All summer, and frankly all year now, our best ball sicko community spends time diagnosing every nook and cranny of every NFL player, team, coach and more to try to gain an edge with our player takes that can lead to life changing wins in best ball tournaments.
There are certainly player take edges to be had every season, there’s no denying that, but that doesn’t mean that our predictions are the biggest edge we can have in any given best ball season. In fact, often times the biggest edges that we end up seeing go against what our honest take about a player or offense is.
One could make a pretty clear case that this was the Saquon Barkley case in 2024. Saquon had been one of the better backs in the NFL and highly drafted in fantasy circles on the lowly New York Giants. He makes the move to arguably the best possible situation for him to put up incredible efficiency on the ground in Philly with their offensive line and Jalen Hurts. And yet, the market’s shift to prioritizing the high end WRs kept Saquon’s price reasonable in the 2nd round. Betting the market was undervaluing this move to Philly and his upside vs. the 2nd tier WRs was clearly a fruitful one, and one I stupidly did not make.
But we aren’t here to re-litigate 2024, even though there are plenty of areas where I can make fun of myself for being wrong. These real lesson is in how we should be approaching each best ball season as it pertains to our “takes” and the “takes” of the market.
In Jonathan Bales’ newsletter Lucky Maverick, he lays out these 12 principles for How to Win Games. I highly recommend reading the whole piece (it’s free), but 3 principles really jump out to me as truly incredible edges given the way Best Ball has evolved.
“Admit how little you know.”
I would almost guarantee this is the most difficult part of the equation. The other principles are much easier because they’re more about looking for where your opponents might be wrong, not yourself. Shit, I know it was for me. It took me years of beating my head against the wall in DFS or season-long before I acknowledged that I simply know a lot less than I thought I did. Once I did, it unlocked results that frankly changed my life.
And it doesn’t mean you don’t “know ball” or that your takes are bad. I played football most of my life. I played in college, and I coached high school football. I love the x’s and o’s and think I know a decent amount about “ball”. But the problem is that when it comes to this game of Best Ball (or DFS, etc.), there simply is no one that can predict the future. We are working with very, very little information, so how could we?
We can’t predict injuries. We can’t predict who didn’t work hard in the offseason. We have no idea what kind of in-season injuries players played through that hindered their performance, or by how much. We don’t know what goes on in these locker rooms, or what the weather is going to be like in these games. There’s an infinite list of things we just will never know as outside observers, no matter how hard we try.
That compounds even further in Best Ball when we think about how the season is decided based upon essentially one week (week 17), or just how impactful the 3 individual playoff weeks are. Jonathan Taylor was objectively a terrible pick for the regular season in 2024 (RB25 in fantasy points as a 2nd round pick), but he went nuclear en route to being the RB1 overall in the fantasy playoffs, including the RB1 overall in week 17. Marvin Mims averaged 5.7 half PPR points per game, but he scored 26.2 points in week 17. Ricky Pearsall caught 17 passes for 190 yards and 1 TD from week 1 to week 16 on a total of 340 snaps, and then went 8/141/1 in week 17.
The definition of being “right” or knowing the answer in best ball isn’t even decided based upon total season performance. Sure, we want the guys who score a lot of points or “outperform” their ADP over the course of the season, but do they lead us to winning tournaments in week 17? I have no idea, and neither do you.
“Think differently than others to obtain extraordinary results.”
After 5 years of Best Ball, we’ve gotten to a point where there is enough content and research to last a lifetime. That’s absolutely amazing for the industry, but it also means we see a lot of research about how to win. We’ve got things like studies about roster constructions that score the most points, hilarious arguments about the definition of Elite Tight End, and detailed research about player performance and talent all over the place. As any space evolves, you start to see things shift more and more to a consensus in terms of how to evaluation what is “good” and what is “bad”.
Especially in a game where we are participating with snake drafts, we end up also getting a market consensus about players and team situations. The players are listed in order of ADP, so you get this overall market valuation of the player pool. You get a market assessment via ADP of which players are “good” and which players are “bad”. You get a market assessment of the offenses that are going to be worse than others, or which player is the most likely backup RB in each backfield.
Once we get that kind of market consensus, the next step should be seeing where the market could be off, not just what we think is most likely to happen. Your takes may be great, but if they simply fall in line with the same take everyone else has, that is only going to get you the same results everyone else gets. We want *extraordinary results*.
We are playing arguably the most high variance game imaginable. We draft teams and wait months and months to see how the game plays out. It’s over the course of an NFL season, but nearly the entirety of the money is assigned based upon what happens in just one slate of NFL games. Think about that. You draft a team in May, and whether or not it’s successful is determined by the games between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Most of us don’t know what we’re going to eat for lunch tomorrow, and that’s something almost entirely in our control, nonetheless what’s going to happen in NFL games 6 months from now.
So, do you think it’s easier to predict the outcomes of those games in 6 months down to the individual player stat level, or simply spot the places where our opponents might be wrong? Hint: it’s not the first one.
The more we fall in line with what all our opponents think, the more our results fall in line with their results. We don’t want to fall in line in this game, we want to be in the top 0.001%. The easiest way to get into that microscopic top group is by taking a different approach than those we are competing with. So, it doesn’t even really matter what our takes are. It matters where our opponents might be the most wrong. Whether that be an offense projected to be bad being good or a player everyone is 100% certain sucks being good, there are a ton of ways we can think differently about the results of this best ball season. As we outlined above, we know so much less than we think we do about what is going to win best ball tournaments during the summer, so why not see where the people we are trying to beat might be wrong. It’s a much easier path to those incredible outcomes.
Do something normal, get normal results. Do something extraordinary, get extraordinary results.
“Exploit weaknesses others’ psychology to maximize payoffs.”
This is sort of the bow that ties all 3 of these principles together for best ball. The psychological element of this game is huge and almost entirely ignored. It’s thousands of humans competing for millions and millions of dollars in this silly game over the course of an entire NFL season.
We’ve established how little we know, and how we can achieve the extraordinary by thinking differently. But if we also exploit the way in which our opponents are thinking about things, we can now make the payoff as big as possible. This doesn’t mean that our opponents are weak, but we are all human, and that means we are inherently flawed.
Especially in a game that only plays out once per year, we are naturally going to look for answers or areas where we can improve every summer. The problem is that this game is about as random as it gets, so any single season is like a unicorn – it’s totally unique & you’ll probably never see it again. And yet, every summer we spend our time overly fixated on what happened last year. Or even if we focus on what has happened over a few seasons, we are still just working with the chaotic results from a couple seasons, and the upcoming season is a lock to be it’s own adventure.
Now think about that in terms of looking at best ball result data, which is a pillar of best ball research these days. We download BBM data, and we run some analysis to see which roster constructions worked best or scored the most points, etc. But that is only a sample of what drafters actually did in drafts. There is an almost endless amount of possibilities for how best ball teams could both be drafted AND could win best ball tournaments. And yet, we only look at the actual teams drafted. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong (at all!) to look at this data, but it offers a potential weakness is the psychology of most of our opponents. We also know that most of our opponents are looking at the same data to determine which players or offenses are good or bad. Again, that doesn’t mean that’s bad! It’s quite good, actually. But if everyone is coming to the same conclusions about who is good and bad based on the same research, that’s something notable for us if we are trying to beat those people.
The market isn’t necessarily looking to new and innovative ways to build teams or target players, it is looking at what worked on best ball teams in the past and how a players performed in the past, and then deciding that is what we should do in the future and who will be good in the future. It is certainly possible what worked before will continue working, and it is possible players who were bad last year will be bad against next year. But it also provides a *potential* weakness.
What if they are wrong? The payoff can be absolutely massive when everyone else is wrong.
Best Ball Picks So Bad They Just Might Be Good
Now that I’ve gotten my Matthew Berry-ian open out of the way, you see what we are getting at here. Our best ball process should not be focused solely around our takes, trying to out-predict all our opponents and use what worked before. We should be thinking about all the “stuff” that the people we are trying to beat in order to win money might be wrong about.
Once we admit how little we know about what is going to win in best ball this year, we can think differently and spot the exploitable angles to our opponents’ process to build the most +EV imaginable.
That often means diving into picks that all your peers think are BAD. They’re going to tell you this player sucks, or this offense is going to be terrible or that no one has won a best ball tournament with that strategy. But if you get those responses, you’re probably on the right track.
So let’s talk about some *bad* picks.
Javonte Williams, RB, Dallas Cowboys (Underdog ADP 121, RB39)
Get ready for a shower after this one. Yes, Javonte Williams has been terrible for 2 seasons. No one on god’s green earth is questioning that. After blowing out his knee in 2022, he has been one of the least effective runners in the league for the last two seasons.
But Javonte is easily the single most fascinating player in 2025 to think about through the lense of the 3 principles we outlined above. In the draft summer prior to getting injured, Javonte was going as high as the 2nd round in Best Ball drafts. He was a 2nd year back who flashed as a rookie after being drafted in the 2nd round alongside Melvin Gordon.
If you participated in any pre-draft Best Ball tournaments, you undoubtedly know that the Cowboys were arguably the number one landing spot everyone prayed their rookie running backs would wind up. Rico Dowdle hadn’t produced meaningful results since high school as a running back, and he was heading into his 4th NFL season at the age of 26, and he totaled more than 1,300 yards in 16 games as the lead back in this offense, despite Dak Prescott getting injured. Now this team has George Pickens, a healthy Dak, and they project to be one of the better offenses in the NFL (with a not great defense) while playing in a dome.
The market actually hates Javonte Williams SO much that they have gone full Kimani Vidal with a rookie 5th round gadget pass catching back in Jaydon Blue. Yes, Blue is fast. Yes, he can catch passes. That’s about where the fun stops. He never earned any real meaningful role at Texas, but sure, he played behind some good backs in Bijan Robinson, Roschon Johnson and Jonathan Brooks. Then, heading into 2024, he was still behind sophomore back CJ Baxter. But Baxter tears his ACL in the pre-season, theoretically giving Blue a chance to step into the lead role in the backfield.
*Lee Corso voice*… Not so fast, my friend!
Blue was leap frogged by true freshman Tre Wisner for that role, and at times even played behind another true freshman in Jerrick Gibson. He is a really fun athlete, and I honestly enjoyed watching him play, but the market would never, ever, ever talk themselves into a guy who could never even earn a major role in their college backfield in 99.9999% of situations. But, just like last year with overhyping Kimani Vidal because they hated JK Dobbins and Gus Edwards, the same thing is happening with Blue.
Despite his poor rushing efficiency the last two years, I find it very intriguing that his coaches still refused to put him on the bench. He led the Broncos backfield in back to back seasons. Maybe the Broncos coaches are idiots, but something we know is that Javonte is a very capable and strong pass protector. I understand pass protection feels very boring and silly, but it’s honestly the most underrated aspect of being the pass catching back for an NFL offense. We tend to think about it like Madden, where we expect the most dynamic receivers and athletes to be out there on passing downs. But the reality is that, at least in pure passing situations and long down and distance, it’s generally the guy who is the best or most trusted pass protector. Of course, you need to actually be able to catch the ball (which Javonte can and has always done), but even in a brutal rushing season, Javonte was 2nd in the entire NFL in pass blocking snaps behind only Kyren Williams while grading out near the top of the position.
There’s a reason an electric receiver like Bucky Irving comes out on obvious passing downs for a boring un-explosive player like Rachaad White. Because Bucky gets thrown around like a rag doll in pass protection and the team trusts Rachaad not to get their QB killed. That trust is important, and it’s particularly difficult for rookie running backs to earn it.
I think it’s also interesting to note that Javonte just turned 25 years old. The Giants rookie running back Cam Skattebo is 23, and their 2nd year RB Tyrone Tracy is 5 months OLDER than Javonte. He now has 2 seasons under his belt after a devastating knee injury. We often talk about the complete knee tear he suffered as a multi year recovery in terms of getting back to full strength. Oddly enough, Javonte just recently mentioned that he’s just now finally feeling back to his old self after the injury. Did the injury just completely zap him for the rest of his career? I’m not sure, it’s possible, but if we are going to try to think about things differently than our opponents, it feels like we should probably consider the fact the kid just turned 25 and just now said he’s finally back to full health.
The psychology part of the analysis is also fascinating. The stats that most will use to cite how bad Javonte has been deserve some context. Most notably you’ll hear about success rate and rush yards over expected. He has definitely been bad in both areas the last two years, but I find it interesting how un-sticky those stats seem to be. In 2022 (as far as the stat goes back), among RBs with at least 100 carries, these players were near the bottom of success rate:
- Ken Walker (dead last)
- Rachaad White (finished as the RB7 in fantasy the following year)
- Saquon Barkley (I hear that guy is pretty good)
- Alvin Kamara
- Derrick Henry
- Jonathan Taylor
- Christian McCaffrey
Ok you get the point. I’m not sure success rate is a great predictor of future fantasy points for running backs.
If we look at rush yards over expected, we can go back to 2021 prior to Javonte’s injury for some insights. In that season, all of these RBs had negative rush yards over expected per attempt:
- Saquon Barkley (this guy must stink)
- Chuba Hubbard (wait, he’s good now?)
- David Montgomery
- James Conner
- Najee Harris
- Joe Mixon
- Josh Jacobs
- Christian McCaffrey
Javonte was slightly positive in this metric (0.6 rush yards over expected per attempt). What is maybe even more telling about how little stickiness we have here is the players who led the NFL in this metric:
- Rashaad Penny
- D’Ernest Johnson
- Jonathan Taylor (wait, we just said his success rate stunk the next season)
- Nick Chubb
- Tony Pollard
- Damien Harris
- Rhamondre Stevenson
- Michael Carter
Look, I’m mostly being silly just for fun. No one is questioning that Javonte was terrible the last two years. But we ARE looking for weaknesses in the pyschology of our opponents, and we are thinking differently to try to gain an edge given that we acknowledge that we don’t know as much as we think we do.
And given the random results in these metrics for RBs, it seems like a reasonable idea to ask “what if everyone is wrong about Javonte Williams, the starting RB for the Dallas Cowboys with only a gadget 5th round rookie and Miles Sanders next to him?”
David Njoku, TE, Cleveland Browns (Underdog ADP 131, TE12)
I don’t actually think that any reasonable mind believes Njoku is a “bad” player, but the Browns stink is all over this one. In 2024, despite all evidence pointing to the fact that Deshaun Watson was completely washed, Njoku went 30 picks earlier than this. Then Njoku plays just 11 games and still finishes 8th amongst all TEs in total targets and tied for 9th in TDs. He was 5th amongst TEs in target % and FIRST in end zone targets (11), despite playing just 11 games.
He was on pace for 139 targets, 99 catches, 780 yards and 8 TDs. Extrapolating player stats over 17 games can have its flaws, but Njoku also missed half of two of the 11 games he played due to his injuries. The Browns project to be bad and Jameis Winston is gone, but Joe Flacco is the exact QB that had everyone excited about both the Browns and Colts pass catchers the last two seasons. Some folks think Shedeur Sanders is a great QB prospect, and the Browns have another rookie QB they took 2 rounds ahead of Shedeur. And I guess they have Kenny Pickett, too.
Despite the disaster 2024 for the Browns, they attempted the most passes of any NFL offense. Being bad is the expectation for the offense, and the last evidence we have of the Browns as a bad offense *literally* led the entire NFL in passing volume.
The team brought in no real target competition at WR. They did draft Harold Fannin Jr. in the 3rd round, but the expectations are so low for Fannin this year that he goes undrafted in basically every draft on all sites. Even if Fannin is a baller, there is room for both he and Njoku to co-exist here, but the Browns stink is so strong that the market truly doesn’t care about what happened last year with Njoku, which is even more fascinating given the usual market obsession with what happened the prior year. Make it make sense!
Khalil Shakir, WR, Buffalo Bills (Underdog ADP 79, WR45)
What’s most interesting about Shakir is that I’m not sure an ADP around pick 80 would technically classify as *bad* per se, but the stigma that surrounds Shakir is that of an extremely boring, PPR only type wide receiver. I think that is a totally fair assessment as the most likely outcome. However, if we zoom out a bit, things get a lot more interesting.
Josh Allen is the QB1 by ADP, understandably so, but because of a peculiar season by the Bills offense in 2024, there is very little excitement for those who catch passes from Josh Allen. Allen threw just 483 passes over 17 games in 2024, and so the market is very worried the Bills are now a low volume passing offense that spreads it around.
However, in the 4 years prior to last year (basically starting with Josh Allen’s breakout into stardom), his 17 game average for attempts was 608.9 pass attempts. That means that 2024 was a staggering 21% (126 attempts) reduction off his average passing volume. Sure, we can explain the changes in 2024. Joe Brady took over as offensive coordinator after 10 games in 2023, and the Bills made this offensive transition to a more run heavy approach. They’ve maintained a solid defense and played with a lot of leads. Makes sense.
But the Bills flamed out yet again in the NFL playoffs with another loss to the Chiefs (and potential loss to the Ravens if not for a disastrous Mark Andrews drop), and their defense is slowly again with some real attrition from all these years of top level defense. They certainly do not project to be bad by any stretch, but age and attrition catch up to everyone.
For years we had been happily hunting the pass catchers for Josh Allen in early rounds of drafts. Whether that be Stefon Diggs, Gabe Davis or even rookie year Dalton Kincaid. Heck, just last year a rookie 2nd round WR (Keon Coleman) had an ADP (78.6) just ahead of Shakir’s current ADP. After the low pass volume season, the market has finally given up.
But Shakir was quietly really good in 2024. He was 18th in the entire NFL in yards per route run among receivers with at least 50 targets. If you’re into PFF grades, he was 20th amongst WRs in receiving grade. He was an eye popping 2nd in the entire league in yards after catch, behind only the WR1 overall Ja’Marr Chase, and he was 2nd in missed tackles forced behind only Garrett Wilson. He earned a target on just over 25% of his routes, and gapped the rest of the Bills pass catchers in total targets while being tied for 2nd in red zone targets with Keon Coleman.
Is Shakir anything more than an efficient YAC producer out of the slot? I have no idea, but I do know that the field has given up on the Bills pass catchers despite still loving Josh Allen. If the Bills return to a higher level of passing volume, whether by choice or by force, Shakir is their leading receiver with a bunch of exciting points to his profile that are being only thought of as “low ceiling slot receiver in a run heavy offense”.
