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NFL Playoff Best Ball is largely about strategy, with a particular focus on how you thread together combinations of players from specific NFL teams to create a lineup that can navigate through the playoffs to the Super Bowl. There’s much more focus put on stacks and teams, but that doesn’t mean that individual players are not important.
Both Underdog Fantasy and Drafters Fantasy have a variety of NFL Playoff Best Ball tournaments available (DraftKings coming soon), and we have made sure to cater our core picks so that they work on both sites. However, if any players is particularly notable on one site or the other, it will be specified in the notes section.
Additionally, if you are looking for real-time updated Playoff Odds, both 538 and Football Outsiders offer high quality models that show the probabilities of every possible scenario for each team in contention for the Playoffs.
Below are our Core Picks for NFL Playoff Best Ball tournaments (structured so that they will work for both Underdog and Drafters). Our picks are a blend of probability to make the Super Bowl, positional value, projection, and our own NFL team assessments (where maybe we disagree with the market). The individual player projections are powered by RotoGrinders.
These picks will be continually updated on an ad-hoc basis leading up to the kickoff of the NFL Playoffs (as needed).
* Last Updated Wednesday December 28th, 4:19 PM ET *
| Number | Player | Position | Team | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Christian McCaffrey | RB | SF | While the elite QBs are all great, McCaffrey is the player who gives you a huge edge over his position on both Underdog and Drafters. The RB pool is not incredibly strong, particularly for teams with strong advancement chances, and CMC should maintain his elite role even if Eli Mitchell returns in the playoffs. |
| 2 | Joe Burrow | QB | CIN | Burrow is our favorite QB pick. He goes at least a round later than the 3 top QBs, despite the fact that two of them will have a bye. Burrow was also the QB4 points per game this regular season, nearly matching the production of the elites, but at a discount. The Bengals playoff chances are also underrated as they're getting mostly healthy, showed the upside making the SB last year, and have the 4th best SB odds. |
| 3 | Tee Higgins | WR | CIN | Ja'Marr Chase is a superstar, but Tee Higgins is a fantasy star himself that always gets discounted seemingly because his teammate is so good. We aren't avoiding Chase (duh), but Higgins is much easier to stack with Burrow at cost. If you remove his games where he got injured early, he moves up to 14.92 Half PPR PPG (WR7 Overall), which is ahead of CeeDee Lamb, but he is drafted well after Lamb, particularly on UD. |
| 4 | Jerick McKinnon | RB | KC | The Pacheco story is cute, but when it comes to crunch time in the playoffs, the Chiefs are going to ride McKinnon. They've already elevated his role down the stretch of the season, which has resulted in huge fantasy scores, but the market is not treating him like the lead back for the Kansas City Chiefs. Even if they get the bye, McKinnon is undervalued. If they happen to lose the bye, he's the best RB value at cost in drafts by FAR. |
| 5 | JK Dobbins | RB | BAL | A Ravens RB? Are you crazy? Clearly the Ravens are a dog to make it far in the playoffs, but the market is probably too low on them. They have basically the same SB odds as Minnesota (per 538) who all go much higher, and they're actually 6th overall in DVOA (via Football Outsiders) in the NFL. They should get Lamar back in time for the playoffs, and their defense is solid. Their lack of receivers should lead to force feeding Dobbins against suspect AFC run defenses, and even if they lose he can be a very valuable late round RB score at a weak position. |
