Best Ball Ranks Part II

Complimentary Drafting

By now I hope everyone reading this has already checked out Part I of my best ball rankings from last week.

Today’s post won’t threaten the length of that pre-amble, in which I discussed my take on how the increased cost of wide receivers in early rounds shaped the current best ball market and our early-round strategy.

At the end of that post I ranked my top 96 players, which took us through the end of the “Wide Receiver Window.” (Or at least what I view as its end)

At this point in the draft the most important decisions have already been made. You know whether you have a balanced construction or whether you need to be attacking a certain position throughout the latter half of your draft. You likely have a vision of the stacks you are building which further informs your player selection for the duration of the draft. You probably have an idea of the final number of roster spots you are allocating to each position. Lastly, you should be attentive to the type of bets you made in early rounds, and what kind of players you should be targeting in the late rounds to complement them.

If the drafter described above does not sound like you, we’re going to briefly touch on each of the above points prior to ranking the rest of the draft.

Construction Check-in

I only discussed roster construction in general terms last week, aside from a nod to Michael Leone’s work in the Best Ball Manifesto.

In general I have a few guidelines I want my team to hit through 8 rounds.

• At minimum I want 1 RB and 4 WRs

  • Even in the highly successful Zero-RB environment of 2022, drafters who pushed past six rounds without a RB selected experienced diminishing returns.

  • As discussed last week, it is essential to generate adequate WR depth prior to the end of the WR window due to the earned-volume scarcity of the position. The difficulty of starting with 2 or 3 WRs through 8 rounds, is the only way to attempt to make up for such a start is to draft 9 or 10 WRs. This means you are drafting 6-8 players out of a total of 18 who have virtually no path to providing a projectable weekly ceiling. It’s far too great a share of your resources devoted to aggregating spike weeks.

• Ideally, I have 2 RBs, 4 WRs, 1 QB or TE, with 1 flexible spot, including:

  • 1-2-5-0

  • 1-3-4-0

  • 0-2-5-1

  • 0-3-4-1

  • 1-2-4-1

My most common final builds are 2-5-8-3, 3-5-8-2, 2-6-8-2 and 2-5-9-2. Each of these is quite easily constructible from the above starts.

Decision Time on QB and TE

One of the keys of this Round 8 dividing line is that the Round 8-10 range is largely when you decide how many QBs and TEs you are taking.

It is my preference to avoid 3-3 builds at the two positions if I can help it. The data over the first three years of Best Ball Mania shows that allocating more than 5 roster spots to QB and TE is generally sub-optimal and it’s easy to see why.

Come playoff weeks, you have to start at least five RB/WRs and typically six. While 6/12 slots does may not seem difficult to fill, keep in mind both how gruelling the regular season is with injuries and how often we are allocating our final picks to what will become dead roster spots.

Between players who don’t see regular snaps and players who are injured, it is likely two-to-three of your RB/WR options will have no path to your lineup in playoff weeks, even for strong teams. Also consider that advancing these teams becomes difficult when you are reduced even further at RB/WR during bye weeks.

That being said, sometimes 3-3 is the most viable choice remaining: that decision typically comes during this portion of the draft.

There is no perfect answer, but at each “onesie” position I have three general constructions.

• Model A: One Elite, One mid/late, two total

• Model B: Two Middle

• Model C: Three Middle/Late.

My first (roughly drawn) line in the sand at Quarterback is Deshaun Watson, and at Tight End is Darren Waller in order to hit Model A. If my first QB/TE is either of these players or anyone else with a higher ADP I am taking only two in almost every circumstance. Ideally I like to take maximum advantage of spending up at QB/TE1 by waiting until the final rounds to select my QB/TE2: these positions have some of the most secure roles week-to-week available in the last rounds.

My second line in the sand is Russell Wilson and Dalton Schultz, respectively. If my second drafted QB/TE is Wilson, Schultz or someone with a higher ADP then I am stopping at two total.

My Model B involves two of the QBs between QB9-QB18, while my TE Model B involves two TEs ranked TE9-14. At QB, I also use this second line as a general line in the sand for when I have to take my QB1 even in 3-QB builds, while at TE I am willing to wait until very late on my TE1 if I’ve committed to a 3-TE construction.

In terms of checking in with our final construction, if I don’t have a single QB or TE drafted prior to Round 9; I am definitely aiming to double tap one of the positions (ideally QB) in my next three-to-five selections if I can do so in a correlated fashion at or near ADP, in order to avoid falling into a 3-3 build.

Correlation vs. ADP vs. Tiers

In part 1 I stated that I was not generally willing to reach outside of tiers for correlation purposes, even if that mean I draft zero or near-zero percent of some players. That’s much less true in the back half of the draft. I don’t want to be reaching well-past ADP to achieve correlation with occasional exception of adding a QB to a stack I have already spent significant resources on. However, I am much less tied to my tiers.

Players such as K.J. Osborn and Van Jefferson are strong examples of late-round picks I value well below their ADP and have virtually no interest in selecting outside of team or game stacks. But when they are the highest ADP option available that is correlated to one of my core stacks, I have no problem selecting them.

Especially with my last round picks I almost always select a correlated option either to one of my QBs or to a player on their Week 17 opponent. The odds of drafting an every-week fixture drop dramatically in these rounds, so you are often at the mercy of spike weeks or injury luck for these players to become a factor in your playoff lineup. You might as well position yourself to maximize the benefit of one of your core stacks by adding tertiary pieces. The further you go into the draft, the more you are dependent on luck, and the more you should weight correlation vs. your player takes.

Complimentary Profiles

One aspect of late round drafting I suspect goes over-looked is the archetype of player who most helps our team. Again, the later we move into drafts the thinner the overall margins become. Several times, one player may not be as much superior to another as they are more suited to our particular roster.

I wrote about archetypal drafting last year and touched on some of the common profile types we try to balance in best ball. I will go a little deeper here regarding the RBs and WRs we’re ranking today:

Wide Receiver

At risk over over-simplifying, I would sort each mid-late round WR into one or more of the following camps:

1. ‘Better in Best Ball’ - high ADOT field stretcher with secure role, unlikely to be a season-long difference maker but should provide spike weeks throughout

   • Ex.) Donovan Peoples-Jones, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Van Jefferson

2. Inning-Eater - high floor ‘professional WR’ who will provide a high rate of useable weeks, but struggles to offer a massive weekly ceiling

   • Ex.) Tyler Boyd, Juju Smith-Schuster, Jakobi Meyers

3. Contingent Upside - WR on crowded depth chart or with an uncertain role who has a path to a legitimate ceiling if situational factors resolve positively for them

   • Ex.) Skyy Moore, Isaiah Hodgins, Khalil Shakir

4. Projection- young WR who has flashed some element of fantasy upside with a chance to ascend

   • Ex.) Rondale Moore, Nico Collins, Alec Pierce

5. Rookies

Running Back

At running back, I’ve used the following definitions in my “Bench RB Tier List” (aka the Pe-Line index) that I have compiled for Bulletproof subscribers. [It will be back this year for Thinking About Thinking subs]

1. Plausible Lead - member of an ambiguous backfield with a realistic path to lead the backfield and receive the majority of high value touches without any injury

   • Ex.) (most) Saints, Bears and Dolphins RBs

2. Flexi-Cuff - RB drafted as a reserve or 1B, with both a secure standalone role and significant contingent upside

   • Ex.) Samaje Perine, A.J. Dillon, Antonio Gibson, Elijah Mitchell

3. French-Cuff - RB with a defined standalone role, but limitations on their contingent upside; typically an early-down hammer or satellite back

   • Ex.) Rashaad Penny, Damien Harris, Jerick McKinnon

4. Hand-Cuff - RB has limited standalone value, but projects for starter level contingent upside

   • Ex.) Jaylen Warren, Tyler Allgeier, Devin Singletary, Chuba Hubbard

5. Maybe-Cuff - member of an ambiguous competition for the RB2 and/or handcuff role behind a clear starter

   • Ty Chandler, Pierre Strong, Keaontay Ingram, Izzy Abanikanda, Isaiah Spiller

6. Free Agent

Drafting Complimentary Teams

I won’t hammer the nail longer than necessary, but we always want to keep in mind how to maximize the utility of each pick. Each player’s use-case is unique.

The advantage of selecting Brian Robinson is that he is one of the cheapest RBs available with a demonstrated role that projects him for a majority of his team’s touches. The downside is he plays on a poor offense and offers very little receiving upside. I think Robinson is a strong option at cost, but needs to be used appropriately.

If paired with an early-RB who is likely to start slow, such as Jahmyr Gibbs or Breece Hall, Robinson is an excellent selection compared to, for example, fellow rookie Zach Charbonnet, whose early-season role is uncertain.

However, if I opened with Derrick Henry and Josh Jacobs in my RB room, I will likely require fewer useable weeks from ‘B-Rob,’ and prefer the contingent upside and role ambiguity of Charbonnet.

Whenever you commit to a more un-balanced roster such as a Zero-RB or Hyper Fragile-RB team, it’s important to layer the room you invest less capital into early with different archetypes later. Make sure to take shots on a Skyy Moore or Marvin Mims to seek out late-season upside in a Hyper-Fragile team, but compliment them with a Meyers or Zay Jones in order to provide useable weeks early in the season.

If drafting a Zero-RB team, I may start with a room such as Javonte Williams, Zach Charbonnet, Damien Harris and Jamaal Williams in order to layer together different use-cases, and different timelines.

The Ranks

As with last week’s article, I hope this pre-amble served as a useful frame of reference through which to action these rankings in your drafts.

Some notes on how these ranks are formulated:

• These are season-long tournament rankings, catered especially toward Best Ball Mania IV and underdog scoring settings

• These are envisioned as actionable ranks rather than my rankings in a vacuum: i.e. I am ranking these players based on the order I would *actually* draft them (subject to my target exposures). This means I am quite willing to punt certain fades far down my ranks, but not willing to rank targets egregiously ahead of ADP because you should not be taking players egregiously ahead of ADP.

  • For example, Nico Collins is my favourite WR I will rank today, but due to his (outrageous) ADP I have ranked him behind several other WRs with higher ADPs who I would like at-market or higher exposure to

• I am not listing target exposures for these picks. Instead I’m classifying each player based on when/how I’m drafting them:

  • AM = Want to be above market on, take at or near ADP frequently

  • WC = Target at ADP when complimentary and/or correlated

  • BM = Want to be below market on, take only when after ADP and in complimentary or correlated lineups

  • OIS = Only in Stacks

    • All Pocket Passer QBs are OIS

  • X = I never select this player

I will update these ranks in relation to major news in the meantime, and do a full v2.0 ranks with some more player notes toward the end of July.