3-Man Best Ball Rankings - Underdog

Jul 2

The biggest secret in Best Ball right now is the 3-man drafts. These are beatable on many levels and should act as your cash teams along the same lines as how you would play 50/50’s and Double Ups in DFS. Underdog offers 3-man NFL Best Ball drafts in the $3 (FAST), $25 (FAST), and $100 (SLOW) price points. I have drafted over 500 of these 3-mans at the $3 level and have found it easy to build a team as I follow a certain roster construction and have fine tuned my rankings as I have drafted at such a high volume.

Some key points to consider while drafting these 3-man Best Ball teams:

Exploit ADP - Underdogs ADP is always based off 12-man drafts. There is no ADP for 3-man drafts currently. You can really use this to your advantage as you will have new drafters trying out the 3-man format and going off of ADP or their own 12-man rankings.
TE Position is the Key - The tight end position is a premium in these drafts and you can really set yourself up for success by getting two of the top three TE’s in Kelce, Waller, and Kittle. Have all three ranked 1,2,3 overall. Essentially if you get two you are blocking the position from your other two opponents and setting yourself up for a nice build from the start.
RB is loaded in this format - With only drafting against 2 others, most will draft 5-7 RBs which is 15-21 RBs total. Guys like Dobbins, Swift, Carson, Sanders, Montgomery, and Jacobs are all available as RB16-21 range. I like to build teams 3/6/7/2 with the TE heavy approach so all these RBs are valuable as RB4-6 on my team. Lots of teams you will see only draft 5 RBs (sometimes even 4) so you can even get RBs in a tier up from this.
Stacking doesn’t matter as much - The kind of stacking you want to do in these 3-mans is just stacking the best players overall. No need to reach on quarterbacks to stack with your WRs.
Keep Roster Construction simple - If you can get two of the top three tight ends, stay with a 3/6/7/2 build. 3 Quarterbacks, 6 Running Backs, 7 Wide Receivers, and 2 Tight Ends.
WR position is 2nd most important next to TE - Drafters that are new to 3-mans are going to heavily value the Running Back position and let the top tier of wide receivers fall to you. Don’t make the mistake of waiting too long for your wide receivers.
Set your Rankings and Limits - Don’t fall into the trap that you will just let the draft fall to you and you know when and where to draft players. Things happen and we are working with a 30 second timer for these FAST drafts. If you set your rankings based on my TOP 70 in this article along with setting your position limits to 3/6/7/2 you will have no issues and could basically draft on autopilot.
Don’t be afraid to try out Autopilot - One of my favorite things to do in these 3-man drafts is to have my rankings/player limits set and right before bed I will enter 5-10 of these $3 3-man drafts and set them to autopilot. When I wake up the next day I can evaluate each draft and research areas that I can get better (rankings, position scarcity, what others are doing).
Look for other edges - Drafting late at night is smart as some might enter these and forget they signed up and basically autodraft teams and they might not even have 3-man rankings or player limits set. Also maybe you do a draft and see that there is a bad drafter in there, they could be entering a few drafts in a row so keep entering until you see they have left the lobby.
Bye Weeks are more important - Your team might be loaded with star players but what if you have 6 players all with a Week 7 Bye week? The goal is to always maximize the points your team can score each week. By the midway through the season there is a good chance you also have 3-4 players injured and missing games.
Start the QB run before your opponents - There are five clear top quarterbacks for 2021 with Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray, and Dak Prescott. If you are picking at the turn and no QBs have been selected you can grab Mahomes/Allen and about 50% of the time your opponents will follow and select a QB or two. What this does is drops WRs and RBs down the board to you at a better value and it gives you the top QBs on your roster.
Look for advantages in the middle of your draft - You are only drafting against two other opponents so it is much easier to view their rosters as the draft moves along. You will undersand what positions they will be targeting with their next picks just by looking at their roster construction. Example of this, lets say one of your opponents already has 6 running backs but only 3 wide receivers, it is pretty simple that you can wait on that RB and grab a WR in front of him and the RB will be waiting for you the next round.
If you are a multi 3-man drafter, get to know your opponents - For me the 3-man is about drafting a high volume of teams and with that comes running into the same usernames over and over. You can make this work to your advantage by getting to know your opponents draft tendencies. What players they like, what their roster build will be, and even getting a good idea of their entire rankings board.