Playoff Best Ball Strategies

Coming off an exciting NFL Best Ball season where I made the BBM3 Finals on Underdog and finished in 271st place of 451,000 entries, I am now fully addicted to best ball. Which means I’m fully invested in NFL PLAYOFF Best Ball!

The best part is there are NFL Playoff Best Ball Contests on Underdog Fantasy, Drafters, and DraftKings. There are a ton of good articles breaking down the basics of Playoff Best Ball, especially on the Underdog Network. I highly recommend this article that outlines the basics and strategies on Underdog Fantasy.

So I won’t get into the details of drafting strategies that are covered such as making sure you can advance in all four rounds including the wild card round, making sure you have a stack all the way to the Super Bowl, and position allocation.

Instead, I want to focus on my strategies of which teams I will have high exposure to in my portfolio and why. When every Playoff Best Ball draft starts, you need to decide which teams you are stacking up. A lot will depend on what pick number you get and who you take with your first pick.

First, I am generally underweight the #1 seeds and bye week teams of the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs. Looking back in the Super Bowl era, about 50% of #1 seeds make the Super Bowl and only 25% of the time do we see #1 vs. #1 seeds in the Super Bowl. From 2013-2017 we had four years in a row of #1 vs. #1 matchup in the Super Bowl. But we haven’t had that the last four years. And two of the last four years, have not had a #1 seed in the Super Bowl, including of course last year.

Yes, I have some Eagles and Chiefs stacks in my portfolio but I’m underweight. Because if they both don’t make the Super Bowl then I can gain a lot of leverage by focusing on teams that play in all four rounds including the Wildcard Round this weekend.

These are the teams I have the highest exposure:

NFC:

San Francisco 49ers:

My favorite of all the team stacks. I trust this head coach and the offensive weapons. They have made Mr. Irreveland Brock Purdy look very comfortable. I try to get as much of Christian McCaffery, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle and Brandon Aiyuk. I do draft Brock Purdy, especially if I missed on Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts and Joe Burrow. And I also love Elijah Mitchell later in the draft. Shanahan will utilize both running backs this postseason, and he’s the key to getting a 49ers piece late in the draft.

AFC:

Cincinatti Bengals:

The defending AFC Champs are looking hot again coming into the postseason. I usually stack the Bengals OR the Bills, because they will most likely meet in the Divisional round. Burrow, Chase, Higgins, and Mixon are the obvious early targets. But I’ll target Boyd, Hurst and even Perine late to get Bengals exposure.

Buffalo Bills:

If you want Josh Allen, ou have the get the #1 overall pick. So if you take him #1, then stack up the Bills and go from there. I like taking RB James Cook in the mid rounds to get a Bills’ RB piece. I also don’t mind grabbing McKenzie, Shakir or even Cole Beasley late if I’m only able to get one receiver with Allen early.

Los Angeles Chargers:

This is a team you can target a little later outside of Ekeler. So that’s what I like most. And this team could make a sneaky run to at least the AFC Championship. If the beat the Jaguars, they’ll meet the Chiefs for the 3rd time and they’ve played them tough the first two times. I would not be shocked if they upset the Chiefs and taking Chargers allows you to stack two AFC teams with the 49ers.