We’ve all been there.
You’ve spent hours researching your starting lineup decisions for your fantasy team. The tight end who has been sitting on your bench the past two weeks while he’s been blowing up in real life finally makes it into your starting lineup. He’s facing a cupcake defense. He’s a consensus top play according to all of the “experts.” Game day comes, he lays an egg, and you lose your game by a few points. Next week, he’s back on your bench facing the best defense in the league and he blows up again, while your steady starter fails to get a single reception. Another close loss.
And so it goes all season long, with different players at different positions, on teams in many different leagues. No matter how much research you do, how many expert opinions you consider, you end up leaving too many points on your bench and miss out on a number of potential wins. Your carefully crafted team doesn’t play to it’s potential simply because the luck of the start doesn’t fall your way.
Most of us simply accept this as just a part of the game. Making your weekly lineup decisions, even when they miss, is part of the fun of fantasy sports, right? But for many, myself included, it’s a frustrating and time consuming exercise. Where is it written in stone that this must be a part of the game? What if there was an easier and yet more equitable system?
Enter the “best ball” format.
Best ball is a scoring format where your league software simply plugs in the highest scoring player from your roster at each starting position each week. If you have three quarterbacks on your roster, whoever scores the most points that week is used in the quarterback slot. Two starting running back spots to fill? The two highest scoring running backs from your entire roster for the week are used. And so forth, for all of the starting lineup positions.
I know this might sound a little crazy. And I know there are many people who feel this format is somehow a less worthy form of fantasy football. They feel the process of selecting a weekly starting lineup is an essential part of the game, and helps to somehow differentiate the men from the boys. But I believe the best ball format for a league could offer many advantages over the traditional lineup format. I have seen many teams win based on fortuitous starting lineups, beating teams comprised of much deeper and higher quality rosters, simply because a key player or two had an unexpectedly bad game at a bad time. It’s a less satisfying way to win, and incredibly frustrating to be on the losing end of those games.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Lets look at a few reasons why the best ball format might be a superior format not only for most fantasy football leagues, but in particular for dynasty leagues:
Best Ball diminishes the randomness of chance and luck.
Football is an unpredictable game. The ball can bounce any number of different and unexpected ways. Players get injured or ejected. Coaches favor a hot hand or unexpectedly bench a player. The dreaded game time decision for a key player can make or break your entire matchup. A defense might focus on a particular player and take him completely out of a game. Week-to-week, game-to-game, play-by-play, anything can happen. Trying to predict exactly what will happen in each game is a very difficult proposition.
Now, predicting performance over an entire season is also difficult, but it is generally easier and less risky. Let’s consider the Law of Large Numbers. This theorem states that as the sample size of an event increases, the variance from the expected mean decreases. Applying this to our discussion of fantasy player performance supports the notion that it is much more difficult to predict the performance of an individual player in each individual game than it is to predict how a player might perform over an entire season. A larger sample size of games and plays will normalize the data and smooth out some of those statistical variations.
As an example, going into a season it’s much easier to predict something like “Dez Bryant will be a top 20 WR.” But trying to predict his performance on a game-to-game basis? You accuracy will naturally diminish given the inevitable game to game variations that player will encounter. Even players who are clear studs at their positions like Aaron Rodgers can have pretty wild performance swings, even in situations where a very good or very poor performance might be expected.
What all of this means is this – trying to make player performance predictions on a game-by-game basis increases the randomness of the fantasy contest. With this increased randomness comes an increased dependence on luck in order to make the right call for your starting lineup. If you are someone who enjoys that element of chance and randomness in your game, or if you believe in your ability to consistently beat the odds and out-guess your opponent in those situations, then you may still prefer a traditional weekly lineup driven league. Personally, I prefer my fantasy football to be less about guesswork and luck and more about building a strong and deeply talented team.
Best ball requires better team building skills.
On a regular fantasy football squad, you can often get away with building a contender around a few reliable studs. Depth is important in the event of injury, but in many cases, higher quality depth is a luxury which is frequently traded away, simply because it’s not often utilized. Ask yourself, if you owned Rodgers, Cam Newton and Andrew Luck, would you keep all three of them on your roster?
In a best ball league, winning teams are not only built around stud players, but true champions must also also have very solid talent deep into the roster – these players are more frequently used in best ball, because you are not guessing when to start and sit them. A player who is inconsistent and blows up for just two to three huge games per year may never make it onto your starting roster in a traditional lineup format. But in best ball, when they have those big games, those points are far more likely to be utilized, provided they outscore any other players ‘ahead’ of them.. Consequently, those players have much more value because they can be key contributors to the success of your team over the entire season. Much like they are to an actual NFL team. In this way the best ball format more closely resembles a real NFL team, where even occasional contributors do actually add real, utilized value to the team.
This dynamic changes how players are valued within the league and creates a much more interesting and competitive environment, especially in dynasty leagues. It is so much more important to mine for quality talent, deep on your roster, because that talent will actually be used and will actually contribute to your success, far more so than on a traditional team.
Best Ball is far less time intensive.
If you find yourself managing a lot of dynasty teams, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the weekly management minutiae. It can be a huge challenge staying on top of the starting rosters for all of these teams. Remembering which player is on what roster, accounting for last minute status changes of players and all of the other factors which affect lineup decisions multiplies the complexity of managing all of these teams.
In a best ball league you’ll have more time to focus on doing what matters most – building your team. Not trying to decipher the meaning of Questionable and Probable. Whether it’s negotiating with other owners, scouring the waiver wire, or researching potential free agent gems, you’ll have more time to immerse yourself in the best part of owning a fantasy team.
We all play this game with some expectation we can control the outcome of games by assembling a solid roster. Best ball gives us each more control over the destiny of our team because it leaves less to the vagaries of chance. Dynasty and keeper leagues in particular benefit from this format because building a deep and talented roster is paramount to long term viability, and what better format to build that deep roster than in a dynasty league?
At the end of the day, the best ball format could be simply more equitable. Your best players against my best players. You hit me with your best shot and I’ll hit you with mine. May the best team win. Winning in this way is far more satisfying and even losing is less frustrating because you know, without question, you lost to the better team, and not to someone who simply guessed better than you.
If you want a fantasy football experience which focuses more on long term team building skill, and less on guessing the random and unpredictable weekly performance of specific players, you should consider the “best ball” format for your new or existing league.
You can follow Ken on twitter @dlf_kenm .
Have you played in a best ball format league? Love it? Hate it? Share your take below!
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Thanks, but no thanks! The unpredictability of a football game and the unpredictability of a fantasy game are what make it interesting, each and every week. Where any team has the opportunity to upset another adds to the fun for me.
It’s all about what you are looking for in the game. That’s why it’s fun, there are so many different variations and ways to play.
I agree! Thanks for sharing. I found the article very interesting.
If a league doesn’t limit itself to Head to Head play only, and also includes a total points format, you don’t need to do this. Head to Head is patently unfair because of many of the issues noted in your article. Head to head is not a true representation of the best built team, but its still one heck of a lot of fun and thats why we play it. However, without putting your team on cruise control for the season (what fun is that?) you can run a Total Points contest along with the head to head format. I run three leagues and we do this in all of them. The owners love it because without fail, there is always one team who happens to catch a string of games against owners with inferior teams but who happen to post their high game of the year against this one owner. That owner might be out of the playoffs in head to head but remains in the fight for the points title. Play both contests at the same time and you dont need to have a computer select your lineup after the points have posted each week.
Our league does something similar in that the top two teams from each division based on H2H record (12 teams, 2 divisions) make the playoffs, as do the top two remaining teams based on all-play.
You still make lineup choices, but it takes out some of the randomness of H2H. But that’s what the NFL is about, too. When Chicago and Houston play, one team loses even though both of them could beat the tar out of the winner of the Jax/KC tilt.
Jax took Houston to overtime. Just sayin…
Interesting idea. A little more work for the commissioner but is sounds like it would be a fun variation. Thanks!
We give a prize to the all-play leader, which is basically your record versus the entire league each week for the length of the season, but we all like the playoff/H2H experience.
It is an interesting concept though. Depending on the league’s starting requirements, wouldn’t this format seem to discourage trading though?
Just to clarify, this would still be a H2H and playoff format. The only difference is, rather than setting a lineup of specific players each week, the highest scoring players each week would be automatically utilized in your starting lineup slots. You’d still play each team H2H each week.
I would like to see a system like this that is utilized for injury purposes. Say your stud back gets hurt “in-game” or is a game-time decision; if you are able to select a “backup” or set a depth chart of sorts then you could choose to take the backup’s points over the starter – just like a real NFL team would do.
This seems like a system that would seriously need major roster restrictions.
I think this is a terrific idea. I wish there was a way to do this in a league engine easily. Otherwise it would fall on the commish to track all of the backups for each team every week, or every tam would have to post them in a league forum or something. Definitely more work, but a great idea. Thanks!
One of the leagues I’m in does this- each team selects a backup player and they declare which one player they’re subbing for. In the week after McCoy was concussed, I declared which player would step into his spot if he was declared inactive.
At the risk of exposing myself as a total dork…I drafted a “Me vs. the DLF Experts” (using the DLF rankings) 9-team solitaire league before this season. I use best ball scoring and all-play format to keep it as simple as possible.
So… how are we doing?
Jeff, Jarrett, and Eric O are 1/2/3.
Sorry Ken, you’re in 5th. Brady, Calvin and Demaryius are working out well for you, but not so much for McFadden, Mendenhall, DeAngelo and VDavis.
Ryan, Steve, and I went for youth over experience and are paying the price…
I think this idea has merit. One of the things I like to try to do is make the fantasy experience as close to the NFL experience as possible. Sometimes in NFL games, a player comes off the bench or seemingly out-of-nowhere to have a studly game.
I still prefer the concept of setting a lineup and making the tough decisions – that is what the NFL coach has to do, leaving a potential huge game on the bench and going with another player. But I could see incorporating the bench into the scoring somehow (in one league, we currently use the bench scoring as a tiebreaker).
-oo-
We use bench scoring as a tiebreaker in a few leagues I’m in as well. It rarely comes into play and invariable is biased to the teams which have a lot of backup QB’s on the bench. But that is one way of utilizing the bench. I definitely understand the attraction of making those tough decisions and setting a lineup each week. Just wanted to present this format as a valid option, as I think too many folks are too quick to write off this and some other league scoring variations. That’s part of the fun of FFB for me, playing in leagues with different formats. This creates new and interesting ways of playing the game.
Setting the team on “cruise control” is a valid criticism, I think. However, a full “best ball” format would also really enhance the importance of the waiver wire and having players with potential for breakout games on your bench. It would also limit the number of stashes a team could roster. Those could be positives or negatives depending on how you view them.
I think a good compromise would be something like a “partial best ball” format where you designate one backup at each position in the same manner that NFL teams must designate their QB2 every week. Another idea would be to identify a certain number of “inactives” on your bench whose scores would not contribute to the team’s score. Just spitballin’…
Good post. Love this idea, as it allows owners to focus on the key aspect of dynasty football: acquiring talent and building a balanced and high upside roster. There’s nothing more frustrating than missing out on a few key performances from your high potential players, even if you did all the research on the matchup – weekly matchups still have extremely high variance.
Some other thoughts:
1. Some people are mixing best-ball with all-play. The idea behind best-ball is to not miss out on your players production because of high-variance week-to-week sit/start decisions. The idea behind all-play is to remove the H2H luck factor. Both of these formats can be combined, or exist separately.
2. I like how this format increases the value of certain kinds of players in deeper leagues: goal-line vulture RBs, deep threat WRs, most DEs (owners of guys like Robert Quinn, Chris Long, Chris Clemons would benefit from this), and big-play CBs. I don’t view best-ball as just taking away the weekly starting lineup decision aspect of fantasy football, it also adds strategy to your roster composition that’s absent in a standard league. If you don’t have any studs at a certain position, you can acquire more high-upside/high-variance guys to fill the weekly production gap.
3. Also like Jeff Beran’s idea of a partial best-ball format (or similarly, selecting the bench inactives), as to still make some starting decisions, but allowing the best of the selected starters to register points for your team. e.g., you’d start 2 QB, 3 RB, 5 WR, 2 flex, 2 TE, 3 DE, 5 LB, 3 DB, but only the top 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 flex, 1 TE, 2 DE, 3 LB, 2 DB would score points. You’d still make some starting decisions in a deep dynasty format with 40+ man rosters, but you get the benefit of the best-ball format too. As far as I know, no league software allows this yet, although Fantrax has this listed as a feature they plan to add.