How Winners Draft Running Backs in Underdog Best Ball Mania

May 07, 2025

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The best way to win in best ball is to avoid what I did last season. And that was fade the one running back you needed to have: Saquon Barkley. Two of the 12 teams in each draft advance to the playoffs in Underdog’s Best Ball Mania (BBM) contest. So, if you’re an average drafter, you’d advance 16.7% of your teams to the playoffs. Teams that drafted Saquon Barkley last season advanced 48.3% of the time. “I’m not mad. Please don’t put in the newspaper that I got mad.”

There are real football reasons why running backs outperformed expectation last season. Those include the rise in shell coverages that have limited explosive passing plays and decreased tackling success especially on outside runs. But there were also some fluky things like injuries.

More UD Winner Series: QB | WR | TE (coming soon)

Looking at the number of weeks lost to IR among all WRs in 2024, the number is below average. The problem was that injuries were concentrated among top WRs. WRs that were listed at the top of their depth chart landed on IR for a combined 153 weeks last season. That is the highest number since at least 2010. Meanwhile, the RB number was the lowest since 2019. To be clear, most teams have 2-3 WRs listed at the top of their depth chart for each WR position on the field. So, we’d expect more WR injuries, but not to the extent we saw in 2024.