Building A Balanced Roster In Best Ball Drafts

Photo: Jon Durr, USA Today Sports

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This article is taken from the 2023 Footballguys Best Ball Guide. To download the full 60+ page guide for free, click here.

The first tip you are likely to hear from someone explaining Best Ball is often about roster construction and how to build out a balanced roster. There are always going to be different theories about how to build out a balanced roster, and there really is no right or wrong way to do it.

You have 18 (sometimes 20) players to draft and roster in a standard best-ball draft. Out of those 18 players, you are required to start 8 players each week, with that being 1QB, 2RB, 3WR, 1TE, and 1Flex. Now the question is what to do with the 10 other players you draft. Do you spend up at RB or WR early, and how many players do you want to fill out each position? Do you put extra value on the onesie positions of QB and TE? My answer to these questions is to try a little bit of everything and don’t lock yourself onto a couple of specific builds.

For an 18-round draft, a typical drafter would build out a 2/6/8/2 team by filling in QB/TE positions with above-average players and playing it safe, taking 6 RBs and 8 WRs. This might be an excellent way to draft in a cash game setting as you are typically playing it pretty safe, but in tournaments where often only 2 out of 12 teams (Weeks 1-14) advance to the playoff rounds, you have to shift your way of thinking some and look for edges to boost your team into those top two spots. Then once you hit Weeks 15, 16, and 17, you have three separate correlated tournaments where you have to outscore your opponents to move on, but the only problem is that all of those teams are super teams as well at that point.

The NFL season is a long season. With each team now playing 17 games, we are seeing more injuries, suspensions, cuts, depth charts moves, etc., as the season shakes out. When thinking of Best Ball, these are key areas that you want to think about when it comes to building a balanced lineup. Often times after a draft, we like to look at our team on paper and think how wonderful and perfect it looks before the season even starts. Then we get a couple of weeks into the season and realize we maybe weren’t quite as smart as we originally thought.