It’s never a bad time to start drafting on Underdog, especially when there’s $2 million available as the first-place prize for winning their primary contest, Best Ball Mania 6 (BBM6). With so many people all competing for the top spot in Week 17 of the 2025 NFL season, it is essential to not only avoid bad picks but also to draft players that wildly outperform their ADP. Drafting league winners in May is not an easy feat, but there are certain players and profiles to target that give you the best chance to win it all.
Round 1
As I said in the Worst Picks article, there are no bad picks in the 1st round of BBM6. If I had to choose who the best pick is, though, I’d personally lean Amon-Ra St. Brown (with honorable mention to CeeDee Lamb). Amon-Ra is never going to be displaced from the alpha target earner in Detroit, and as long as Dan Campbell is the head coach, their offense will always be aggressive, if nothing else.
If it takes a step back with Ben Johnson gone, so be it. Amon-Ra, like most other alphas in the NFL, is mostly offense-proof. He’s going to get his 125+ targets every single year, he’s going to have the opportunity to score double-digit touchdowns, and he’s going to finish as a WR1 guaranteed outside of injury.
St. Brown is not only the safest wide receiver in the back half of the first, he also arguably has the highest upside of the wide receivers in the back half, outside of maybe Malik Nabers if Jaxson Dart is better than people expect.
The instant that Jahmyr Gibbs is off the board in Round 1, I’m targeting Amon-Ra St. Brown. He is the quintessential combination of floor and ceiling that you want in the 1st, and you don’t have to take him with a Top 6 pick, in fact, I’ve even seen him fall to the 2.01 before.
Round 2
He’s already crept up into the 1st round since taking this ADP screenshot, and he would have been the best pick in that round too if I were using a screenshot from today’s ADP. Christian McCaffrey is the highest upside RB in football, and you can get him in the 2nd round about half the time.
I totally get the sour taste in a lot of people’s mouths from last year. Taking him at the 1.01 all summer, then Shanahan dropping the bomb about halfway through that CMC was dealing with an Achilles injury. One lost season later, and plenty of folks are out on him entirely. And I get it.
But I need folks to understand, he did not tear his Achilles’ in either foot. Yes, it was the type of injury that was extremely problematic in-season. But there was no surgery required. He has not been laid up all off-season. According to Shanahan, he is, in fact, fully healthy at this point.
The last 2 seasons, CMC was fully healthy, and he was the RB1 overall. By a lot. He’ll be 29 when the season kicks off, and he’s not automatically over the age cliff. We’ve seen no proof that CMC is declining whatsoever. And until we get that proof, there is no reason to draft McCaffrey like he’s not the clear RB1 from a volume and talent perspective.
Round 3
BBM6 rewards drafting the best possible value in as many rounds as you can, and right now, we are being given the opportunity to draft a top 5 WR rookie prospect profile in the 21st century, who had a perfectly fine rookie season and did not flash any red flags or negative indicators.
However, because he was not the best or even 2nd best rookie receiver last year for fantasy, plenty of folks have already decided that Marvin Harrison Jr. doesn’t have the potential or ability to be elite in the NFL. And that is frankly just flat out wrong. Second-year jumps are still the most exploitable player trait in all of fantasy football, as they are relatively consistent and make quantifiable differences statistically.
They are not something we can predict, but it is something we can bet on. Every other receiver in this round has a pretty easily identifiable floor and ceiling, and none of their ceilings (outside of maybe Tyreek Hill) are higher than MHJ’s, and their floors are pretty much the same as his. For me, when the floors are similar, I always bet on the higher upside, especially in a contest where you have to have the best team for 3 straight weeks to win the grand prize.
Round 4
I personally like the bets in BBM6 Round 4 more than Round 3 in a lot of cases. And the guy I like the most in this range is 1st round rookie RB Omarion Hampton for the Chargers. Running backs with 1st round draft capital have very high hit rates of giving you valuable seasons in fantasy, regardless of how talented the back actually is.
Hampton has a strong prospect profile with ideal draft capital, and he lands in just about the perfect situation for him. And the only guy standing in his way is Najee Harris on a 1 year, low-money deal. If Hampton can’t beat out Harris for the job, your team is already sunk, so no reason to draft him with hesitation if you’re expecting a timeshare for most of the season.
I believe Hampton will win the job almost immediately, if not before Week 1. Which means you have a young, athletic, workhorse back in a Greg Roman offense with a star QB entering his prime. In the 4th round. Yes, please, give me more. Ashton Jeanty goes at the 1.09, and the only real difference between him and Hampton from a capital and situation standpoint is 12 picks in the 1st round.
Yes, Jeanty is a better prospect, but Hampton is not a prospect to sneeze at either, and he’s in possibly the best situation available for a running back in football. And you’re telling me I can get him in the 4th? I will have boatloads of Omarion, and you should too.
Round 5
There are a lot of really strong options here. George Kittle could just be the TE1 over Bowers or McBride. Hurts could be the QB1 over Allen, Lamar, and Daniels. But I’m going to go with George Pickens as the current best pick in the 5th round.
Yes, he is absolutely a knucklehead. No disputing that fact, or the risk associated with him because of that. But he is also an uber-athletic, uber-talented receiver, not even in his prime yet. And he’s finally free of the slog that is the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offense since Big Ben retired.
The Cowboys’ offense is usually a top-half offense regardless of their OC and HC combo, due to how elite CeeDee Lamb is and how well Dak utilizes Lamb both as a target and a decoy to make the offense hum. They still haven’t addressed the RB room, which most likely will result in oodles of passing attempts from Dak again this year.
We get a former alpha receiver entering his prime on a high-volume passing offense, and he’ll basically never see a double team playing next to Lamb. Pickens could easily give a Tee Higgins’ level season, and Tee goes at the 2/3 turn while Pickens goes in the mid-late 5th. I love his upside, and I know he will produce well here without much downside risk outside of attitude and off-the-field stuff, which so far has not played out at all.
Round 6
In my opinion, pre-conceived injury risk is the single most overrated factor that the average fantasy football fan takes into consideration when making draft decisions. There are some injuries and problems that have an increased risk of causing future compensation injuries; this is an actual fact. Knee injuries can lead to other lower leg injuries.
A misconception that I will always push back on, however, is that getting a concussion causes players to have more concussions. Now, I will agree with what the science indicates that having had a concussion can make future concussions more impactful and more damaging to the player. But I staunchly reject that the player is more prone to concussions once they’ve had one.
Chris Olave was a 2nd round pick in the BBM5 drafts last year, and his season was unfortunately cut short due to multiple concussions that landed him on IR about halfway through the year. However, he’s still a 1st round pick with proven talent at earning targets and creating separation in his routes.
Olave’s injury risk is not any higher than any other player’s; it will just be more impactful if it does happen. Sure, Tyler Shough is probably not very good, but frankly, neither was Derek Carr. And what if, against the odds, Shough actually is good? No one was high on CJ Stroud going into his rookie year. He was the consolation pick after Young. Then he took the league by storm and helped Nico Collins ascend from another guy to a legitimate alpha. Stop overthinking with Olave. Take good players, especially when they’re cheap.
Round 7
Matthew Golden is simply the best Round 7 bet you can make right now in BBM6. While he’s not a fantastic prospect, there are plenty of things about him to like in his profile. He has 1st round NFL draft capital, measurably good top-end sprint speed, and is going to an offense with plenty of potential to be explosive and high-powered, especially with Jordan Love hopefully fully healthy.
While Golden does not profile as a traditional alpha receiver, he still has the opportunity to become the lead target earner in the offense if he’s really good. You don’t often get the opportunity to draft the primary target in a good projected offense in the 7th round, especially a rookie who has room to be much better than your average 7th rounder.
Think of the rookies who were available in the 6th and 7th last year. Most of them (BTJ and Ladd) smashed that ADP, despite being prospects with some question marks and a semi-murky path to becoming the primary pass catcher. While that isn’t a prescriptive path, Golden presents the same opportunity that BTJ and Ladd did last season, and you should absolutely be embracing that upside case in a round full of boring clicks for the most part.
Round 8
Despite being a Cardinals fan and disenfranchised former Kyler supporter, I do still think he’s the best pick in this round. Let me be clear, he still can’t see over his offensive line when he throws. It’s very evident, as he still is more or less incapable of throwing over the deep middle of the field unless he’s out of the pocket.
With that being said, he does have the most rushing upside of just about any QB outside of the Big 4 besides Justin Fields, and Kyler is at least a better passer than Fields is. And despite his height, Kyler does actually score rushing touchdowns at a good clip, despite having no QB sneak upside built in.
Kyler has been on record as saying he wants to get back to running the ball much more, now 2 full years removed from his ACL tear. If Murray actually does run more, he has the potential to be a Top 5 QB finisher, and that type of potential isn’t readily available usually this late in drafts.
While lots of QBs can give you a Top 5 season, it’s a lot more random for the average QB in a given year. Konami Code QBs are always king, and usually they are more expensive than this in the average draft room. Kyler (and Fields later) are both more affordable than you’d expect, and as long as they’re demonstrably cheaper than the Stud QBs in the earlier rounds, I’m happy to take Murray and Fields at discounts to try and match the Elite QB scoring while beating those teams at the skill positions.
Round 9
I’m not going Fields here after the convo with him in the last round, though he is a great pick here. In BBM6 Round 9, the best pick is one of the most boring, vanilla picks you can possibly make this season. He was a 3rd/4th round pick last year in BBM, which was an absolutely horrible price for him.
But this year, I’m very in on 9th round Michael Pittman Jr. I am fully aware of how bad their QB situation will probably be all year. I also tend to think Josh Downs is better at football than Pittman is. But we have proven data now that Shane Steichen makes a concerted effort to get Pittman the ball, no matter who the QB is.
The case for Pittman is that either Anthony Richardson improves enough to be the starter all season, making Pittman worth more than his 9th-round price tag. Or, they play Daniel Jones, who gets flighty under pressure and is happy to dump off passes when his first read isn’t open. Pittman is often used as the outlet target for the Indy QBs, and even just Top 32 QB play from Daniel Jones could really provide a solid floor with Pittman.
While floor picks aren’t sexy, the last few years have proved that sometimes, you just need points to help advance your teams of younger, late breakout draft picks, especially as RB scoring has risen back to the median compared to the last 5-10 years. Pittman will never give you 40 points in a week, but he could easily give you 12-18 points week in and week out every week as your WR3 or even your Flex as the rest of your roster fluctuates around him.
