One of the broadcasts this past Sunday mentioned that we are halfway through the NFL season. While that isn’t technically true (the end of Week 9 will mark the halfway point of the NFL regular season), it’s quite close. It struck me that we’ve been analyzing the season up to this point almost exclusively through the lens of preseason expectations. Preseason expectations inform the cost of players in the draft room and therefore the texture of our teams. However, does cost really matter at this point in the season? Obviously the higher cost players are generally scoring more points, but do you really care about missing on Christian Watson if you also drafted Puka Nacua? Probably not. As we look forward to the back half of the regular season, we’ll find leverage on center stage. What really matters going forward are the players positioned to have the biggest impact in the best ball playoffs.

This week’s Best Ball Mania IV (BBM4) advance rate review is going to cover the two highest leverage ranges of the draft: Rounds 1 through 3 and Rounds 17 and 18. Of course, these two ranges provide leverage for different reasons.

LOW ADVANCE RATE EARLY ROUND SELECTIONS

The early rounds of drafts provide leverage both by having the highest raw point scoring players and by having the lowest average deviation from ADP per selection. I’ll cover this more in the offseason, but all you need to know now is that drafters reach less often and less significantly in the early rounds. The mix of these two factors make early-round player combinations important for gaining leverage over the field in the best ball playoffs. If you have two or three early-round players on a team together that are underrepresented in the playoffs, you have an advantage. Combinations can be underrepresented because of rare ADP value or poor advance rates from the combination. We’ll look at an example of each below.