Navigating the 2024 Best Ball Mania Economy

What are the bid edges in 2024 Best Ball Mania Drafts? And how are we constructing our teams in response?

This is the best I’ve ever felt about my best ball drafts at this time of the year.

Every year, the market takes shape in unique ways that force us to consider how we build teams - often with competing incentives.

• Do we want to attack elite QBs or TEs? Can we do that while still generating enough fire power at WR?

• What positions are most available at the end of drafts? How does that alter how we want to draft early?

This year however, I think the market aligns in a complimentary way that allows me to build coherent teams, targeting players I want high exposure to without massive opportunity cost along the way. In this piece, I’m going to walk through how I came to that conclusion, and how I’m building my teams in this market.

The New WR Window and New RB Dead Zone

I wrote a lot last year about the way the market had shifted, and how that was changing my draft process. Without re-hashing a hoard of year-old player takes, the TLDR was this:

• The tightened “WR Window” (i.e. WRs being drafted earlier and breakout profiles being prioritized) should lead us to prioritize early WRs more heavily rather than to scoop up an excess of “under-priced” RBs

• The corresponding decrease in RB prices meant we had traditional “dead zone” profiles going at the end of or after the WR window. This meant we should be more open-minded about the type of RB we draft if the cost was low enough, and needed to hold early RBs to an especially high standard in terms of their upside

However, one defining feature of last year’s RB environment was a group of truly unique talent-based bets in the traditional “dead zone” rounds. I viewed Breece Hall, Travis Etienne, Jahmyr Gibbs and JK Dobbins as mandatory players to build my 2023 portfolio around, which had knock on effects for the rest of my teams. 

We have a long way to go in this draft season, and the market will likely fluctuate. But some aspects of the 2023 draft economy has remained, while others have shifted. For my first article on this year’s best ball landscape I wanted to walk through the process by which I’ve formulated my early strategy in drafts. To get there, I’m asking a few big questions:

1. What do I think is the number one edge that is currently exploitable in the market? (Last year it was that group of RBs)

2. Where are the breakout opportunities at each position located through the draft, and where are the “dead spots” at each position where I don’t want to be picking that position? 

3. What do I want to be taking late in drafts, and how does this effect how I draft early to “leave myself” the options I want?