Football Garbage Time 2019 Best Ball Fantasy Football League Draft & Strategy

By the Football Garbage Time Staff & Friends

Here at Football Garbage Time, we’re always thinking about how we can help you, our readers.  And one thing we did for the first time last year was help all you poor souls who play Best Ball Fantasy Football.  But once isn’t enough, so we’re back for another year!  Before we get to the draft and strategy, perhaps you’re asking yourself “What the heck is Best Ball Fantasy Football?”

Best Ball Fantasy Football is essentially a PPR points league where only your best scoring players count each week.  There are no lineups to set.  If you draft three QBs, only your top scoring QB each week counts toward your score.  In Best Ball on Draft.com you get a roster of 18 players and have to score 1 x QB, 2 x RB, 3 x WR, 1 x TE and 1 x FLEX each week.  Typically, the drafts for these leagues are conducted early in the off season and allow each team an 8 hour clock to make picks.  So no excuses of having been pressured into taking that 10th TE when you really needed a WR.  Once you complete your draft, regardless of site, you’re lock in.  No waiver pickups, no trades, just sit back and enjoy the season!

So what we did was gather some of the best minds in fantasy football, put together a 10 team Best Ball league on Draft.com and tweeted out every pick of all 18 rounds with the hashtag #FGTBestBall.  You can find the complete draft results under our Twitter account (@FBGarbagetime) or by using the hashtag OR by clicking HERE (NOTE: some browsers don’t let you zoom in enough, in which case you may have to RIGHT-CLICK and “SAVE LINK AS…” so you can open the JPG locally and enlarge to your heart’s content).

And since we want to make it easy on you, we’ve compiled the results of that draft below for each team and provided you with each team’s strategy, draft approach and post-draft thoughts to help you with your Best Ball drafts this season!  Have more questions?  Feel free to reach out to us, we’re all happy to help!

Draft Order

  1. Ryan Whitfield from Football Garbage Time (rwhitty24)
  2. Jeff Carrier from NFL Talking Heads Podcast (jdcarr15)
  3. Ha Kung Wong from Football Garbage Time (FBGarbageTime)
  4. Geoff Lambert from Going For 2 (GoingFor2DotCom)
  5. Joanne Kong from Football Garbage Time (JoJo115)
  6. Dan Thury from the Beer Fueled Fantasy Football Podcast (ThuryBFF)
  7. Matt Hicks from the The Fantasy Fanalysts (MattHicks15
  8. Wally Akinso from the Urban Sports Scene (UrbanSportsScene)
  9. Victor Rogers MFL10/Best Ball Expert (GateKeeper1906)
  10. Scott King from Football Garbage Time (NFLFantasy_more)

Ryan’s Team

To this point in the draft season, I have been big on the 0-RB philosophy and this draft shows it. I had the 1.01 and shook the draft up by going Hopkins right out of the gate. I followed that with Mike Evans and Antonio Brown. I took Cooper Kupp and Marquise Brown later and then handcuffed the KC situation with Hardman and Hill.

I love my QB situation with Luck and Brees and then a flyer on Haskins. I also don’t hate my RB situation led by James White and Kerryon Johnson. I mixed some RB2 flyers with Coleman, Ekeler, and Ito Smith, and took Justice Hill as a rookie flyer.

I traditionally like to have 3 QB’s and Tight Ends in Best Ball leagues so coming away with just 2 tight ends was a whiff on my part. With that said getting Njoku in the ninth and Herndon in 12th is hard to hate.

Jeff’s Team

Being my first Best Ball draft of the season it went fairly well. With the second overall pick it was nice to have S. Barkley fall there, who is typically the consensus 1.01. My overall goal was to draft and secure a good TE so I don’t have to waste multiple draft picks to secure the position. I accomplished that with Ertz at 2.9. Didn’t have to select a backup until 17th rd. Second goal was to wait on QB for as long as I felt comfortable, was able to get Brady in 12th and Garappolo in 14th.

Overall I’m happy with my team, don’t love it, would give it a B.

Ha Kung’s Team

In Best Ball leagues, unlike regular fantasy football leagues, I’m generally willing to take upside players late instead of investing in any of the top players at any position since I don’t need to worry about consistency from week to week.  My general strategy this year, as it was last year, was to go spend up at RB and TE, and spend down on QB and WR, but to spend 7 of my 18 picks on the WR position.  My reasoning was that:

  1. There are very few RBs that aren’t part of committees, so getting two that got the majority of carries was an significant advantage.
  2. WRs do very well in PPR leagues, but consistency can be an issue.  So it was a better value to get lots of upside WRs late anchored by one or two studs then to spend up on lots of WRs early.
  3. TE is an incredibly thin position.  If you don’t get one of the top 3 (Travis Kelce, Zach Ertz and George Kittle), then you might as well wait until the end.
  4. There are plenty of good QBs available, and Best Ball format limits low floor QBs.

And after finishing second place in last year’s league, I wasn’t about to mix things up!

Will Matt Ryan consistently give me 2 TDs and 250+ passing yards each and every week? If history is any indicator, probably not. But do I have a good chance at getting that production from one of Matt Ryan, Russell Wilson and Mitch Trubisky every week? I’d go so far as to say that there’s as good a chance I get that from one of that trio as getting that from a grouping of Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes and Drew Brees. So I knew I was going to wait until around the 9th and 10th round to take my first two QBs (Matty Ice and Russell Wilson), which by the way is exactly what I did last year and almost exactly where I got Matt Ryan last year, and then the 15th round to take my third QB (Mitch Trubisky). And yes, I’ll admit to a little homerism seeing as I’m a Bears fan, but Trubisky took some big steps forward last year and has even more weapons this year with the Bears drafting David Montgomery and Riley Ridley as well as getting back Allen Robinson and Tarik Cohen.  Again, will he be consistent?  Probably not, but Best Ball doesn’t require that.

Mitch Trubisky Passing Stats
Year G Cmp Att Cmp% Yds TD Int Rate QBR
2017 12 196 330 59.4 2193 7 7 77.5 31.6
2018* 14 289 434 66.6 3223 24 12 95.4 72.8
Care 26 485 764 63.5 5416 31 19 87.7
Mitch Trubisky Rushing Stats
Game Rush Rush Rush
Year G Rush Yds TD
2017 12 41 248 2
2018* 14 68 421 3
Care 26 109 669 5

As for RB, since this was a half PPR league, my plan was to spend 2 of my first 4 picks on RBs that had involvement in the passing game, so Ezekiel Elliott and Aaron Jones made a lot of sense as my 1st and 4th round picks in high powered offenses that won’t shy away from dumping the ball to the RB.  Then I went with Tarik Cohen in the 6th round, which I think was a steal for someone who may lead his team in touches at RB.  I’m not a fan of Shady McCoy this year, but he’s still the primary ball carrier in Buffalo, so 12th round felt like decent value.  D’Onta Foreman was an upside pick in the 17th round seeing as how Lamar Miller hasn’t been anything special and Foreman could easily end up leading a committee after healing up from an achilles injury.

I’m psyched about my starting three WRs, even though I waited.  Michael Thomas, Julian Edelman and Allen Robinson with my 2nd, 5th and 7th pick feels like a steal.  Edelman is in line for a serious workload with no Gronk and Robinson is the top target on a rapidly improving Bears offense.  And I don’t much like Emmanuel Sanders this year, particularly with the injury and the uncertainty at QB, but end of the 16th round?  That’s simply too good value to pass up.

And finally, I spent up and got one of the top 3 TEs in George Kittle in the early 3rd round.  He was the last of the big 3 to go, so if you want one, you have to be willing to target them early.

Looking forward to a move up to first place this year!

Goeff’s Team

With the 1.04 I knew I end up with a stud RB in the first round and my intention was to go WR in the next round— except one of my favorite players fell in my lap in the second, Nick Chubb.

I’ve been drafting Chubb in other leagues at the end of the first or very top of the second, to get him at the 2.07 was too good to pass up.

Unfortunately, it did hurt my WRs by going RB/RB in rounds one and two, so I tried to compensate that with drafting a ton of WRs. Outside of Brandin Cooks, all my WRs have a good chance to out perform their ADP by a lot…if the cards fall correctly. Highlighted by guys like Mike Williams and D.J. Moore with some deeper high-upside “big play” guys like DeDe Westbrook and Tre’Quan Smith.

I waited as long as I could to draft my QBs and I was ecstatic to land two running QBs in Cam Newton and Josh Allen, and at tight end I ended up with potential Top 5 candidate, Evan Engram, and another high-upside “big play” player in Mark Andrews.

Joanne’s Team

Is there really a Best Ball strategy? And if there is, how many of us stick to it when faced with the decision of “who to draft?” Like most drafts, for the first round I drafted the best available, whether that be a running back or wide receiver. I applied the same strategy for round two, making my picks – running back (1) and wide receiver (2). Best Ball is a different type of draft. You don’t need players to have a good week every week, you just need to have one good player each week. This gives you a lot of leeway when drafting a player allowing you to take more risk.

Alvin Kamara, running back for the New Orleans Saints, had 968 rushing yards and 13 rushing touchdowns, 656 receiving yards and 5 receiving touchdowns.

My strategy wasn’t in the order of position as much as to get certain players, such as rookies Josh Jacobs, DK Metcalf (WR), Parris Campbell (WR), AJ Brown (WR). To balance for the potential disappointment of these players, I wanted to round out the team with reliable veterans in the running back and wide receiver position.

My next strategy was at the quarterback position. There were certain quarterbacks that I sought to draft – four to be exact. Out of the four, I was able to draft two – Baker Mayfield (Cleveland Browns) and Jared Goff (LA Rams).

With Odell Beckham Jr. now a receiver for the Cleveland Browns, there could be a race to the top in the AFC North. Did I mention OBJ celebrated his new team by buying a new Rolls Royce in Cleveland Brown colors…

On the bottom of my priority list was the tight end position. Due to injury, in the 2018 season, Greg Olsen only had 291 receiving yards and 4 touchdowns. This veteran tight end was a great value at round 16, and has the potential to be a playmaker again if healthy.

And although the tight end position wasn’t a priority, cracking cancer is always on the top of my list, as it was for Greg Olsen and Ron Rivera.

Overall, I’m confident in my drafted team. Although my wide receiver group was heavily skewed towards rookies and thus have equal potential to be a triumph or disappointment, I feel this team is relatively well rounded with high floor veterans and “hopefully” breakout rookies to bring this team to victory.

Dan’s Team

So my strategy in this was to stock up on RBs and WRs. I accomplished that with my RBs with Bell, Mixon, Guice as my 1,2,3 then having Royce Freeman, Ronald Jones and Ballage as upside players. My WRs are a bit thin with Thielen, Green, Watkins as my 1,2,3. Im hoping my upside picks in N’Keal Harry, Devin Funchess and DaeSean Hamilton will work out. I generally will always wait on QBs, which paid off in getting Rodgers and Prescott to back him up, this also allowed me to be a bit more aggressive on my WRs. TEs could be a mess, if OJ Howard cant stay healthy, so hopefully Cook can continue to produce in NO.

Overall I’m happy with my team and looking forward to repeating as the champion!

Matt’s Team

I went for a well-rounded approach with this Best Ball DRAFT – a strategy I don’t always employ but enjoyed here. I took the bait on Gurley at 1.07 – I believe that’s a huge value for someone whose value is dropping based primarily on speculation and the selection of a 3rd round change of pace back in Henderson. I’ve emphasized taking Tight End early, so I was happy to snag Kelce and then completed the most dangerous stack in the NFL by taking Mahomes, albeit a bit early.

After ignoring them early, I focused on wide receivers in the mid rounds. With Cooper, Ridley, and Fuller I have 3 wideouts who have proven they can cash in huge weeks – I’ll chase the upside even more in Best Ball formats. Robert Foster and Curtis Samuel are also two of my favorite breakout candidates for the 2019 season.

I landed on 2 tight ends, given the high capital I spent on both Kelce and Hooper, leaving me with the flexibility to take 3 quarterbacks. Wentz and Carr both provide upside on what I expect to be high-octane offenses in 2019.

Wally’s Team

I went aiming for running backs early but when Julio Jones was on the board after getting Melvin Gordon, I had to grab him up. Then I just waited my turn for a back in the 3rd round which happened to be Leonard Fournette.  I lucked up.

I like the versatility of my team. I love the combination of Gordon and Fournette at running back. Then I can throw Jones in the mix for big plays.  Get your popcorn ready because my squad will be a serious problem.

Victor’s Team

Coming off a 3rd place finish in last years BestBall I felt I needed to do something different to secure the W this year. I went into the draft with the thought in mind I would pick up Kyler Murray and Lamar Jackson so I admit I reached for them both thinking I should get high ceilings out of both players. With that in mind every other pick was made with the priority of capitalizing on value falling to me. A perfect example of that was Matt Stafford falling to me at 17.09.

My RB strategy was centered around stacking with my QB’s which is something I normally don’t prioritize . David Johnson should benefit from the new offense and Ingram should get a lot of goal line touches on a run heavy team. I feel like Henry, Miller, and Murray have high touchdown upside and Hunt is going to be in a great situation on the backend of the season. Hunt should be great depth in case someone gets hurt plus he was my 14.02 pick, again you can’t beat that value.

My WR’s are the weakest position on my team. OBJ and Allen are two great anchors for my team with Lockett & Sutton hopefully stepping up into WR 1 roles on their respective teams. I feel like KeKe should do well in a high powered offense and Zay Jones was a great value dart throw with my last pick on a Bills team with a of ton boom bust potential.

My TE’s give me a good floor. If Henry is back to the same player he was prior to his injury he should hold me over for the year with Goedert and Burton both having the potential to outscore each other on bye or down weeks.

All in all I feel like my team has a solid floor with limited upside. Luckily my QB strategy didn’t come back to bite me in the butt. With 3 QB’s I don’t think I will have too many lower scoring weeks and I’m anticipating my TE’s to score high enough to be a flex on lower performing weeks from my RB’s and TE’s.

Scott’s Team

Fantasy football draft in May?!? You bet. This is my second season in best ball and I learned a lot last year. I went a little too QB heavy and paid the price when injuries wiped out my WR and RB squads in several leagues. This year I decided to wait on 2nd and 3rd QBs. I sat at 10, which is always a decent spot for me to pick from. I took Adams and Conner first, both have potential for big seasons. I like my QB situation with Watson, Big Ben and Darnold. All should carry me with no problem. I waited a long time on TE and that might come back to haunt me with Rudolph, Walker and Fant. I honestly took Fant late as a protest to the Lions taking TJ.

We’ll see how this year works out, but this will not be my last draft of the summer.

tagged with , , ,