On April 4, 2025, I was joined by Jon Mosales as we streamed a best ball draft on Underdog and discussed the ins and outs of the newest form of fantasy football. Here, I’ll break down the draft from our perspective in word form, discussing factors that went into each pick and how it all shook out at the end. Feel free to view the full draft board here. We landed the fourth pick in a 12 team snake draft.

Before we begin, it’s important to understand how best ball works. Prior to that that, however… why the hell are we drafting so damn early? We don’t even know where some of these dudes are going to be playing. Sometimes drafting early gives you an edge when finding value within drafts. Often times to begin the best ball draft season (late January) players can be mispriced for a variety of reasons: being a free agent, rookies, ambiguous situations that get resolved as the offseason progresses. ADP changes quickly when news breaks, positive or negative. Folks start to catch on to players who’s situations are better than their cost suggests, or vice versa. Where there’s value, there’s also disvalue. A player may get signed or drafted to replace the guy you clicked way too many times. Players could get hurt, traded, whatever the case may be. Its the wild wild west for early drafters, and there’s an edge to be had.

The biggest difference between best ball and the rest of the fantasy football landscape: there’s no roster management beyond the draft. That’s right. Nothing. No setting lineups, no trades, no waivers, not a thing. You simply draft, and see what happens. The platform you use will automatically set your best lineup each week. What does this mean? Well, you know how there’s those guys that are on your roster and you never know when to start? The Gabe Davis type. They stink for weeks on end, then when you least expect it… BAM. 25 points, likely on your bench. What happens next? You start chasing the points. Dud after dud after dud. Enough, back to the bench.. and BOOM. Another multi touchdown performance wasted. You no longer need to worry. You get the spike weeks, and avoid the lows 100% of the time.

You know another thing that really grinds my gears about fantasy football? Schedule luck. Ever have a team that’s top-two in points for, but leads the league in points again, thus fore leading to a mediocre record and missing out on the post season? Me too, but not with best ball. Final seeding at the end of week 14 is based on your cumulative score from the regular season. Its much easier to survive a bad week when you could have several high end weeks to balance the score. If you advance (usually top 2-4 in each draft pod) the playoffs are week 15-17. You’re placed into pods of various amounts of teams, and the top however many advance each week until we get to a final week 17 pod, which is usually much larger than the previous two weeks. Playoff scores don’t roll over each week, so you better bring your A game if you make it to the finals, because some of the larger tournaments have final pods with several hundred seats.

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