Playing in best-ball leagues, like those offered by MyFantasyLeague, the FFPC, and PlayDraft, requires a different mindset than regular redraft leagues. These “draft expert” type leagues are draft and forget in nature, without any in-season management after your league’s draft. No trades. No waiver wires. No bailouts due to injury or suspension. They take the score from each player on your overall roster and optimize your best plays of the week to fill out your lineup.
This stresses the importance on the draft immensely. Selecting the right type of players that have high ceilings is a necessity. Most of these leagues are top-heavy, and you need to target the right type of players to put yourself in the best chance of capturing first place. As part of that, this is a series on the type of players to target in these best-ball formats to help you hopefully finish with some extra green in your pocket by season’s end. We touched on the quarterback edition last week, now it’s time to look at the running back position.
Mike Gillislee, RB, New England Patriots
I mentioned Gillislee as one of this year’s potential breakout running backs and while I think he’s great in every format, he should be particularly great to target in best-ball. Bill Belichick has infamously left us stranded at times trying to project which running back will see the most usage. The best-ball format eliminates that worry with Gillislee, who is projected to be their lead running back in the LeGarrette Blount role. Blount was a must-start in games when New England was favored by double-digits, averaging 1.3 touchdowns per game:
New England is favored by 16. You know what to do. pic.twitter.com/8rH5BIhyiU
— Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) January 10, 2017
That touchdown upside is a major target in best-bell formats, particularly at the running back position. From Weeks 1 through 16 last year, 84.4 percent of all top-12 weeks from the running back position were by running backs who scored a touchdown. Blount led all running backs with 17 touchdowns last year and I’ll be chasing Gillislee’s potential to finish with double-digit touchdowns.
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