Underdog Drafts

In the Mouth of Madness

Jon Snowing It

The Allied evacuation of Dunkirk during WWII, King Leonidas’ Spartans at the Hot Gates, and the army of Rohan at the Battle of Helm’s Deep… these moments in history are a lazy Sunday afternoon compared to the odds faced in Underdog tournaments. In a Best Ball Mania IV contest that features 677,376 entrants on the battlefield, the only chance for survival is the most rigorous commitment to a tempered strategy. Do not be tempted to invest tens of thousands of dollars into building a data center outfitted with complex algorithms that draft for you - Mad Max didn’t use AI when he entered the Thunderdome and neither should you. Instead, we will focus on wielding a process trained by historical data, risk assessment, and the most powerful tools in the space. This path does not guarantee all of your teams will survive the first onslaught, nor your most promising 18th-round pick will save you in the eleventh hour. But rest assured there’s no greater confidence than harnessing a strategy that can adapt to any circumstance that was built with your own sweat and efforts. Let’s get into it. 

WoRP Your Mind

We will begin by freeing your mind of everything you thought you knew about Underdog drafts. ADP would have us believe that WR and the elite QB have overtaken RB as the focal position of the format. At the writing of this article, 19 of the top 36 players are WRs, along with 4 QBs and 2 TEs, which leaves 11 RBs remaining in the top three rounds of ADP. But much like parents, ADP is something we ought to respect but not always something we need to follow. And in a tournament that rewards the most unique combination of players, it will actually be to your benefit to stand out from the crowd. But in order to separate ourselves to our benefit, we have to determine what the most valuable positions and players are given the scoring and roster format on Underdog. The single best method available to us in the space for determining production value is WoRP. 

I had the privilege of interviewing one of the foremost authorities in the field of WoRP, Dr. Koopa, Director of the Mind Flayer Project at the Labs of South Harmon Institute of Technology. In his research, he explains:

“WoRP, or Wins over Replacement Player, is a singular metric you can use to compare the value of players in your fantasy league, even across positions. Rather than using PPG, which can be biased towards one position (QBs) or against another (TEs), WoRP normalizes against the fantasy points of the replacement player, aka the best player at that position who didn't make your lineup. This allows you to compare one player to another, even if they score drastically different numbers of points. Finally, the values between positions can change from league to league, and the tool adjusts to your specific league settings to show you where an edge exists that wouldn't exist in a more "standard" league. With these calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire fantasy world...I believe we did.”

Koopa may or may not have said that last part, but what is undeniable and most compelling is that WoRP “allows you to compare one player to another, even if they score drastically different numbers of points.” So what does 2022’s WoRP reveal to us about Underdog?

I hope everyone has been drafting RBs because they are far from being dead. Underdog is a half-point per reception scored format, which gives RBs more than a fighter’s chance to be on equal footing with their WRs counterparts. Three of the top four players last year were RBs, but Christian McCaffrey is the only RB who is being drafted consistently in the top six of Underdog drafts. Workhorse and dual-threat RBs are going to win contestants a lot of money this year.

When sorted by WoRP per game, there are only 13 WRs that make it into the top 36 (compared to the 19 WRs found in ADP), only 1 TE (2 TEs in ADP), and a whopping 18 RBs (only 11 RBs in top 36 of ADP)! It would appear that QB is the only position that is being drafted appropriately on Underdog and yet they are still being taken at value compared to their WoRP. 
When armed with this knowledge, participants can effectively navigate Underdog drafts by avoiding the landmines who are being drafted too far ahead of what they can truly offer and letting the real difference-makers fall to them (often past their true ADP in terms of WoRP). 

The Last of Us Strategy

Having played Underdog since their first year, there are a number of key lessons I have learned over the last three seasons. The following section comprises the very pillars of my strategy. To your benefit, I will hold these core principles of mine up to the magnificent light of WoRP, as well as in the brilliance of Hayden Wink’s research at Underdog Network. We will begin with Roster Construction, which is very similar to Taco Bell in that the possible combinations are endless despite there only being 4 ingredients.

2-3 QBs (DON'T get 2x top 5) - Having 2 top 5 QBs sounds good in theory, but we have to remember that this is a 1QB format, not SuperFlex. Why draft a 2nd elite QB at an elite cost (top 3-4 rds) that is going to score nearly the same amount of points as your other elite QB? Hayden Winks would further add “It looks like when we hit on a QB, it's best to wait until this Round 9-12 range.1” In terms of WoRP, the top 4 QBs were all nearly identical in the value they offered. I am betting on the elite 4 becoming an elite 7-8, with the likes of Lamar Jackson, Trevor Lawrence, Justin Herbert, or Justin Fields rounding out the steep slope we saw from last year.

Drafting 3 QBs is a strategy I am willing to employ in about a third of my drafts for two simple reasons: 1) I can capture 1-2 more high-WoRP skill players with the picks I would have otherwise spent on elite QBs if I’m aiming for 2nd/3rd tier QBs. 2) There are a number of QBs that have top-10 potential that are being drafted far later. But despite these assumptions, it’s hard to ignore how much better the elite QBs were compared to the rest of the field. The ideal QB strategy is perhaps drafting a top 8 QB and a 2nd QB that offers elite potential at a later ADP. Hayden Winks’ research affirms the 2 QB over the 3 QB strategy when he writes “2022: Once again, QB3 teams closed the gap on QB2 teams in Round 12, but never eclipsed them at any point on average.2”

3 TEs - An epidemic more alarming than the effects of Brainworm that continues to pervade the entire fantasy football space is the mishandling of the Tight End position. But thanks to recent breakthroughs in research, we have discovered a vaccine to cure our rosters of Persistent Tight End Arousal Syndrome (PTEAS). The best way to treat tight ends in Underdogs drafts is to draft three of them and punt the position entirely unless you have the fortune of drafting Travis Kelce. He is the one and only TE who consistently challenges the top RBs and WRs in fantasy that is worth his 1st round value.  

After Kelce the position plummets to an abysmal plane of existence that never once comes close to WRs or RBs. Given how flat the position is after TE 6 (Schultz = 0.032 WoRP/G) until TE 31 (Otton = 0.011 WoRP/G), there isn’t any upside to drafting a top 10-12 ADP tight end in the first 11 rounds of your Underdog drafts. It’s essential to draft 3 TEs given the absurd volatility of the position - Kelce registered a combined 20 Spike and Above Average weeks last season, while TEs 2-32 had an average 4.9 combined Spike and Above Average weeks in 2022. Woof.

5-6 RBs (5 RBs if you get 3 QBs) & 7-8 WRs (7 WRs if get 6 RBs or 3 QBs) - Knowing that 5-6 spots on your 17-player roster have already been spoken for by the QBs and TEs, this leaves 11-12 roster spots that can be devoted to the RB and WR position. There are a number of factors that play into drafting slightly more WRs than RBs, but the most significant is the starting lineups on Underdog (2 RBs, 3 WRs, 1 Flex) and the edge in WoRP that WR commands after a certain point in the draft. Before every draft, I take a “snapshot” of how the WoRP/G distributes between the various positions every 6 spots in the top WoRP players.

As you can see in the above Underdog snapshot, RB and WR trade superiority throughout the top 42 of their respective positions, with perhaps a slight advantage to RB. That edge quickly gives way to the WRs after the 42nd RB and is never regained. Bearing this dropoff at RB in mind, be diligent in drafting at least 3, but ideally 4, of these top 40ish RBs, and saving room for 1-2 upside dart throws for later in your drafts.
Furthermore, I would not recommend drafting more than two rookie WRs per roster given how long it typically takes for rookies to acclimate to the NFL. Lastly, I would not advocate for drafting too many Boom WRs towards the end of the draft whose game is entirely predicated on the big-play over the safe-floor veterans that are routinely available.

There Can Only Be One!

Much more can be said about what it takes to be the last one standing, but outside of what I’ve already shared from my personal findings, I would highly recommend checking out the following articles from Hayden Winks to help prepare for Underdog drafts. I’ll end it with one final piece of advice: don’t draft timid - It’s better to burn out than to fade away!

1 - Winks, Hayden. “When To Draft QBs In Best Ball (Updated).” Jun 6th, 2023. https://underdognetwork.com/football/news/when-to-draft-qbs-in-best-ball-updated

2 - Winks, Hayden. “When To Draft QBs In Best Ball (Updated).” Jun 6th, 2023. https://underdognetwork.com/football/news/when-to-draft-qbs-in-best-ball-updated

Winks, Hayden. “Strategy Data For Underdog Fantasy's Weekly Winners.” Aug 7th 2023. https://underdognetwork.com/football/best-ball-research/strategy-data-for-underdog-fantasys-weekly-winners

Winks, Hayden. “How To Draft Zero RB Properly: "Even More Radicalized Zero RB." Apr 24th, 2022. https://underdognetwork.com/football/best-ball-research/how-to-draft-zero-rb-properly-even-more-radicalized-zero-rb

Winks, Hayden. “Draft More Best Ball Teams With Only 6-8 WRs.” Jun 27th, 2022. https://underdognetwork.com/football/best-ball-research/draft-more-best-ball-teams-with-only-6-8-wrs

Winks, Hayden. “When To Draft WRs In Best Ball (Updated).” May 16th, 2023. https://underdognetwork.com/football/best-ball-research/when-to-draft-wrs-in-best-ball-updated

Winks, Hayden. “When To Draft RBs In Best Ball (Updated).” May 15th, 2023. https://underdognetwork.com/football/best-ball-research/when-to-draft-rbs-in-best-ball-updated

Winks, Hayden. “When To Draft QBs In Best Ball (Updated).” Jun 6th, 2023. https://underdognetwork.com/football/news/when-to-draft-qbs-in-best-ball-updated

This article has been perfected by Dr. B Harris