August Best Ball Rankings
With players to bump up or knock down in Best Ball Mania
Welp, it’s here. Best Ball Summer is down to its final weeks, and week one is just around the corner. Luckily for us, there is a plethora of options to close out the last few weeks. Underdog just dropped small and mid stakes tournaments with the Puppy 3 and the Chow Chow, and still high stakes options available with the $500 Big Dog and $1000 Mastiff. Oh, and its flagship tourney Best Ball Mania still has another 25% to go as well. DK and Drafters tourneys are both headed for significant overlay, so I’m planning to prioritize those down the stretch. Ultimately this likely means I’m headed for another slow draft hell of epic proportions, especially as clocks shift down to 4 hours and less, but scared money don’t make money.
Final Strategy
In the final weeks, I usually have two distinct strategies, that run counter to each other. In time-boxed tournaments, I want to simply build the best possible teams for those contests, using a combination of my rankings below (see how I build my rankings here) and a few other rankings from the people/sites I trust the most. Same process as ever.
However, in the contests that have run all summer long (like Best Ball Mania), leverage becomes the tactic of choice. While I do still leave my ranks in Underdog when drafting BBM teams in August, there are quite a few players where I have to manually adjust that rank on the fly, because of how they have been drafted by ~75% of the field to this point. Below my rankings (which are… below…), I’ve included a few blurbs on the guys that I’m bumping up or down based on how they have been drafted to this point, and why I’m making that adjustment. If you’re not interested in that, please feel to jump straight into the ranks. As always, thanks for reading and happy drafting!
Bumping up in BBM
Kyren Williams
Before injuring his foot, Kyren was a mainstay of round 2, where he seemed fairly priced in a vacuum, but difficult to draft in the WR-heavy environment of Underdog. Even as he fell to round three, I never felt overly comfortable when selecting him ahead of the early round three receivers, and ended up at 4% through ~400 Underdog drafts. However, in my June rankings post, I listed my target exposure for him at 1.25x (about 10%), as he seemed extremely similar to the round 2 RB cohort of Jonathan Taylor, Saquon Barkley, and Devon Achane, in that it was mostly a rushing efficiency bet. While I, and most of us I think, don’t view Kyren in the same class as those guys as rushers, that’s probably wrong. I recently read this article from Shawn Sigele at Rotoviz, and not only was Kyren more efficient than Saquon and JT (not Achane because of course), but he was better as runner than round one picks Breece Hall and Bijan Robinson. While I strongly prefer Breece and Bijan because of their improved environments, it did make me much more bullish on Kyren. While he does have some injury concerns, as well as the addition of Blake Corum to reduce his workload, he’s a guy I want to prioritize down the stretch.
Devon Achane
Speaking of efficient rushers, how about the guy who nearly broke fantasy last year while only playing roughly half the season and splitting time in a committee. I’ve hovered at about 9% so far, as I wanted to see how Mike McDaniel and crew talked about the RB room to see if Achane would get the lead back nod, and to draft him in a slightly less WR-heavy environment. The lead back reporting hasn’t happened, though I have continued to see tweets with crazy stats like this all summer long. However, the more friendly WR environment has, and with Achane (and Kyren) priced at the 2/3 turn, I think they allow for some unique opportunities because of this next cohort of players.
The Young, Round 7 WRs
Ladies and Gentleman, we got it. There is WR upside finally available in the 7th round.
While I have been drafting JSN there all summer (for both qualitative and quantitative reasons), it’s good to see the rookies fall there. I’ve largely been underweight Ladd McConkey (3%), Brian Thomas Jr. (5%), and Keon Coleman (4%) all summer due to their six round price tags, and now that they’ve fallen to the 7th, it’s time to target them aggressively.
With the selection of Achane at ~2.09, or Kyren at the 2/3 turn, one or two of these young WRs (and/or JSN) is very likely to be available in late round six and early round seven. This allows us to more comfortably take the round 2/3 turn RB detour AND an elite tight (which is a huge advantage in playoff best ball) in the first seven rounds. Through seven rounds, we can comfortably plan to draft a 0-1-5-1 team, or even a 1-1-4-1 team, where we get a shot at legendary upside at RB and elite players at each onesie position. In the softer and less WR-heavy environments of the past, anchor RB 1-1-4-1 starts were often the skeleton key of best ball, and these young round seven WRs are the key to unlocking it this year. With 75 Best Ball Mania drafts to go, this will likely be my go-to roster construction down the stretch.
The Cardinals
I’ve been moderately in on the Cardinals so far, with a 14% position on McBride, slightly overweight both RBs, even on the WRs, and slightly under on Kyler. But the more I think through it, I just really like their chances to exceed expectation, in part due to articles like this. While they aren’t priced cheaply enough to be one of the key edges of the season, I do them hitting top 5-10 offense instead of their roughly average expectation could both supercharge advance rates and be a difference-maker in the playoffs. Bottom line, they have a quality QB, with an elite tight end, the best WR prospect in years (who has been posting clips like this at training camp), a couple solid #2/#3 WRs in Michael Wilson and Greg Dortch, who complement each other very well, a professional WR4 in Zay Zones, and two outs to solid rushing efficiency with James Connor and Trey Benson. Additionally, the offensive line was solid in 2023, suggesting that they won’t be a major hindrance at a minimum.
Overall, I’ve bumped up my rankings of all them, barring Trey Benson, and they will be a priority for me down the stretch, both in Best Ball Mania and in time-boxed tournaments, despite their ADPs being among the most static of any team all summer.
Knocking them down in BBM
Rashee Rice
Way back in April, in the final days before the NFL Draft, I drafted more than 20% Rice, as I viewed him as a uniquely valuable leverage piece, even though I had doubts about his actual talent (and still do).
Over the course of the summer, I have less Rice than I want to, in part due to drafting in fewer windows than before, and missing out on some of his bargain bin prices. Still, I’m at 6%, which is mostly all pick 65 or later, so I’m in a decent spot with him overall. However, I think Rice is rapidly approaching do not draft status in Best Ball Mania. As we can see from the Rotoviz Underdog ADP tool, Rice’s ADP bottom out in late May, and he remained a 7th round pick until the beginning of July.
Going forward, unless we get news of a Rice suspension, he is only going to continue rise, and will likely become a 3/4 turn pick by the time BBM fills. While it’s certainly plausible Rice should be drafted there, or even higher, his rising ADP is the exact opposite of the leverage we should be chasing. Even in the scenarios where Rice smashes as an early round four pick, we will still have to a significant number of teams with 6th and 7th round Rice in the playoffs. While it’s not insurmountable, it dampens Rice’s appeal in BBM. Instead, if you’re light on Rice like I am, I would recommend prioritizing him in time-boxed tournaments like the Puppy 3, where exactly zero 7th round Rice team exists. While I do still have some questions about his ultimate ceiling, even I am on board with him all the way through round four.
Late round rookies that were drafted all summer
Kimani Vidal, Devontez Walker, Luke McCaffrey, Javon Baker, etc. I’m overweight all these guys. I’m glad I’m overweight all these guys, even if our week one brains are freaking out right now. Late-round rookies continue to generate the back-weighted production that wins championships and money. However, from a leverage standpoint, it’s time to scroll down. Each of those guys, and many others, have been drafted in almost every BBM so far. Even if I still like them, taking the leverage with players that have barely been drafted is almost always the right move, as it maximizes the “what we win when we win” scenarios in the playoffs. So, at least for BBM, let’s chill out on our favorite rookies that aren’t likely to see early season playing time and find another young player to target for a few weeks.
The Vikings
As a Vikings fan, this one pains me to write. Despite the flurry of Sam Darnold hype tweets that have flown across my timeline the last few days, a season-ending injury to your round one rookie quarterback pick is almost certainly a bad thing for every Vikings fantasy player. Yes, I get that Nick Mullens and Josh Dobbs were able to dice up some bad defenses down the stretch, and yes Justin Jefferson is pretty easily the best WR in football in my opinion. Kevin O’Connell is also an extremely good offensive playercaller, and he will absolutely put Jefferson and company in advantageous positions at an above average rate this year.
But ultimately, the fact of the matter boils down to this.
The Vikings lost their best chance at above average quarterback play this year.
Instead of having the out of Sam Darnold AND McCarthy, their quarterback outs are now Sam Darnold and Nick Mullens. However we want to spin that, it’s worse. While I will still be willing to take some shots on a falling Jefferson, he absolutely should fall in my opinion. Darnold also probably does offer some leverage for a 75%-filled tournament, but as these guys said, if Darnold is hitting your lineup in the playoffs, you’re probably drawing close to dead anyways. And on that happy note, best of luck in your final drafts of the year!