Everything you need to know to build winning best ball rosters, from the basics to advanced tournament strategy.
Best ball is a fantasy football format built entirely around the draft. You pick your team, and then you are done. There are no waiver wires, no trades, no weekly lineup decisions, and no in-season management of any kind. The platform automatically slots your highest-scoring players into your starting lineup each week, giving you the best possible score from your roster.
If your third quarterback outscores your first quarterback in a given week, you get the third quarterback's points. If a late-round running back goes off while your early pick has a quiet day, the late-round guy is in your lineup. The format rewards one thing above all else: how well you draft.
Most best ball leagues use deeper rosters than traditional leagues, typically 18 to 20 rounds. You need that depth because you cannot add players during the season. Injuries, bye weeks, and busts all have to be absorbed by the roster you build on draft day. The standard starting lineup is one quarterback, two running backs, three wide receivers, one tight end, and one flex.
Best ball is fantasy football at its purest. The draft is everything. Nail it and ride. Miss it and there is no fixing it.
In traditional fantasy football, the draft is just the beginning. You spend the season working the waiver wire, making trades, and agonizing over start/sit decisions every week. In best ball, all of that goes away. What remains is the part of fantasy that most people love the most: the draft itself.
This changes how you evaluate players entirely. In a managed league, a boom-or-bust wide receiver who puts up 3 points one week and 30 the next is a nightmare to manage. In best ball, that same player is an asset. You never have to guess which week the boom is coming because the format captures it for you automatically and benches the bust weeks.
Roster depth matters more in best ball than any other format. In a traditional league, you can replace injured players and stream matchup-based starts. In best ball, what you draft is what you have. Every pick in rounds 15 through 20 matters because those are the players who cover your bye weeks and absorb the inevitable injuries across a 17-week season.
Consistency, which is king in head-to-head managed leagues, takes a back seat. The format auto-optimizes your lineup, so a player who goes off four times and disappears the rest of the season still provides real value. You are chasing ceilings, not floors.
How you allocate your picks across positions is one of the most important decisions you make in a best ball draft. Every time you draft another player at a position you have already filled, the value of that pick decreases because only so many players can start each week. This is the law of diminishing returns, and it should guide your entire draft.
A general framework for an 18-round draft is two to three quarterbacks, four to six running backs, six to eight wide receivers, and two to three tight ends. Wide receiver gets the most investment because three start each week plus the flex spot, creating the largest scoring window. Running back needs enough depth to survive injuries but does not need the same volume of picks because only two spots are available. Quarterback and tight end are one-starter positions, so overinvesting there burns draft capital that could go toward other positions.
The key is thinking about roster construction as a sliding scale throughout the draft, not just a final count. If you go heavy on running backs through the first six rounds, you should be lighter on them the rest of the way. If you load up on wide receivers early, balance it out with running back picks in the middle rounds. The drafters who win consistently are the ones who stay flexible and let value dictate their picks while keeping their overall allocation in a healthy range.
Don't draft for a final position count. Think about how much capital you have invested at each position at every point in the draft, and adjust from there.
Stacking is the strategy of drafting multiple players from the same NFL offense, and it is one of the most powerful tools in best ball. The logic is simple: when a quarterback has a big game, his pass catchers usually do too. A quarterback throwing for 350 yards and four touchdowns means someone is catching those passes. If two or three of those guys are on your fantasy roster, you are doubling and tripling up on production from a single elite performance.
The strongest correlations are between quarterbacks and wide receivers, followed by quarterbacks and tight ends. These are direct connections. When the receiver catches a touchdown, the quarterback gets points for the throw. Stacking a quarterback with one or two of his pass catchers is the foundation of competitive best ball drafting. Ideally, every quarterback on your roster should be paired with at least one of his receivers.
Backdoor stacking is an advanced technique where you draft the wide receiver first and then target his quarterback later in the draft. Instead of investing a premium pick on an elite quarterback and then reaching for his receivers, you let the value come to you. Draft a second or third-round wide receiver, then grab his quarterback when he falls to the double-digit rounds. You get the same correlation at a fraction of the draft cost.
Game stacking takes this one step further by rostering players from both sides of a projected high-scoring matchup. If two high-powered offenses are playing each other, having pieces from both teams means you benefit no matter which side is scoring. This is especially valuable in the fantasy playoff weeks when your roster needs to spike.
Stacking is not optional in competitive best ball. Pair your quarterbacks with their pass catchers. Let the draft come to you, and do not reach so far that you destroy value to complete a stack.
In best ball, a player who scores 8 points every single week is less valuable than one who scores 2 points for 12 weeks and then goes off for 30 points five times. The format auto-optimizes your lineup, which means your bad weeks get benched and your monster weeks count. You are drafting for peak performances, not steady averages.
This is why volatile wide receivers and dual-threat quarterbacks are more valuable in best ball than they are in managed leagues. A deep-threat receiver who is frustratingly inconsistent in traditional fantasy becomes a weapon in best ball. You only need him to hit a few times across the season, and the format automatically captures those spikes.
Dual-threat quarterbacks who run the ball are especially valuable because they have a higher week-to-week ceiling. Rushing production gives them a secondary scoring path that pocket passers lack. A quarterback who can throw for 250 yards and run for 60 more has a wider range of outcomes, and in best ball, a wider range of outcomes tilts in your favor.
Late-round picks should almost always be upside swings. Rookies entering new systems, backup running backs one injury away from a starting role, and deep-threat receivers on high-powered offenses are exactly the profiles you want at the end of your draft. You are not looking for 6 points a week from those picks. You are looking for the chance at 25.
Most major best ball tournaments use a 14-week regular season where cumulative points determine which teams advance, followed by single-elimination playoff rounds in Weeks 15, 16, and 17. This is where the real money lives. The flagship contests on platforms like Underdog, DraftKings, and FFPC pay out the vast majority of their prize pools in the Week 17 finals. You can survive 14 weeks of regular season play, but if your roster does not spike when it matters most, you are leaving the big money on the table.
This has real implications for how you draft. The regular season matters for survival, but the playoffs are where fortunes are made. Players who have favorable late-season matchups, players on teams likely to be in competitive games down the stretch, and offenses that project to be playing meaningful football in Weeks 15 through 17 all carry extra value that does not show up in a standard ADP ranking.
Game stacking becomes critical here. If you can identify two or three projected high-scoring matchups in the playoff weeks and roster pieces from both sides, you give yourself a realistic path to a ceiling-breaking performance when the money is on the line. Teams eliminated from NFL playoff contention may rest starters late in the season, so targeting players on teams with something to play for is a genuine edge.
Think about your roster in two layers. The first layer needs to get you through 14 weeks and into the playoffs. The second layer needs to give you a realistic shot at the highest score in the building during the final weeks. Balancing both is the challenge, and it is what makes best ball more strategically demanding than it looks on the surface.
The regular season gets you to the dance. The playoff weeks pay you. The biggest payouts in the biggest contests are decided in Week 17. Draft with both layers in mind.
Not all best ball is the same, and the format you are playing should change how you draft. A standalone league with 10 or 12 teams is a much different animal than a massive tournament with tens of thousands of entries. Understanding the difference is critical.
In a standalone league, you can get away with a more traditional approach. Solid players, reasonable roster construction, and a couple of good stacks will put you in contention. There are fewer opponents to beat, so you do not need a perfect build. A top-three finish in your league is realistic with a well-drafted roster that avoids major injuries.
Tournaments are a different game entirely. When you are competing against thousands of other rosters, many of which will have similar player combinations, you need to differentiate. Uniqueness matters. If everyone is drafting the same two players at the turn in rounds one and two, drafting a less common pairing can give you an edge. You are not trying to build the safest team. You are trying to build the team that has a realistic path to the highest score in the entire field.
This is where game theory enters the equation. Paying attention to ownership percentages, identifying underowned stacks, and being willing to take contrarian positions at the right price are all tournament-specific skills. The more entries in the contest, the more unique your roster needs to be to win it all.
If you are drafting multiple best ball teams, and most serious players do, managing your overall exposure to individual players is just as important as building any single roster. This is portfolio management, and it is how you handle risk across an entire season of drafts.
Exposure percentage is the share of your total teams that include a specific player. If you have 20 teams and a player is on 15 of them, that is 75% exposure. If that player tears his ACL in Week 2, 75% of your teams just took a major hit with no way to recover. Diversifying your exposure ensures that no single injury or bust torpedoes your entire season.
That said, exposure is not about being perfectly even across every player. If you have strong conviction on a player, it is fine to be overweight. The goal is intentional exposure, not accidental concentration. Know where you are heavy, know the risks, and make sure your portfolio has enough variety that multiple paths to success exist across your teams.
Tracking your exposure is one of the most underused edges in best ball. Most drafters have a vague sense of who they have drafted a lot but do not have precise numbers. The drafters who track it carefully have a real advantage in managing risk across a full portfolio.
Draft with conviction, but diversify with discipline. Track your exposure and make sure one bad break cannot sink your entire season.
There is no single correct way to build a best ball roster, but most winning teams follow one of several common structural approaches. Understanding these archetypes gives you a framework to work within while staying flexible during the draft.
Take two or more running backs in the first four rounds to lock in elite weekly production at the position. Fill wide receiver depth in the middle and late rounds with upside targets.
Draft one premium running back early and pair him with wide receivers and other positions through the next several rounds. Anchor RB with one stud and spread investment everywhere else.
Avoid running backs entirely in the early rounds, loading up on wide receivers and other premium positions first. Fill RB slots later with upside backs and breakout candidates. High variance, high ceiling.
Go all-in on running backs early, taking three or more in the first five rounds. Build a dominant RB room and take high-upside receiver swings in the middle and late rounds.
Invest a premium pick on a top-tier dual-threat quarterback in the first three rounds. Pair him with his pass catchers later to build a high-ceiling stack around your signal caller.
Grab a top tight end early to lock in a positional advantage most opponents will not have. The position is thin, so owning one of the few elite producers creates a weekly edge that compounds all season.
No archetype is universally correct. The best drafters are comfortable running any of these builds and let the flow of the draft dictate which one they land on. Going in with a plan is smart. Being willing to abandon that plan when the draft presents better value elsewhere is smarter.
The best way to get better at best ball is to draft. Run mocks, experiment with different builds, and see which roster constructions feel right. Every rep makes you sharper.