A Guide to Pre-Draft Best Ball

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If you love fantasy football as much as I do, you probably have 10+ teams easily. If you have tens or hundreds of fantasy teams, one of your least favorite tasks Sunday morning is setting lineups. If you’re like me, this problem has led you to fall in love with the newer best ball format of fantasy. My favorite platform to do it on is Underdog Fantasy where I can draft hundreds of best ball teams in different types of best ball contests and then never have to think about those rosters again. Exposure is everything in this format. You want to plant flags on a few guys you love at ADP with 20%+ exposure and cautiously avoid traps with under 5% exposure on guys you hate at ADP.

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Although we’re still months away from Underdog’s world famous Best Ball Mania contest opening, they’ve already opened their “pre-draft” contests for degenerates like you and me.

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Through their now open contests like The Big Board, The Little Board, etc. you can draft Best Ball teams for the 2025 season before free agency and the draft have even happened. Love Ashton Jeanty and Quinshon Judkins regardless of landing spot? Go get some shares now.

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If you are familiar with Underdog, you already know wide receivers are king in their format and stacking is critical, especially in the playoff weeks.

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With that being said, my early advice is go WR almost always in round 1:

Jamarr Chase, Ceedee Lamb, Justin Jefferson, Amon-ra, and Puka are my five safest round one picks. Notice I said safest. Even though Saquon, Bijan, and Jahmyr Gibbs could and should score more points, their safer floors (due to less injury risk) increases the odds of getting a team out of round 1. Last year the three common first round RBs in Underdog drafts were CMC, Breece, and Bijan and they had far fewer advance rates than the safer Jamarr, Amon-ra, etc builds.

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A huge part of Underdog strategy is stacking. First is the obvious stacking of your QB’s with one or two pass catchers on the same offense. But then the more delicate matching of wide receivers on opposing teams during the playoff weeks (especially week 17). An example last year would have been if you had Amon-ra and Goff to also get Juan Jennings on that team (Detroit vs San Fran Week 17). But again, this is pre-NFL draft best ball leagues that are open now. Not only do you not know what team’s some players will be on, the NFL schedule isn't even out. This brings me to one of my favorite things to do which is to casually stack divisions. On your AJ Brown-Hurts teams, sprinkle Cowboys, Commanders, and Giants mid-late rounds. On your Jamarr-Burrow teams look for values on Ravens, Browns, and Steelers in those drafts. Odds are you’ll have some weeks 15, 16, and 17 stacks when the schedule is released.

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