The RotoViz Best Ball Tools have been an industry leader in helping best ball players uncover fantasy football draft strategies and tactics that propel teams to first place. As our opponents learn to apply the RotoViz Best Ball Workshop Lessons and draft rooms become more efficient, we must continue to evolve our strategies and stay one step ahead of the game. Earlier this offseason, we looked at roster construction trends through the years, discovered which roster constructions actually work, how the field has adjusted over the years, and revealed the Silver Bullet Strategy. Getting more specific and nuanced with our roster construction decisions helps us maintain a structural edge.^[1]At the same time, we need to avoid the trap of getting too specific and overfitting our data. One of the most underutilized Roster Construction Explorer features is the ability to filter by draft month, which is how I was able to determine the optimal month to draft best ball tournaments. We’ll be taking advantage of the draft month filter here again.

The most successful roster constructions are effective year-over-year. But are the success rates of roster constructions affected by draft month? The next evolution of Best Ball roster construction may be targeting specific strategies and roster constructions in their optimal draft month time periods. In the early offseason, we are working with more uncertainty with unknown rookie and free agents landing spots, depth charts, schedules and bye weeks, and general offseason team coverage. But earlier in the offseason, draft rooms also tend to be filled with sharper, higher-volume best ball drafters who are plugged in year-round, while drafts later in the offseason have a higher percentage of casual managers.

The NFL Draft is a pivotal moment of the offseason that provides us with a ton of information to improve our upcoming season projections. Do roster construction success rates change based on whether you are drafting before or after the NFL Draft? Are balanced roster constructions more effective when we have more uncertainty before the NFL Draft? Are extreme roster construction more effective when we have more information after the NFL Draft? This question is especially valuable for those currently drafting in early best ball tournaments: Underdog’s Big Board, FFPC’s Never-Too-Early, and Drafters’ Early NFL Best Ball Championship.

Prerequisite reading: Be sure to first read “Which Best Ball Strategies Actually Work? Roster Construction Evolution And The Silver Bullet Strategy” in order to understand which strategies are successful year-round, as we will build off those findings.

A note about BestBall10s and different best ball platforms: 

• Bestball10s are full-PPR, 20 rounds, and include a DST. Even if your platform uses half-PPR scoring or does not include a DST, I believe the below results should still be directionally accurate for your platform.
  • At the end of the day, we don’t need to be so precise with this type of win rate analysis, rather we just need to be directionally accurate.
• The best ball landscape has dramatically changed in the last year or two. There has been a massive influx of users. Each year drafts are filled earlier and earlier in the offseason. 2022 Best Ball drafts were being filled before the 2021 Super Bowl! But we have much more historical data from post-NFL Draft best ball leagues (85% of Fanball drafts since 2017 have occurred post-NFL Draft). There may be small sample size effects with Pre-NFL Draft results.
• There is more best ball content being produced year round, so best ball drafts in the early offseason are becoming sharper than ever before.

Quarterback

2-QB or 3-QB?