DraftKings Best Ball Strategy: How to Draft a Team Built to Win

Best Ball is fantasy football with one fairly important catch:

The draft is basically the whole damn season.

Once your DraftKings Best Ball draft ends, there are no waivers, no trades, no lineup decisions and no Tuesday morning rescue mission because the running back you loved just lost his job.

You get 20 players.

Then you live with them.

DraftKings automatically uses your highest-scoring eligible players each week, which removes one headache from fantasy football while making the draft considerably more important. 

That changes what we’re looking for.

A traditional fantasy player asks:

Who will score the most points this season?

A good Best Ball drafter needs to ask something closer to:

Which combination of players gives this roster enough weekly scoring, spike-week upside and structural flexibility to survive an entire season and, in tournaments, eventually beat other good teams when it matters most?

That’s a different game.

First, Know What You’re Drafting

DraftKings NFL Best Ball currently uses 20-player snake drafts. Each week’s scoring lineup consists of:

• 1 QB
• 2 RB
• 3 WR
• 1 TE
• 1 FLEX

There are no kickers or defenses in the standard NFL Best Ball format. DraftKings uses full-PPR scoring, with one point per reception, plus 3-point bonuses for 300 passing yards, 100 rushing yards and 100 receiving yards. 

Fast drafts currently give you 30 seconds per pick. Slow drafts give you up to eight hours. After the draft, there are no adds, drops, trades or waivers. 

That format tells us a lot before we’ve ranked a single player.

Three wide receivers must score every week, and WR can also fill the FLEX.

You only need one quarterback and one tight end to score.

And because there is no waiver wire, depth isn’t optional insurance. It’s part of the roster.

Best Ball Is About Capturing Weeks, Not Predicting Them

This is the part of Best Ball I like most.

You don’t have to know when the explosion happens.

Suppose a receiver gives you something like:

6 points
9 points
7 points
31 points
5 points
24 points

In a managed league, that player can make you lose your mind because half the battle is figuring out when he’s usable.

Best Ball doesn’t care.

When the 31 arrives, DraftKings can use it.

When the 5 arrives, hopefully somebody else on your roster pushes him out of the scoring lineup.

That means volatility isn’t automatically a weakness.

Sometimes it’s exactly what we’re buying.

A deep-threat receiver, explosive change-of-pace back or field-stretching tight end can be much more attractive in Best Ball than in a format where you’re deciding whether to start him every Sunday.

You don’t need consistency from every player.

You need the roster to produce enough useful scores collectively.

But Don’t Build 20 Lottery Tickets

This is where the previous idea gets taken too far.

If volatility is good, why not draft nothing but maniacs?

Because somebody still has to score when the explosions don’t happen.

The best Best Ball rosters should have different kinds of players doing different jobs.

Some provide:

Volume.

Some provide:

Ceiling.

Some provide:

Structural depth.

Some provide:

Asymmetric upside if their role changes.

The goal isn’t 20 safe players or 20 moonshots.

It’s a portfolio.

You want enough stability to survive ordinary weeks and enough volatility to produce extraordinary ones.

Draft Capital Should Determine Roster Construction

I don’t believe in walking into every DraftKings Best Ball draft saying:

I WILL DRAFT EXACTLY THREE QUARTERBACKS, SIX RUNNING BACKS, EIGHT RECEIVERS AND THREE TIGHT ENDS.

That’s backwards.

Your early picks should influence how many roster spots you need later.

If You Pay for an Elite Quarterback

If you’ve spent significant draft capital on a quarterback you expect to score for you almost every healthy week, drafting three additional quarterbacks makes very little sense.

Two total may be enough depending on the build.

If You Wait at Quarterback

Now the equation changes.

If you’re assembling a cheaper group with more uncertainty, using three QB roster spots can create more opportunities for one to deliver a usable week.

Same principle at tight end.

Draft an elite option early?

You may need less quantity.

Wait until the position gets messy?

More bodies can give the roster additional shots at finding weekly production.

Spend draft capital on certainty, and you can often buy less depth.

Spend less draft capital, and you may need more chances.

That’s structural drafting.

Wide Receiver Usually Needs the Deepest Room

This isn’t because running backs don’t matter.

It’s because the DraftKings lineup requires three receivers every week, compared with two running backs, and the FLEX can also be filled by a receiver. DraftKings also awards a full point per reception. 

If you’re drafting six receivers and expecting all six to remain healthy, productive and useful for an entire NFL season, you’re leaving yourself very little margin for error.

That’s why many viable constructions end up with a substantial portion of the 20 roster spots devoted to WR.

But again, capital matters.

If you’ve invested heavily in elite receivers early, you may not need to keep drafting them forever.

If you leave the opening rounds thin at WR, you’re probably going to need more swings later.

Running Back Strategy Should Follow the Board

Best Ball arguments about running backs have become fantasy football’s version of debating pineapple on pizza.

Zero RB.

Hero RB.

Robust RB.

People pick a religion and begin evangelizing.

I don’t want Cover The Slate doing that.

There are drafts where pounding receiver early makes sense.

There are drafts where running-back value falls directly into your lap.

There are drafts where an elite RB gives you an enormous weekly ceiling and then later rounds provide receiver opportunities we actually like.

The useful question isn’t:

Which RB strategy is correct?

It’s:

What does this particular draft allow me to build?

DraftKings looked back at the winner of its 2024 Best Ball Millionaire and found a 3-QB, 6-RB, 8-WR, 3-TE roster. That team started with two running backs and had four RBs through seven rounds, while also being unusually light at wide receiver early. It ultimately won despite ignoring several pieces of conventional Best Ball wisdom. 

The lesson isn’t draft four running backs in seven rounds.

The lesson is that there’s more than one viable way to construct a winning roster.

Draft Roles, Not Just Players

Late in drafts, I care much less about a player’s median projection.

I’m asking:

What could happen that makes this guy massively more valuable than he is today?

That’s where Best Ball gets interesting.

Think about profiles like:

• Rookie WR who could earn a much larger role
• RB2 who becomes extremely valuable if the starter misses time
• Receiver entering an ambiguous target tree
• Young tight end with a path to becoming a primary option
• Explosive player whose playing time could expand
• New starter whose market hasn’t fully adjusted yet

We’re looking for nonlinear outcomes.

A player drafted in Round 17 who simply performs like a Round 17 player doesn’t really change your season.

A Round 17 player who becomes a weekly starter absolutely can.

Late picks should give us reasons to be wrong in interesting ways.

Rookies Belong in Best Ball

Rookies are particularly fascinating because early drafts are making bets before we have complete information.

We don’t fully know:

• NFL efficiency
• Exact snap share
• Target distribution
• How fast the player earns trust
• Whether the depth chart survives training camp unchanged

That’s risk.

It’s also why the price can be interesting.

A rookie who starts slowly but becomes a major offensive piece in November and December can be substantially more useful in a tournament than his full-season totals eventually suggest.

We’re not drafting last year’s stats.

We’re drafting what the role could become.

The key is separating upside we can explain from offseason fan fiction.

Health Risk Is Different When You Can’t Replace Anyone

In normal season-long fantasy, an injured player hurts.

Then you hit waivers.

DraftKings Best Ball doesn’t give you that escape hatch. A long-term injured player remains on the roster, and you cannot replace him. 

That makes health and depth important.

But I wouldn’t respond by refusing to draft anyone who has ever appeared on an injury report.

Football players get hurt.

Sometimes the discount on a perceived health risk becomes more attractive than the risk itself.

This is another price question:

How much uncertainty am I accepting, and what am I being compensated with in ADP?

An injury-prone player at an aggressive price?

Dangerous.

The same player after the room lets him fall two rounds?

Now we can talk.

Bye Weeks Matter, But Don’t Let Them Run the Draft

If both of your quarterbacks have the same bye week, you’ve created a guaranteed zero at quarterback that week unless you drafted a third.

That’s worth noticing.

Same idea at tight end if you’re only carrying two.

But I would not pass on a materially better player in Round 8 because his bye week isn’t aesthetically pleasing.

Best Ball rosters are already balancing:

• ADP
• Team stacks
• Positional structure
• Upside
• Health
• Role
• Bye weeks

Eventually you can optimize yourself into drafting worse football players.

Use bye weeks as a tiebreaker and structural check, not a dictator.

Stacking Matters More in Tournament Best Ball

Now we get into roster-level thinking.

If your quarterback throws a touchdown to your wide receiver:

Both score.

If that offense explodes for 40 points:

Multiple pieces can produce ceiling games together.

That’s correlation.

In tournament formats, where DraftKings advances the highest-scoring teams from one round into another, correlated ceiling can become especially valuable. DraftKings distinguishes these tournaments from Best Ball Sit & Go contests, where payouts are based on cumulative scoring over the full contest. 

The obvious stack is:

QB + WR

But we can also use:

QB + TE

QB + multiple pass catchers

And depending on tournament structure:

Players from opposing teams who could produce together in an important late-season matchup.

The goal isn’t to force stacks.

If you drafted a receiver in Round 3, don’t reach three rounds for his quarterback just so the roster looks sophisticated.

Correlation is valuable when the price still makes sense.

The Quarterback Can Come Later

This is one of the cleanest ways to stack without forcing anything.

Suppose you draft a wide receiver early.

His quarterback isn’t selected until much later.

Now when the quarterback reaches a reasonable draft range, you have a legitimate tiebreaker.

Two QBs are close on your board.

One creates a stack.

Take the stack.

That’s very different from deciding in Round 6 that you simply must complete a pairing regardless of price.

Stack when the draft gives it to you.

Don’t let the stack hijack the draft.

ADP Is Information, Not a Ranking

Average Draft Position tells us what rooms are doing.

It doesn’t tell us what we’re required to do.

ADP helps answer:

When will I probably need to take this player?

That is enormously useful.

But if our research says Player A belongs materially ahead of Player B, we’re allowed to draft him first.

Likewise, liking a player doesn’t mean taking him four rounds ahead of market value is smart.

The ideal scenario is:

We disagree with the market and still capture the player near market price.

That’s where drafting becomes interesting.

You’re not just trying to identify players correctly.

You’re trying to acquire them efficiently.

Best Ball Has Two Very Different Jobs

DraftKings currently offers both traditional Best Ball Sit & Go contests and tournament formats. Sit & Go standings are based on cumulative scoring, while tournament teams can advance through multiple rounds. 

That distinction should affect how aggressively we pursue ceiling.

Sit & Go

You’re building for season-long cumulative output.

Weekly production matters all year.

Tournament

You need enough scoring to advance.

Then you eventually need enough ceiling to beat increasingly strong surviving rosters.

That makes late-season upside and correlated ceiling more interesting.

A roster that merely scrapes through the first stage still needs a path to becoming dangerous later.

This is why tournament Best Ball shouldn’t be approached as a standard season-long league where we’re thrilled to finish third.

The Draft Should Tell a Story

When the 20th round ends, I want to be able to explain the roster.

Not every player.

The roster.

Something like:

We paid heavily for WR early, grabbed one anchor RB, waited at QB and built three correlated quarterback combinations later. Our late RBs have contingent upside, and our receiver depth gives us plenty of spike-week shots.

Or:

We opened with elite RBs because the value was there, then built a deep volume-based receiver room and paid for a high-end tight end to create a weekly positional advantage.

Those are strategies.

“This player was next in the rankings” twenty times isn’t.

What I Want From the Last Five Rounds

The end of a Best Ball draft is not where I want boring.

At that point, I’m hunting reasons the market could look stupid by November.

Give me:

An ambiguous role.

A player one injury away from serious volume.

A rookie with a real ceiling.

A forgotten receiver attached to a good quarterback.

An athletic tight end with a path to routes and red-zone work.

Will most of them hit?

No.

That’s why they’re available.

But when you’re drafting late, the downside of being wrong is tiny.

I want the upside of being right to actually matter.

The Cover The Slate Best Ball Approach

We’re not going to treat Best Ball like normal rankings with the names rearranged.

When we evaluate players for DraftKings Best Ball, we’ll care about:

Cost
Where do we actually have to draft him?

Opportunity
What kind of role can realistically exist?

Ceiling
Can this player produce weeks that matter?

Durability
How much risk are we absorbing without access to waivers?

Team environment
Is the offense capable of supporting the outcome we’re drafting for?

Correlation
Does the player strengthen something else we’ve already built?

Asymmetric upside
What happens if the optimistic version of this player’s season becomes real?

Those inputs won’t become a fake mathematical score.

They’ll become the reasoning behind our tiers.

Because Best Ball isn’t about discovering the 20 players who score the most fantasy points.

It’s about constructing one roster whose pieces give each other enough ways to win.

The draft is the season.

Make the 20 picks count.