Best Ball: How to Approach the Late Rounds (2022 Fantasy Football)

If you lay the foundation for your team in the early rounds and then refine your team in the middle rounds, the final rounds are where we can add the final sprinkles to our rosters. This is the last part of a series looking into how to approach best ball drafts. You can find the first two parts here if you haven’t already.

By the final third of a draft, you should have a clear idea of what players you need and if you’re adhering to one of the many micro-strategies common within best ball. In this installment of the series, we’ll look at the following;

• Late stacking opportunities
• Late round best ball gems

When we get to the later third of drafts, it’s imperative to be aware of our player exposures. For example, if you’re drafting Dyami Brown in the 19th round of every single draft, it might feel like a low-cost move, but you’re giving yourself far fewer opportunities to hit on a late-round league winner. For more on managing your late-round exposure, check out this article.

In the second installment of this series, we looked at the stacking opportunities in the middle rounds and the importance of being comfortable with our rosters so that we don’t reach on players. In the late rounds, there are fewer stacks still available, but if you’re looking at your roster and feel that you’d like to leave the draft with at least one, the table below shows 10 teams that offer late-round stacking opportunities.

If you find yourself with only one quarterback through 12 rounds, targeting one of these stacks is a great way to improve the look and feel of your roster. While some of these can be added to players you already drafted from these teams, the Giants, Jets and Patriots all offer large percentages of the offense. These players belong in this section of the draft for good reasons, but as a secondary stack, they’re interesting.

While stacking isn’t worth passing up good players, it’s been proven to increase win rates. As Mike Leone wrote last offseason, teams with stacks featured in the top percentile of all teams 1.01% of the time, compared to 0.92% for teams who avoided stacking. So it’s not that stacking always gives us an advantage; it’s more that choosing not to stack causes our rosters to be at a disadvantage.

The late rounds also provide opportunities for adding upside to the quarterbacks we’ve already selected. Wide receivers and tight ends tend not to have the intrinsic value of running back handcuffs. If a player ahead of them gets injured, they still have a chance to outplay their ADP. For instance, Van Jefferson is currently the WR77 on FFPC with an ADP of 179.6. Last year when Robert Woods got injured, and Odell Beckham Jr. took time to get up to speed with the Rams, Van Jefferson had several usable weeks and finished the season as the WR36 in PPR.

A player who was regarded as a WR3 suddenly gave you WR2 performances. When coupled with Matthew Stafford, it became an effective stack. Occasionally with fantasy sports and best ball, in particular, we have to approach “what would things look like if this happens.” In the late rounds, asking yourself that question on occasion can lead to upside, and if you find yourself stuck between two players, allowing the stack to become the tie-breaker is a good habit to get into.

Late-round Best Ball Gems

You’ve probably heard the phrase “I prefer him in best ball” before. Typically it’s coming from somebody who has trouble ranking or valuing a player with a high upside and a low floor. Unfortunately, in redraft or dynasty formats where you’re making start and sit decisions week in, and week out, these players will scorn you when left on your bench and possibly burn you when they are in your starting lineups. So while many fantasy managers play the game thinking about a safe floor in best ball, particularly in these late rounds, we should be thinking about the ceiling outcomes.

When thinking about late-round players who can maximize their ceiling, it’s essential to think about the story that leads that player towards outscoring their usual output. With running backs, it’s nearly always down to a player ahead of them suddenly being out of the picture. For instance, if Josh Jacobs was to be suspended or suffer a season-ending injury, Kenyan Drake could benefit massively. At wide receiver, though, it tends to be a little less clear when a WR1 is out of the picture. The work doesn’t always go to the next man up. So for receivers, we should consider the different factors that can help them find a way into our starting lineups.

Ability

In 2021 Cordarelle Patterson was largely undrafted but for those who did draft him, they landed a potential league-winner. While Patterson hasn’t been a reliable fantasy producer over the years, he has shown the ability to be a difference-maker in the right scheme and flashed brilliance. Another type of player who falls into this category is the deep shot specialist. Marquez Valdes-Scantling epitomizes “better in best ball” to many people because of how he scores his points. One week he might have 20+ points, and the following week he’ll see two targets and zero catches.

The table below shows the top 10 players in air yards per target in 2021 (minimum 25 targets). Not all were regular contributors to your teams, but six of the 10 had positive advance rates above the average of 16.7%. Taking shots on deep shot players, particularly as a part of a stack, is a solid method in this area of the draft.

Rookies

Typically, rookies integrate more into the offense as the season goes on and can offer league-winning upside down the stretch. Taking multiple starters earlier in the draft gives you the freedom to target rookies in the later rounds who can find their role as the best ball playoffs approach. Josh Palmer was drafted in 69.6% of 2021 Underdog drafts and had an advance rate of 17.3%. If Palmer had exploded in the playoff rounds, he could have been a true league winner when managers took on teams without him. Amon-Ra St. Brown was drafted in 99% of drafts but wasn’t someone the best ball community was overly high on until he made a lot of managers regret not having some exposure to him down the stretch. Try not to get too attached to one player, and spread your exposure across a range of rookies.

Players on a Good Team or a Team With a Bad Defense

Players who are part of a good team will often find their way into useful weeks for best ball, but we also see similar from players who are a part of a team with a poor defense. As these poor defenses give up points, the offense is forced into a pass-heavy approach as they try to reclaim a winning position.

The table below shows the twelve highest weekly PPR scores from players drafted in the later portions of Underdog drafts.

We crave consistent high points scoring in best ball, so having spike weeks like this can help open up gaps over our competition.

As we close out this series, the key takeaways are:

1. Be mindful of how we start drafts and how a bad start can force us into the corner
2. Stacking opportunities are available throughout the draft and shouldn’t be reached for
3. Forgoing common strategies can be a fine approach as long as we balance our roster
4. Spread out late-round exposure and aim for certain styles of players late in drafts

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