Fantasy Football Best Ball

Underdog Fantasy Best Ball Rankings 2023

By Matt Schauf 10:13am EDT 3/21/23

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Find the biggest values. Win your draft.

Who’s the biggest fade in your best ball drafts right now?

Who's going much later than he should?

That’s what you should be thinking about at this point in the fantasy football draft cycle, more than specific rankings.

You’re not drafting a single team to win a league. You’re building a best ball portfolio to win some money.

Our full projections will be ready in mid-April. They’ll power the Draft War Room to help you accomplish both of those goals.

But if you’re already drafting, then you deserve some rankings. So here they are.

Early Underdog Fantasy Best Ball Rankings

Below you’ll find a top 100 that everyone can access.

If you’re a DS Insider, then you’ll get access to the full top 300 – plus a downloadable spreadsheet that you can load right into your Underdog Fantasy account for use in your drafts.

Before we get to the rankings, here are some things you should keep in mind …

You’re likely drafting for volume

You can draft into individual best ball leagues on Underdog Fantasy right now. But most drafts going this time of year are tournament entries.

If you’re drafting into a tournament, don’t treat it like a single team that’s trying to win a league.

Treat it like part of your portfolio: a collection of fantasy rosters that you hope will produce a big-money gem.

You’ll want to mix up your player exposures (i.e. the players you draft). If you don’t, then you leave yourself more vulnerable to a key injury. Or even just a disappointing season.

ADP doesn’t matter … until it does

The further we get into summer, the better average draft position (ADP) rankings become.

If you’re drafting in August, you won’t want to go wildly against the market for player values – at least not repeatedly.

You also shouldn’t ignore ADP now, but it definitely means less.

Almost no one is working off player projections. So drafting began with Underdog’s site rankings for the year. Those starting rankings have an “anchoring effect,” the tendency to lean too much on initial information when you make a decision.

ADP has certainly shifted from those initial rankings. But those rankings have also helped set that ADP.

Look for dramatically undervalued players

Take advantage of this anchoring effect by looking for guys going much later than they should.

Take James Conner.

2022 finish: RB10 in half-PPR points per game
2023 Underdog Fantasy ADP: RB31

Wut?

Conner should be going no later than Round 6. Instead, he’s going early in Round 9.

So you can get him in Round 7 pretty much whenever you want. You can get him in Round 8 most of the time. And if he falls past ADP – pounce.

I’m even OK with extra exposure to such a player at this point, because I expect he’ll move at least a little closer to proper value this summer.

That’s when you can shift more to other players and balance out that portfolio a bit.

Great time to draft rookies

If you’re drafting right now, you should make sure to take some rookies. As a group, they’ll move up in ADP after the NFL Draft.

Obviously, Bijan Robinson can’t climb much higher than his current RB4 Underdog Fantasy ADP. That might be true for Jahmyr Gibbs (RB16) and Jaxon Smith-Njigba (WR29) as well.

But the later you go, the easier it is to take shots on guys whose main issue is that we don’t yet know their teams.

You can (and probably should) even change up which rookies you take from draft to draft.

Wanna get to know the top rookies before you draft them? Check out our early dynasty rookie rankings – with links to every prospect we’ve profiled so far. (And more to come.)

Pay attention to stacking

Of course, because this is best ball, you’ll want to look for stacking opportunities.

That’s most commonly combining a QB and at least one of his pass-catchers. But play around with it.

Multiple pass-catchers? Sure! A QB and lead RB here and there? Why not!

You can even pair later-round RBs from the same team, such as Dolphins Raheem Mostert and Jeff Wilson Jr. (both of whom look attractive as late options).

Underdog Fantasy Best Ball Rankings

Now let’s get to those rankings.

We started with the current Underdog Fantasy ADP, to represent the draft market. Why? It’s important to know where players are going in drafts.

If you decide a player’s ADP is way too early, then you’re basically deciding you’ll never draft him (at least for current tournament play).

That’s fine in some cases. But make sure you think about whether you want to be totally out on a player – or merely mix in a few shares in case you’re wrong about him.

On the other end, it’s OK to go heavy on a player you think is being drafted way too late. Take him every time, though, and you might be depriving yourself of exposure to some other upside players around him in ADP.

Check ADP for the big movers

You’ll find a column with Underdog ADP in the rankings. That can show you which players have made the largest moves up or down these rankings.

That signals the players we’re targeting or fading the most.

Otherwise, play around with how you build your entries. And check the bottom of the article for downloadable rankings.

Underdog Best Ball Rankings Top 300

Rankings Download

Want to load these rankings directly into the Underdog Fantasy website so they'll show up when you go to draft?

Access the Google Sheet here.

Once you're in: Click File > Download > Comma Separated Values (.csv)

That will save a version to your computer. Then:

1. Navigate to Underdog Fantasy.
2. Click "Rankings" in the navigation menu.
3. Click CSV upload/download button at bottom.
4. Click CSV upload and choose "3-21-23 Underdog upload - Sheet1.csv" from the folder where you saved it.
5. Hit the Save button.
6. Draft away!