No matter if you’re a veteran fantasy football player or new to the game, you may be asking yourself “What is best ball fantasy football?”. This new format of fantasy football has taken the industry by storm and rapidly gained massive levels of popularity.
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If you love fantasy football but don’t like making management decisions throughout the season, you may enjoy participating in best ball contests. This post will explain exactly what best ball contests are, and what makes them different from playing in regular fantasy football contests.
Later on in our post, we will also introduce you to some basic strategies for best ball fantasy league competitions, and point you in the direction of our top recommended app for best ball contests. Let’s dive in.
Table of Contents
- What is Best Ball Fantasy Football?
- Best Ball Fantasy Football Strategy
- Top Best Ball Fantasy Football Sites
What is Best Ball Fantasy Football?
Best ball fantasy football league contests are simply an alternative to regular fantasy football where no management decisions are necessary over the course of the season.
At the beginning of the season, you draft your team. Then, your team stays exactly the same for the rest of the season. Every week, the platform that you play on will make sure that your best lineup is starting. It is that simple.
Best Ball Fantasy Football vs. Traditional Fantasy Football
To help you better understand how best ball fantasy football leagues work, let’s compare best ball fantasy football with traditional fantasy football.
In traditional fantasy football …
- Throughout the season, you have to manage your team with waivers, trades and so on.
- By the end of the season, your team composition may not match what it was at the start of the season.
- Every week, you need to come up with a custom starting lineup and submit it.
In best ball fantasy football …
- You do not have to make ongoing decisions throughout the season about waivers, trades, etc.
- The team you create when the season begins will be your team for the whole season through to the end.
- You have no weekly lineup decisions to make when participating in best ball leagues. Instead, your weekly lineup is selected automatically by choosing top scorers.
How do you know if you are someone best ball leagues would appeal to? It really just comes down to the level of time and effort you want to spend on management.
If you enjoy that time and effort digging through the waiver wire, then you should probably stick with traditional fantasy football. But if you find those decisions fatiguing, you just are too busy to deal with them every week, or they give you anxiety, then you will love best ball fantasy football.
In fact, best ball is a great format for a beginner who is intimidated by the management aspects of fantasy football, and is looking for a simpler, more streamlined way to participate in fantasy contests.
Best Ball Fantasy Football vs. Daily Fantasy Football
Something else you are probably wondering is how best ball compares with daily fantasy football. The answer comes down to the duration of the contest. Best ball, like traditional fantasy football, lasts the length of the NFL season. But daily fantasy sports contests are much shorter, usually a week or less, often just a day.
Many people enjoy a combination of both. They will participate in a best ball league for the whole season, but also some shorter daily contests as well for the additional action.
Also, note that even though best ball tournaments run the entire season, there may be shorter best ball events that you also can participate in (more on that later).
Best Ball Fantasy Football Strategy
Unlike traditional fantasy football, with the best ball format, you are not going to have the luxury of being able to reconfigure your team over the course of the season. That means that the decisions you make during the initial draft are absolutely critical.
When you are building your team, you should take into account how many other teams are competing in your league. Put an emphasis on volatile scorers. Another strategy that also works well in best ball drafts is stacking. In particular, you should consider stacking a quarterback and wide receiver from the same team.
If you have the ability to enter at a high volume for contests that allow it, you should. If you do not, you will need to work extra hard to find an edge. A good way to do this is by loading up your team with players that you believe are being undervalued. You can find our list of undervalued NFL players by ADP for this upcoming season here.
This advice is really just skimming the surface, and your mileage may vary with different strategies. You are going to need to do some research and development to figure out what works best for you when putting together best ball rosters.
Top Best Ball Fantasy Football Sites
Now that you know a bit about strategies when putting together your best ball team during the draft phase, let’s share where you can play in a best ball contest. Our top suggestion is Underdog Fantasy.
Underdog Fantasy (Sign-Up Here)
Underdog Fantasy is one of the best-known platforms for participating in best ball contests. On this app, you can also participate in other Underdog Fantasy football contests including Pick ‘Em and more.
There are two types of best ball formats at Underdog Fantasy: regular best ball, and “Weekly Winners.”
Underdog Fantasy explains, “Weekly Winners is like other Best Ball contests – your drafted teams compete for the duration of a specified season. Instead of being tournament-style, where teams accumulate points throughout the season to advance, Weekly Winners awards prizes to the highest-scoring teams for each scoring week throughout the season.”
Sign-Up for Underdog Fantasy Today
Get up to $100 when you sign-up for Underdog Fantasy through the link below today.
That means that at Underdog Fantasy, you get to combine the excitement of competing in a season-long event and having a shot at weekly wins.
You can open an account and play at Underdog Fantasy in most states, provinces, and territories of the USA and Canada. The platform has developed a reputation for rapid, reliable payouts with its Underdog Fantasy withdrawal process, as well as exciting bonuses and promotions. In fact, you can receive up to $100 in bonus funds when you make your first deposit.
If you are ready to claim your welcome bonus and compete in the best ball contests now, sign up for a new account.