Underdog Battle Royale Week 12 Preview

Underdog Battle Royale Week 12 Preview

Week 11's best teams contained a few consistent elements. Josh Allen scored over 40 points and Tetairoa McMillan was the top scoring WR. Many of the teams at the top of the leaderboard had some combination of players around these two. While the idea of draft the best players who score the most points could easily be a takeaway, I think there was something additional hiding in this result. 

Allen had an ADP right around 12 meaning he was often either a 2nd or 3rd round pick. Going around him were WRs Drake London and Justin Jefferson. These guys were easily outscored by McMillan. So the pick of Allen accomplished two things for these elite teams. First, they got the highest scoring QB by a large amount but more importantly, they did not use up one of their WR picks on a player in this range. This allowed them to still have space for McMillan late. I have often found myself saving my final two roster spots for the QB and TE positions because it can be tough to separate at those one off spots so taking a high ADP option often seemed like a poor bet. However, in conjunction with the roster construction benefits, this becomes a way more interesting bet.

Let's assume Allen only scored 25 points instead and as a result essentially matched Jacoby Brissett who had a sixth round ADP. If instead of taking Allen someone took London and his 15 points and then instead of taking McMillan took Brissett in that last round, even without Allen separating, his 2v2 wins. This would remain true even if Brissett were to outscore Allen. Obviously, the combo of the highest scoring QB and highest scoring WR is ideal but the idea that the Allen pick frees you up to bypass a tier of WR or RB to target players in the later tier. The most important thing is to realize that we should be mixing in different structures across our portfolio and while the early QBs and TEs may not necessarily always separate, taking them forces you into these different draft structures. 

Let's dive into the data for this week's sims and see if there is anything we can learn.

For all of these data points, the sims and ADP is run as of Friday morning.

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Roster Structure

The first decision that needs to be made when drafting an Underdog team is what you are going to do with the flex spot. Within the 10,000 sims that were run, 90 percent of the time the best possible team had a RB in the flex. This is not a huge difference from last week but 3WR teams see a slight decline in this week's sims. Additionally, with a slightly better TE pool, we see TE FLEX teams get a small boost but they are still not worth drafting as their win rate is so low. RB in the FLEX almost always wins out and combining this with our Allen observation we want to mix in RB-RB starts with lots of different constructions and RB ADPs. We can dive into this more later when we discuss RBs.

What ADPs to Draft

I made a small adjustment to the rules around this, this week allowing for up to THREE players to be drafted in Bucket Three but only THREE combined players between Bucket Two and Three. This is to slightly better simulate how drafting actually takes place. In this structure you will not really see ADP fallers like you may in actual practice but regardless this is important.

Just a reminder here are the buckets and the rules on how they can be "drafted".

1. ADP <= 6
2. ADP > 6 and <= 10
3. ADP > 10 and < 28
4. ADP >= 28

By no means are these buckets at all perfect but we need some rules to allow the sim to build "reasonable" teams. Per the rules you are allowed at most ONE player in Bucket One, TWO players in Bucket Two, THREE players in Bucket Three, and FOUR Players in Bucket Four. Additionally you may only take TWO players across Bucket One and Two and THREE players total across Bucket Two and Three. Again, this is not perfect but it does the job for what we are trying to accomplish. So let's take a look at how the sim actually built teams.

Much like last week, there is not a ton of super valuable information to take away from this, but it does still lead support to ADP is smart and mostly correct. This tells us that we should definitely take ADP fallers where possible. Since it is impossible to get two players from Bucket One in this model, if you have that option in your drafts, take it. The interesting thing is that a lot of the big steps seem to come from how you mix and match those middle round picks in Buckets Two and Three. Often that is really the key to these drafts.

QB Analysis

Let's take a look at where the best teams are getting their QBs from. Like last week, there are no QBs being taken within Bucket One and Two and four in Bucket Three. The rest all fall in Bucket Four.

Those four QBs in Bucket Three are Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, Drake Maye and Jalen Hurts. Those four QBs end up on the winning team in 60.98 percent of sims. This is slightly more than last week, and I think it's a function of all of these guys being great plays. Each one individually wins more than 10 percent of the time.

Beyond that, only one of the Bucket Four QBs wins more than eight percent of sims and that is Jaxson Dart. It is  important to note that Joe Burrow is actually included in these runs, and his two percent win rate does not stand out. I think this all highlights the overall point we made earlier where these earlier ADP QBs win a lot because they have a high chance of leading the scoring for the day but also because they allow you the ability to attack the late WR/RB options.

TE Analysis

Now let's take a look at TE and much like last week Trey McBride leads the way with a 35 percent win rate. This is slightly surprising to me as it matches last week's figures despite Brock Bowers and Tyler Warren also appearing on this slate. Bowers comes in at 18 percent win rate which allows him to occupy the George Kittle spot from last week and then beyond that only one other TE breaks eight percent.

A lot of the same dynamics are at play for TEs as we see for QBs where taking one early allows you to leverage a low rostered FLEX option but the elites outside of McBride do not consistently reach a high floor often enough. I think that we may be underrating the ceiling of Bowers and Warren in the projections so I am fine with viewing them as closer plays to McBride than it may seem here. I think the main takeaway here is that despite the high win rate for McBride, i think early QB is a more viable strategy than early TE this week and no matter what do not box yourself out from the late TE options as they have a collective win rate of around 38 percent.

RB Analysis

This is a fascinating RB slate. At the time of writing, three RBs have a Bucket One ADP, three have a Bucket Two ADP, only one has a Bucket Three ADP and then the rest are Bucket Four. Additionally, the projections do not really love the Bucket Two RBs relative to their peers and only have them collectively winning a little above a quarter of the time. This means that it is a great week to be attacking the Bucket four RBs which explains the high rates for the early TEs and QBs. Almost 70 percent of winning teams include at least one RB from this group.

So who are some of the late round RBs the projections seem to like? Javonte Williams, Josh Jacobs, and Ashton Jeanty appear in the winning lineup over 10 percent of the time with Williams at over 20 percent. Jacobs is in danger of missing the game so if he does you can likely replace him with Emanuel Wilson. Jeanty projects exceptionally well but the success has not been there yet. He barely gets drafted though so he's a decent bet late in these drafts. After that, no one stands out but there are interesting options like Travis Etienne and Breece Hall who have around four percent win rates. The most important thing to remember though is that these guys do not necessarily need to outscore their early round counterparts, we need them when combined with an early QB or TE to win the 2v2 that passing on a TreVeyon Henderson creates. 

WR Analysis

WR this week creates a few obvious trends. First of all, it does not love taking a Bucket One WR, mostly due to the strength of the RBs up top. Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jaxon Smith-Njigba both project exceptionally well but there is a deep tier of WRs that the models also like. There are no Bucket Two WRs this week but Bucket Three has nine WRs. Due to this the sims think this is the ideal place to be attacking WR actually seeing taking two in this range as ideal 25 percent of the time. CeeDee Lamb and Rashee Rice are favorites in this group but three others have win rates above 10 percent and three others above eight percent. Jameson Williams is the only one below five percent but his role has changed massively and projections may not be fully on board yet.

Even with the love for Bucket Three this still seems to suggest that taking a Bucket Four WR is extremely important as well. DeVonta Smith and Zay Flowers both come in above 10 percent this week with the rest of the group falling below seven percent. Personally, it seems like starts where you can get one of the top RBs and some combo of McBride/Bowers and maybe even an elite QB before tacking on a Bucket Three WR and then rounding out the roster with any fallers at RB/WR or rotating through the Bucket Four guys is the likeliest construction to win. The Battle Royale games present an interesting game theory and roster construction problem, and I personally think they are the best DFS games out there now.

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