When To Draft WRs In Best Ball: Points Contributed

Author: Billy Jones

Introduction

Hey fantasy football fam, welcome back to my blog! In our previous discussion, we dove deep into the world of running backs production from Best Ball Mania II and III, discussing the pieces of what made up an optimal draft strategy. Now in this part of the study, inspired by an intriguing article penned by Hayden Winks of Underdog Fantasy, I switch to investigating wide receiver production under different lights and varying levels of granularity. Armed with thought-provoking visualizations, I aim to shed light on what might be the optimal draft strategies in Best Ball Mania IV. If you're a fellow best ball data nerd, eagerly seeking the keys to victory in BBMIV, join me in this data-driven exploration.

BBM Basics

For those who may be less familiar with Best Ball Mania (BBM) by Underdog, it’s a unique and immensely popular fantasy football tournament. Best ball is a fantasy football format where participants draft a team and then have no in-season management requirements like waiver wire additions or setting lineups. Instead, the highest-scoring players are automatically placed in the starting lineup, and leagues are decided based on cumulative season points rather than head-to-head matchups.

BBM takes best ball to another level with its distinct two-stage structure: the regular season and playoffs. During the 14-week regular season, teams compete against others in their draft, with the top two teams advancing to the playoffs. The playoffs then consist of a series of single-week DFS-style competitions, where teams from different drafts, potentially with overlapping players to your roster, vie for advancement to the next round.

Data Source

Before I jump back into analytics, I would like to acknowledge the data source. The data used for this analysis was obtained from Underdog Fantasy and is the basis for the Best Ball Data Bowl. There have been three BBM’s but the Best Ball Data Bowl competition states the competitors should only be using the BBMII and BBMIII data as the BBMI data is a bit of a mess, so I’ll be following the same rules here.

From a Different Lense: Points Contributed

To kick things off, I present to you my version of Hayden Winks' visualizations from his original Underdog Network post. This allows for a direct comparison between Hayden's work and my own, ensuring that we are working with consistent and comparable data.

In Hayden's visual, he depicts the average total points based on the cumulative number of drafted wide receivers on a team at each stage of the draft. This graph shows us when the optimal timing for drafting your first, second, and subsequent wide receivers was in BBMII and BBMIII.

In Best Ball Mania II, the most optimal wide receiver draft strategy was to have either zero or one wide receiver through the first three rounds and then select three wide receivers between rounds four and seven. At this point, the aim was to have a total of four or five wide receivers and potentially add two more by the end of the draft.

In Best Ball Mania III, the most optimal wide receiver draft strategy was to draft only wide receivers through the first four to five rounds. After this point, similar to BBMII, you would focus on adding only one or two more wide receivers by the end of the draft.

While Hayden's visuals were indeed insightful and captivating, my curiosity led me to explore a different perspective. Instead of focusing on teams' total average points, I wanted to see the average points contributed to a team by players drafted as the team's WR(n) in each round.

The BBMII contribution visual reveals a market misjudgment on wide receivers. In rounds four, seven, and nine, there were instances where the market didn't accurately align average points contributed with the players' average draft positions (ADP). 

In BBMIII, however, the contribution visual demonstrates the market's efficiency in evaluating wide receivers. Wide receiver production follows a clean diminishing return curve, showcasing the market's accuracy in identifying value at different stages of the draft.

Player Level Average Contribution Ranges

To further analyze player level contributions by round, I used a box and whisker plot to showcase the average contribution ranges of individual players. This provides a richer understanding of the distribution of the statistic as the visual includes mean, median, minimum, maximum, and the interquartile range.

In BBMII, we observed that the market missed on certain rounds, such as the fourth, where players like Cooper Kupp (268 Avg. Points Contributed - APC) outperformed their draft position. While Kupp was the ultimate draft day hit, there were other significant contributors frequently going in the fourth round beyond Kupp that we tend to forget about, Ja’Marr Chase (182 APC), Mike Evans (176 APC), Chris Godwin (173 APC), Diontae Johnson (169 APC) and so on that should have been drafted higher. This round was filled with hits and the only miss commonly going in round 4 was Julio Jones. 

In Best Ball Mania III, we witnessed an efficient wide receiver market, with diminishing returns as the draft progressed. Although there were no standout players like Cooper Kupp, the top of the draft yielded excellent results, creating the nonsense that we see at the beginning of most Underdog drafts.

How I am Playing the WR Market

- JUST LIKE RUNNING BACKS, there is a huge distinction between the "heroes" and the "average Joes". Drafting heroes brings the legendary upside that can make one a millionaire. 

- UNLIKE RUNNING BACKS, the wide receiver market seems to be much more efficient and thus we see much less of a “deadzone”. This makes attacking wide receivers in the running back deadzone a logical play as there is a clear diminishing return on points contributed to a roster.

- In the current wide receiver centric Underdog market, wide receivers fly off the board at an insane rate. Wide receiver profiles which traditionally have fallen in rounds 3 or 4 are soaring to places many players are uncomfortable drafting them. This is quite a predicament for those who don’t want to be entirely boxed out if the draft room turns against you. 

- Probably more than any other position, I view wide receivers as a positional room rather than individual picks. This perspective allows me to approach my draft order with more creativity and flexibility. Let me illustrate this concept with an example from a recent draft in the Puppy 2 tournament… During this draft I consciously did some gross negligence and stretched way ahead of ADP to set up an impossible game stack if I had kept to the book. What I wanted to do was double stack the Chargers with Herbert, Allen, and Williams with the week 17 WR1 bringback in Jerry Jeudy, all of which have round 4 and 5 ADP. At first glance, the ADP negligence is tough but at further inspection I do believe this roster has enough juice at the wide receiver position to make some damage happen. The reason I believe this is some basic 'if then' logic. If Justin Herbert, my selected quarterback in the fifth round, turns out to be an optimal play, then it's highly likely that Allen and/or Williams, are key advance rate plays as well. Conversely, if Herbert in the fifth round proves to be the wrong play and doesn't drive my teams success, then it's highly probable that the team's chances of success are ruined anyways, and the supposed negligence in my wide receiver selections becomes inconsequential. I am fully aware of the likelihood that this play may not yield the most likely desired outcome, however in best ball tournaments, our aim is to hunt for the 95th percentile tail outcome, and not median. Additionally, if successful in advancing to the playoff rounds, this roster will have unique leverage against the other rosters in the field.  By wildly deviating from ADP, the likelihood of competing against an overlapping roster will be very low, which is especially powerful in the smaller quick moving products that Underdog often releases (like the Puppy 2). These tournaments are less exposed to massive ADP swings that would make accessing these “impossible stacks” possible.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this two-part series on exploring points contributions by position in Best Ball Mania II and III from a different perspective was an insightful and fun exercise. While we uncovered valuable insights, it's important to remember that this analysis primarily served as a descriptive exploration. When approaching the current best ball market, it is essential to combine this information with current market factors to effectively construct your optimal lineup. I also want to extend a special thanks to Hayden Winks for the inspiration and consistently fantastic work for the Underdog Fantasy Network. Stay tuned for more fantasy football analysis but until then, may your fantasy teams thrive, and your player takes never be wrong!

*This blog post was enabled by ChatGPT. The text was generated by me, and the content is my own, but some sentences and wording were provided by the model. I take full responsibility for all information produced in this blog. More information about OpenAI and their technology can be found at https://openai.com.*