With all the prize money up for grabs in BBMIV on Underdog, we are searching for the best ways to optimize both our individual roster construction and our portfolio constrution. One aspect of portfolio construction that goes overlooked is adjusting for the number of teams you are drafting. I will be nowhere near the 150-entry limit when the tournament finally fills. If you are drafting in the 20-50 team range, you won’t be able to have a portfolio as diversified as someone who is max entering the contest.
If you have fewer teams, diversification becomes a secondary goal. It is important to get your high-priority targets at ADP values on as many of those teams as possible, and let shifting ADP diversify your rosters naturally as you draft througout the offseason. This ensures that at least you don’t overpay for having a concentrated portfolio, which helps to mitigate the risk. Usually, these high-priority targets come in the earlier rounds. For this reason I’ve been avoiding the elite quarterbacks for now. I will get my exposure to those builds later this summer when we have more information and the running backs and wide receivers in the later rounds are safer bets.
Stacking is still a big piece of the BBMIV puzzle, but not having elite QBs means no exposure to the premium stacks. Is it possible to compete with the teams who have a Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce stack?
In 2022 this stack advanced to the playoffs almost half of the time, but what if you could have drafted Kelce, passed on Mahomes, and drafted a late-round stack that was less common with just as high of a playoff advance rate?
Geno Smith was not on anywhere near as many rosters as Mahomes because it was not clear he was going to be the starting QB until deep into the summer, and Smith did not score anywhere close to the level Mahomes did. If we add Kenneth Walker to the stack, who was also cheap, the playoff advance rate jumps to 52%.
I’m not saying cheap stacks are better than premium stacks. However, this does illustrate how an effective late stack can be the gasoline on top of the inferno that is an elite early-round player selection, even if you miss on the early pick’s stacking partners.
What can we learn from the Seahawks’ example to help lead us to a similar payoff in 2023? At least three factors were readily identifiable in the 2022 offseason:
