It’s one of my favorite times of the year – playoff best ball szn. As our season-long managed and best ball teams come to an end, playoff best ball comes to the rescue. While the optimization of our rosters is the same, the playoff format has some key differences. Let’s start with the basics.
The Basics
Each Underdog tournament has six drafters and 10 rounds, with a starting lineup of 1QB, 1RB, 2WR/TE, and 1 standard flex, using half-PPR scoring. Once drafted, our rosters are optimized in standard best ball style, with a resetting score each week. You’ll need to finish either first or second in your group to advance, which is a key point to note. In the Gauntlet, only one out of six advance, meaning that it’s much harder to advance the teams on byes (very likely the Eagles and one of the Bills or Chiefs). In the Mitten, two out of six advance, increasing the likelihood that bye week teams advance. More on this in the Path to Winning section.
Another difference compared to normal best ball, is that roughly half of the real-life NFL teams will be eliminated each week, meaning players on eliminated teams are useless to our advancing teams. Most of the money is in the Super Bowl round, where only the players from two teams will score points. So, we must build concentrated lineups, where we bet on just a few teams succeeding, to have a chance to win the tournament. How do we do that? We build paths. Let’s look at an example.
Path to the Super Bowl (And Winning The Mitten)
