How Winners Draft Wide Receivers in Underdog Best Ball Mania
Today, we’re digging through the WR data from last year’s Best Ball Mania V (BBMV) contest to see what worked and what lessons we can carry forward to this season. If you haven’t already, I would start with the RB article, particularly the introduction and the ADP Value section. There are two main takeaways that will carry-over to this discussion. The first is that the 2024 season had the most WR injuries among team WR1s since at least 2010. Meanwhile, the RB number was the lowest since 2019. The second was that capturing ADP value, both real-time and closing-line, is the clearest way to boost your odds of advancing to the playoffs and making the finals in BBM. With those takeaways in mind, let’s dig into the WR-specific data!
Position Capital and Roster Construction
Drafting 4-5 WRs through the first 7 rounds was optimal every year in BBM…until last year. The graph below shows the playoff advance rate for teams sorted by the number of WRs they drafted in the first 7 rounds. For each additional WR you drafted through round 7, you lowered your average playoff advance rate by about 3.0%. It would have been really nice to have known this while drafting last summer.
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