Stacking the Bye Favourites in Playoff Best Ball

A highly fragile but extreme upside strategy

This is my second piece in the Playoff Best Ball Series: if you missed my introduction to playoff best ball content last week, make sure to check that out to get a handle on some of the format rules and FAQs.

With two weeks to go in the season, we still don’t know for sure which teams will have a bye in Round 1 of the playoffs. But the possibilities have been narrowed.

Unless a top team loses a game as a 10+ point favourite, there are two realistic teams who could take home a bye in each conference, and one clear favourite.

In the NFC, the bye remains the 49ers’ to lose, even after their disappointing performance on Christmas night. Should they defeat the Washington Commanders and the Los Angeles Rams at home, they will secure the bye. If they stumble, likely against the Rams, the Eagles are the most likely beneficiary with two remaining games vs. bottom feeders in the Cardinals and Giants. In theory, Detroit is also live for a bye but it would require a win vs. Dallas and Minnesota, and losses by both Philadelphia and San Francisco as likely TD+ favourites.

Sumer sports currently has the bye odds as 79.8% for San Francisco.

In the AFC, things are slightly more complex but there are also just two teams with a realistic possibility at the bye (the Browns are also mathematically alive for it but it’s quite a stretch). If Baltimore wins this week vs. Miami they will immediately clinch the bye. If Miami is able to win, they would tie Baltimore and take over the tiebreaker. However, they face Buffalo in Week 18 while the Ravens take on Pittsburgh, each at home. Assuming the Ravens take care of business, it will fall on Miami to win a third straight difficult game to close out the bye week.

Taking all that into account, Sumer sports currently has the bye odds as 80.3% for the Ravens.

This sets up a nice symmetry between conferences in which each has a team that will get the bye roughly 4 out of 5 times. Interestingly, this means that if you play your drafts assuming each of the two most likely teams get the bye, you’ll only be correct 3 in 5 times.

One notable difference between the conferences is that while we’ll gain a lot of information this week in the AFC which could either tilt the bye toward Miami or clinch it for Baltimore, the NFC is more likely to come down to the final week with San Francisco vs. Los Angeles. This is key to consider in terms of how you draft because if you want to play outside the box scenarios in the AFC you have less time to do so. On the other side of the coin, you may benefit more from playing those in the NFC since fewer teams will be able to draft after the final information is received.

So with all that said, let’s dive into how I would draft a particularly interesting scenario: assuming BOTH the bye favourites get the bye AND make the super bowl.