I’ve mentioned before that I’m excited to do more best ball content in the future, because earlier this summer I came to realize I could travel out of state and get into Underdog’s awesome contests. And I’ve been particularly excited to share this Mastiff draft with you guys, because the advance structure is such that it is a really nice blend between best ball strategies and also some of what I would do in a typical home league draft.
That’s because for every 12-person draft, six teams will advance into the playoff rounds, with half of the remaining field advancing in each of Week 15 and 16, and then there being 30 remaining teams for the Week 17 final. Underdog is great because it offers a variety of contest styles, but in most of them it’s quite a bit more difficult to advance from each section, meaning you need to correlate your roster intelligently and bake in real upside across the board. The Mastiff is a little bit different, with a little more balance between these upside-seeking strategies and floor-seeking ones that help improve advance rate and get us into the money rounds.
Before I get to the roster, I just have to say that if you’re not playing best ball on Underdog, you’re missing out. I’ve gotten friends and family into it this offseason, and despite some initial skepticism, they overwhelmingly have enjoyed it. The app and site is super easy to use. The Best Ball Mania tournament provides the potential to win life-changing money from a $25 entry, which obviously most everyone is not going to realize, but I mean it’s still a fun way to have a little more to root for during the season with all the fantasy research you’ve done, but also without adding a ton more work handling waivers and all those things. And if you sign up with the promo code, “SIGNALS,” Underdog will match your first deposit up to $100, meaning if you put $100 into a new account, Underdog will give you another $100 and you’ll have $200 to play with.
In my Mastiff draft, which was my one high-stakes contest this year at a $1,000 buy-in, I drew the 1.03. I think anytime you’re in the top five on Underdog this year, you’re in a great spot, but probably the 1.03 is the worst of those top-five slots, as I’d much prefer the 1.01 or 1.02, and then I’d probably prefer the 1.05 next, and then likely the 1.04. At any rate, I was going to be in position to draft a WR I really liked in the first round and then build from there. In a half-point PPR format like Underdog, there was going to be a real pull to go RB-RB at the Round 2/3 turn, but I did do this as a slow draft, and I hit that 2/3 turn right around when all the drama with those RBs started. Here’s how I started through my first three rounds.
Rounds 1-3
As you can see, when the big money was down and I had a draft slot that cooperated, I really liked leaning into the WR-WR start I’ve written about as being the key in 2023 drafts (even in this half-PPR format). Certainly that strategy as helped along somewhat by the lack of clear RB targets where I was late in the second round, and also by Chris Olave sliding a little bit and being a guy I was really excited to target there.
The WR-WR start leaves you open to attack the next several rounds of drafts a multitude of ways, which is perfect for the way draft rooms set up in 2023. You have the opportunity to let value fall to you, knowing each position is viable into the middle rounds.
As you can probably surmise from the Breece Hall selection also coming in the third round, my Rhamondre Stevenson pick did come prior to the Ezekiel Elliott and Dalvin Cook signing day bonanza. But I’m still very content with Stevenson — the only RB I now have ranked above him that went after him in this draft is Jahmyr Gibbs, and that’s in my full PPR rankings where I’d prefer Stevenson by a nudge in half PPR (so much of my Gibbs excitement is a belief he has legitimate 100-catch upside, and that element is obviously a bit less impactful in half PPR, though he’s still a very good option).
So through three rounds, I was very excited, both from a structural perspective — with the flexibility it gave me going forward — and in terms of the players I was able to select.
Rounds 4-7
In a best ball format where there are no waivers — and particularly on Underdog, where WRs have been going higher and higher all offseason — I wasn’t able to fully lean into my home league WR-WR start idea where I then might go away from the position for several rounds. That would have left me too thin through the close of the WR Window, which would have been a mistake.
Still, I did utilize the flexibility my WR-WR start brought me to accomplish two key things through the main part of the RB Dead Zone. First, at the Round 4/5 turn, I identified that I would be comfortable with either Joe Burrow or Justin Fields, and targeted those two as 5.03 options. Both of the drafters on the turn had gone QB at the Round 2/3 turn, so I was pretty confident both would swing around.
With Travis Etienne going off the board just two picks ahead of me, I had the option to go to Kenneth Walker, but decided I could push RB a little bit and try to find a similar profile a bit later. I also had T.J. Hockenson as an elite TE staring at me, but ultimately decided that I preferred an elite QB in this format at this turn, and wanted to grab a WR3 to pair with that QB over hitting elite options at both onesie positions and perhaps thinning myself out too much at both RB and WR.
Then the decision became a very close one between Brandon Aiyuk and Jaxon Smith-Njigba (pre-wrist injury). I did ultimately settle on Aiyuk as a pretty aggressive move, but really liking his spike week potential in best ball, and also knowing his lower-target but higher-efficiency upside outcomes played up in half PPR.
Burrow was the pick on the way back despite no earlier Bengals’ WRs, and while I did start to think about stacking him, in this format I didn’t think it was necessary and I’d look for a good value if I did go that route. There’s an important lesson about understanding the contest here, where The Mastiff only has 20 total drafts, which means only 20 total Burrow teams, so even if he is the overall QB1 and I go into the 30-man Week 17 final facing a high number of Burrow stacks (which is the concern when you don’t stack in a contest like this), there is a limit to how many of those can exist.
At the absolute most, 20 of the 30 teams in the final would have Burrow, but realistically probably half of the Burrow teams wouldn’t make it even if he’s the QB1, because they’d have other issues. So maybe I’m dealing with another 10 or so Burrow teams, and half are stacked with Ja’Marr Chase and half with Tee Higgins — and even a couple with both — but I’ll have room in many other areas of my roster to gain ground on those teams, and that’s a different proposition than some of the Week 17 finals that will include hundreds of rosters and many, many more iterations of the unstacked player in question.
Additionally, an unstacked Burrow probably raises my roster’s floor (and advance rate) by giving me access to a very interesting offense, but not overexposing me to them in the case of a major injury. This is absolutely something that’s applicable to home leagues for those of you who ask about stacking — I don’t think it’s at all necessary in a self-contained 12-team league. But these are the fun types of considerations that go into these best ball contests, and make them a hybrid of fantasy football and a sort of puzzle, where you know you need to have various elements checked off to build a winning roster in the contest you’re in, because you won’t be able to make changes later.
There’s also a question of why I took Burrow over Fields, when Fields likely has the higher upside, and is even less necessary to stack. And in hindsight, I think that was probably a mistake given the format. I really love Burrow’s set-up this year after the strong PROE in 2022, but I’m getting increasingly excited about Fields as I watch D.J. Moore make great plays in the preseason, and still firmly believe the way to play him — and you guys know I love his talent — is through loading up on more Fields, who will be a bigger hit at QB if DJM makes a big impact on the Bears’ passing game than DJM himself likely will at WR.
Then at the Round 6/7 turn, I had another difficult decision with how I’d play the turn. We were down to the final TE before the “Big Tier Break” in my rankings, but both drafters behind me had already taken a top-three option at that position. After George Pickens had gone off the board, Jahan Dotson was a priority target here, and he has a Week 17 correlation boost with Aiyuk, who I’d taken earlier.
I also realized that I wanted to take three different positions here, and had to decide which I’d be most comfortable letting slip. I still really liked this RB range, which is the RB range I’ve written about so much this offseason, but going RB/TE at this turn would leave me with just three WRs through seven rounds, and perhaps boxed out of adding anymore before the WR Window could feasibly close before my eighth-round pick. So I decided WR4 was the priority, and I tried to push Dallas Goedert through so I could select Dotson. When the drafter out of the No. 2 spot took Goedert at 7.02, I took the plunge on J.K. Dobbins at a point where news around him was murkiest. In hindsight, this turn looks incredible, and I feel fortunate with how it played out.
Through seven rounds, I had one QB, two RBs, four WRs, and no TEs, a very comfortable build at that stage, particularly in a contest that prioritizes advance rate (i.e. the QB and two RBs were beneficial to my early-season scoring and overall floor).
Rounds 8-13
Over the next three turns, I had to try to navigate several different elements. First of all, given the best ball format, I did need to continue to infuse my WR build with upside swings. Secondly, I needed to build out my RB room in this important RB Target area. And then lastly, as it related to the onesies, I needed to keep an eye on QB a little bit, and while going with three late TEs became an option, I did want to keep an eye on getting a strong upside TE1 option for a late-round build.
At the Round 8/9 turn, Rashod Bateman was a pretty brutal snipe one pick before I got on the clock. That said, while I wasn’t interested in reaching for Tyler Boyd at this point just to stack him, I did have a way to play the Bengals’ Week 17 opponent by grabbing Skyy Moore. On the way back, I grabbed Rashaad Penny, who by now you all know is one of my favorite RBs to target, particularly in managed leagues where any missed time — or time spent buried on the depth chart — is less impactful if you can cut him and move on, but I also think there’s an argument for his weekly ceiling in these half-PPR best ball formats where his rushing efficiency could really play up on any given week where the team gets a lead and leans into it, and he racks up 12+ carries. Not having to figure out when to start him for those situations is kind of nice.
That said, the Penny pick was a difficult one. I strongly considered Pat Freiermuth or Evan Engram here, Boyd was definitely an option, Jameson Williams was, too, as was the WR I got in the next round. And then even while settling on RB — I decided I’d rather play TE later given my early QB pick — I was debating where to go, with AJ Dillon, Samaje Perine, Khalil Herbert, and both Washington backs as legitimate considerations. I did expect that whole tier to get wiped out before I was up again, and that came to pass in a way where I was grateful I did go RB here. But it’s certainly up for debate whether my Penny enthusiasm is a bit high within that tier of RBs, and I have to cop to being concerned a couple of those other RBs could both be safer and also bigger hits (Herbert comes to mind in particular, and I’ve since moved him ahead of Penny in my rankings as news has continued to break perfectly for him).
But I was grateful to see Romeo Doubs make it all the way back to me, as in a WR thirsty format like this, he’s one of the last oases of potential upside. Jaylen Warren on the way back just added to my exposure to my highest-owned player, as you no doubt know by now, and he was the one RB that I include in that tier I discussed in the last paragraph that I could hope might linger a bit. He also works really well with Penny, in my opinion, where Warren’s also a nice unpredictable spike week kind of RB, but one where the role and snap rate could be more consistent throughout the year, and the valleys maybe not quite as low as they could be for Penny on a weekly basis.