that’s a completely different ballgame and discussion on its own).

You need things to go right in best ball, perfect in fact to win BBM. Should you draft four running backs and 10 receivers, as one finalist did, it can work out. But that’s the thing; he was the only one. Being overly shallow in some positions only works if those shallow-depth players have an incredible year. If you drafted Christian McCaffrey, Breece Hall, and Raheem Mostert, and then grabbed another RB later that would have worked out just fine! I can say that with the help of hindsight, but the problem is we have to project that. We don’t know who will go off in a particular year. We can make educated assumptions using the knowledge and data we have to find people who have a higher chance to hit a ceiling year, but anyone who tells you they know for a fact they know who will hit in a given year is lying.

The formula for roster makeup is there, it’s how you use it that makes the difference. Here are the top four most popular roster constructions of the 441 finalist teams:

These four styles made up almost 52% of the finalists. The other 48% was spread out over thirty-four other combinations. There are a lot of ways to approach a best ball draft and a lot of ways to build a team (and many valid ways, for sure!). But those four were more prevalent than the other 34 different styles combined. 🤯 

Inherently, you may assume that because many people know this about best ball, or at least those who have dipped their toes in the pool, the reason those four styles are the most popular among the finalists is that they are the most popular styles of roster construction to begin with. If more teams draft a certain way, then it stands to reason more teams will manage to advance with that given roster construction. And you’re correct, that is a legitimate assumption.

However, I can only show you what the data gives me, and the data is heavily hinting that what is in the above charts works. In best ball (generally) go for 2-3 QBs, 5-6 RBs, 7-8 WRs, and 2-3 TEs. If I had to boil down everything I’m going to cover over the next few weeks, it would be that principle above. It’s that simple. 🧐 

Drafting Quarterbacks and Tight Ends

The strategy behind drafting quarterbacks and tight ends is fairly simple. If you grab one early, then only do two. So you grab Mahomes? Great! Don’t draft another QB early, and especially don’t draft two more. Wait a while before selecting another QB (double-digit rounds preferably). ✏️ 

Did you wait until round 6 or later to draft a QB? Awesome! Go ahead and grab three, but space it out a little. Don’t go back to back, space it out some.

With tight ends, it’s essentially the same concept. Did you draft Sam LaPorta, Travis Kelce, or Mark Andrews? Great! Don’t draft another early-round tight end and just get one more in the later rounds. Don’t go for three.

If you waited on tight ends, shotgun the position by grabbing three of them, even if you grab one in say, the 6th or 7th round. Some may disagree with me on that point, but in my eyes, once the elite tight ends are gone, you’re left with some good dudes and everyone else. So grabbing three is a great idea if you miss one of the top-tier guys even if you draft your TE1 as early as round 6 or 7.

And, you have to decide whether you want to go QB early or TE early. On rare occasions will you make an exception to that rule. If you can “stack” Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, I’m not opposed to it. Or stack Lamar Jackson and Mark Andrews. But don’t go with Kelce and Jalen Hurts or Josh Allen. We’ll talk about stacking in the future, but suffice it to say don’t draft an early-round QB and TE unless you also draft a duo. PS: Hurts and Allen both have their tight ends available a little later in the draft, so you won’t have to worry about missing out on stacking in the early rounds. 😄 

That will do it for this edition of the Ballfield Banter newsletter! Thanks for reading and I’ll be back next week for some more best ball breakdown! In the meantime, join the Discord! We’re talking all about the incoming rookies, dynasty trades, start-up drafts, and more! Can’t wait to see you there!