NFL Best Ball – DRAFT Best Ball Championship Final Analysis & Takeaways
After four grueling months of injuries, attrition, poor projections, and explosive picks at low ADP… survival of the NFL fittest has arrived. The final 132 teams remaining in the DRAFT Best Ball Championship Series are (not surprisingly) comprised of the league’s strongest players across the bulk of the season, rostering the likes of Patrick Mahomes, Saquon Barkley, Christian McCaffrey, & Travis Kelce.
To survive the Knockout Rounds, however, these teams featured late-season bloomers such as Derrick Henry, Damien Williams, & Jaylen Samuels while the strong plays that catapulted teams into the Knockouts faded slightly (Drew Brees) or fell completely out of the picture (Kareem Hunt).
I waded knee-deep into Best Ball Championship roster data provided by the awesome folks at DRAFT to determine what worked, what didn’t, and attempt to discover any truths we can carry forward into 2019 Best Ball leagues.
Editor’s Note: Be sure to check out thehazyone’s look at ownership and roster breakdowns ahead of the Best Ball Championship!
What Worked?
There were some pretty clear, fundamental strategies that propelled teams into the final Knockout stage. Those included:
- Avoid Le’Veon Bell (5 teams), David Johnson (5 teams) & Leonard Fournette (1 team) in the 1st Round
- Avoid Rob Gronkowski (3 teams), Jordan Howard (2 teams), Jerick McKinnon (1 team), and AJ Green (2 teams) in the 2nd Round
- Sit on Derrick Henry, Marlon Mack, or Damien Williams until Week 13, and then unleash Hell
In all honesty, though, the fundamental strategies that pushed teams into the Final have been the same strategies that I’ve espoused in preseason articles here on RotoGrinders.com:
- Wait on QB
- Adhere to reasonable roster construction practices (2-3 QBs, 5-8 RBs, 6-9 WRs, 2-3 TEs)
- Avoid stacking RBs from the same roster
Below, you’ll find the twenty most-prevalent players rostered in the DRAFT Best Ball Championship Finals. The first plot sorts players by how frequently they occur on Finals rosters. The second plot presents the same information, but sorted by ADP.
A few notes for the 2018 season that we need to be mindful of when drafting 2019 teams:
Tight End is a minefield. Personally, I went very heavy on Zach Ertz, Trey Burton, Ryan Griffin, Jake Butt, and Ed Dickson. The above plots show us that huge leverage existed at the position this season, but it required nailing the right value (George Kittle, Eric Ebron, Jared Cook) and avoiding pretty much everyone else. Tight Ends that I’ll be looking to buy low on for 2019 will include:
Reaching for Running Backs in Rounds 4 through 8, primarily veterans in committees, appears to be a recipe for disaster. It has been noted by several industry sharps (notably, Matt Kelley) that this same type of player is available in the late rounds of your draft for a fraction of the cost and the same amount of upside.
For the love of all that is good and holy… wait on QB.
Anomalies
The 2018 Best Ball draft season offered some challenging situations in every single draft. In particular, the 4th through 6th Rounds offered very little in the way of value and very much in the way of landmines.
Judging by the players from surviving teams, there wasn’t a consensus on which player would push you over the top from this range. While the 2019 off-season may present a completely different value proposition in these rounds, this decentralization of performance is something we should remember when we consider reaching for a particular player in this range.
Pay Attention to High Stakes Players
I can’t stress this principle enough. If folks entering the Mini had paid more attention to the High Stakes players in the Championship and Mega, they would’ve noticed Patrick Mahomes receiving much more consideration at a slightly lower ADP.
Do High Stakes players always assess these situations accurately? No, they do not. Over the aggregate, however, the High Stakes crowd understands outcome and ceiling potential much better than the Average Joe. Because of this, we should pay attention when the market shifts for particular players as buy-in increases.
Derrick Henry, Dragon Slayer
Derrick Henry earned his own section in this analysis because of his blitzkrieg in Weeks 14 & 15, which are likely unprecedented when considering the horrific power-outage that many high-octane offenses experienced during those same weeks.
If you rostered Julio Jones, Kareem Hunt, or Michael Thomas you were a likely survivor into the Knockout Rounds. Unfortunately, this type of attrition is what your rosters encountered. Mine certainly ran into the Derrick Henry wall.
The visualization above shows growth/attrition of each player throughout the Knockout stages, top to bottom. The relative number of Derrick Henry rosters compared to those of three incredibly productive 1st Round picks is startling. If you spread Henry’s 80-someodd fantasy points from Weeks 14 & 15 across his fantasy season, it’s highly likely none of those teams advance past the first Knockout stage, let alone to the Finals.
Football is baffling.
Wrapping Up
This weekend will feature a sweat unlike any we’ve seen before. I wish I could be part of it, but the stars didn’t align on my rosters this season. In short, I drafted too many bad or injured players, and was left on the outside looking in. Hopefully you have at least one team making a run at the gold this weekend. If so, good luck!
I’ll see you in Best Ball draft rooms when 2019 drafts open up shortly.