Earlier this week, I got a chance to compete in the NFFC’s Best Ball Championship tournament against 11 of the sharpest drafters in the industry. It’s a 35-round draft with a third-round reversal with PPR scoring and the weekly top-scoring QB (1), RBs (2), WRs (3), FLEX (1), TE (1), a team kicker (1), and a team D/ST (1) make up starting rosters.
You can view the final draft board, and all future Draft Boards from our drafts here.
Here are a few things I noticed from the draft picking from 5 overall:
Get Your RBs Early
Eight of the first 12 picks in the first round were running backs and 14 of the first 20 picks were all backs. In total, 20 of the first 36 picks were RBs. This will be a common theme in every fantasy football draft this year. Because running backs are so scarce -- there are only a handful of workhorse backs -- they fly up the draft board in best-ball leagues because there is no waiver wire to hunt for any potential replacements.
Great WRs Will Be on the Board in the Mid-Rounds
Because running backs are rightfully getting pushed up in cost, it’s leaving a lot of wide receiver value on the draft board throughout Rounds 5-10. Wide receiver is incredibly deep this season and because this is a best-ball draft with no weekly management, drafters can craft WR rooms without worrying about whether or not they’ll pick the right week to a start a fairly unpredictable receiver like Mecole Hardman.
Favorite Team of the Draft
The first pick is a really interesting place to draft from this year. You get to lock in CMC, but most of the high-floor, high-ceiling RBs are gone by the end of the second. Team 1 did a fantastic job managing, though, and came away with my favorite team in this league. He started with McCaffrey-Evans-Beckham with his first three picks, took two intriguing RB2’s at the 4-5 turn (Vaughn and Singletary), and then hit a full Texans stack with his next three picks (Watson-Fuller-Cooks). Because CMC provides such a positional advantage -- he scored 8.2 more PPR points per game than last year’s RB2 -- Shepard focused on upside with the rest of his team build and absolutely nailed it.
Least Favorite Pick of the Draft
Look, it’s hard not to love Lamar Jackson, but 7 overall is too high of a price for any quarterback in fantasy. Jackson and Mahomes both deserve to go off the board somewhere in the first three rounds of drafts because they are a clear tier above Dak Prescott, Kyler Murray, and Russell Wilson -- but I can’t justify taking Jackson over Michael Thomas, Joe Mixon, Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, etc.
My Strategy and Team
Fifth overall is an incredible place to draft from this year. You get to start your draft with a locked-in top-5 back (usually Elliott, Kamara, or Cook) and have excellent flexibility in the second and third round. When the draft wrapped back around in the second, I knew I’d have a chance at securing a second high ceiling back or Travis Kelce/George Kittle, depending on how the board fell. If Kelce wasn’t there at 2.08 or if Kittle didn’t make sense, my plan was to pivot and try to target my TE3, Mark Andrews, in the fourth or fifth round.
So, I knew I wanted to start my draft with at least 2 RBs in the first three rounds and then hammer receivers in the mid-rounds. The board ended up falling nicely for my draft plan and I was able to start my first seven picks with Dalvin Cook-Kenyan Drake-Allen Robinson-JuJu Smith-Schuster-Mark Andrews-Terry McLaurin-Marquise Brown.
Quarterback is a huge problem for my squad, though. We saw a massive run on QBs in the 8th-9th round where 11 QBs flew off the board in 14 picks. I got caught at the end of the run and ended up having to settle with a Joe Burrow/Teddy Bridgewater tandem. It’s not a total disaster -- I like Bridgewater as a super cheap QB2 this year -- but I certainly have the weakest QB corps in this league.
Here is the core of my team (round picked in parenthesis).
QBs: Burrow (9), Bridgewater (11), Fitzpatrick (14)
RBs: Cook (1), Drake (2), Coleman (8), McFarland (12), Edmonds (13), Bernard (21)
WRs: Robinson (3), Smith-Schuster (4), McLaurin (6), Brown (7), Hardman (10), Jackson (15), Ross (18), Sanu (23)
TEs: Andrews (5), Sternberger (16), Fells (28)
K: Cardinals team kicker (20), Texans team kicker (22), Patriots team kicker (25)
D/ST: Patriots D/ST (17), Chiefs D/ST (19), Cardinals D/ST (24)
