Underdog Fantasy is the cutting edge of best ball content, especially in the fantasy football space. Their flagship contest, “Best Ball Mania,” turns one lucky/skilled drafter every year into a millionaire. They also boast perhaps the earliest look at each season in all of best ball with their “Big Board” contest. This year, the winner of the contest takes home a cool $250k.
The Big Board offers drafters (sickos) the unique opportunity to flex their prospect eval muscles, while also focusing on best ball theory and roster construction, in a beautiful blend of knowing football and knowing game theory.
Let’s take a look at the current rankings on UD, as of February 9th. For anyone new to Underdog, scoring is 4 point passing TD, half PPR. You start 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, and 1 FLEX, with 12 bench spots. Best Ball puts all emphasis into the draft, as the system auto-starts your highest scoring players in each position every week as you try and score as many cumulative points as you can.
Every season, there are draft picks who woefully under-perform. While some of that can be attributed to injury, there are unfortunately picks every year that just don’t reach their projections, some even be a wide margin. In the first of two parts, we’ll look at the first 10 rounds of Big Board ADP and identify the worst pick on the board in every round.
Round 1
As I said in the Best Big Board Picks by ADP article, it’s difficult to have a player to be fully in or out on. But, if there was a player who could conceivably end up not worth the cost, for me that’s De’Von Achane.
Don’t hear what I’m not saying. I love Achane as a player, and I think he has arguably top 3 spike week potential at the RB position alongside Saquon and Gibbs.
But, the only fact that saved Achane’s frankly abysmal second season was the fact he became the team’s almost primary wide receiver, especially when Tua was healthy. His rushing efficiency absolutely bottomed out when given the workhorse role, as did his explosiveness.
It’s possible some of this can be chalked up to how poor the Dolphins’ offensive line was last season. But, the Dolphins are over the cap as it currently stands. They don’t have money to spend to fix a lot of their roster issues. It will more or less have to be through the draft, and there’s no guarantee the rookies they select will be good enough to help out at all.
For me, Achane’s efficiency and explosiveness were what made him enticing as a fantasy asset. And while there’s certainly an upside case that he can regain form in an offense that is reignited, there’s also a very real chance it’s more of the same in 2025. If Achane is inefficient once more, there’s no guarantee he’ll be force-fed targets in 2025 like he was in 2024.
Round 2
Josh Jacobs flat out is just a bad process pick here in Round 2 of the Big Board. He still doesn’t catch passes, basically at all. His two primary backups (AJ Dillon and rookie MarShawn Lloyd) basically missed the entire season, leaving him without any competition for playing time or touches.
Jacobs also ran extremely hot on rushing touchdowns with 15 (and 1 receiving), a stat that is almost never sticky year over year. The Packers dealt with a hobbled Jordan Love from literally Week 1, and the receiver core was pedestrian for most of the season.
Everything had to bounce that way for Jacobs to put up a good fantasy season again, and the potential for things to not go his way is exponentially higher at this stage. Lloyd could improve coming into Year 2, and the Packers can’t seem to quit AJ Dillon on principle. There’s also a non-zero chance they draft another running back in the upcoming draft, giving Jacobs another run for playing time and valuable touches.
If Josh Jacobs was in the 4th-5th round again like he was last year, the selection would be a lot easier to stomach. But he needs so many things to break right to even pay off his current Big Board ADP, and the odds are that more things will go wrong for him next season than they did in 2024. Jacobs is a fade for me here.
Round 3
Round 3 of the Big Board holds a couple of riskier bets to make, but one of them is especially tough. James Cook has almost the exact same premise as Josh Jacobs does, except he actually did cede a lot of work to the other backs around his last year.
The only thing, and I mean only thing, that saved him in 2024 was touchdowns. Cook scored 18 in total, including 16 rushing. This is especially surprising, considering that Josh Allen has historically vultured most of Cook’s red zone opportunities.
This didn’t happen nearly as much as previous years, which is absolutely a positive. But, Cook also did not get nearly as much passing work as he used to, as much of that went to Ty Johnson. There’s also now second year back Ray Davis who looks to eat even more into Cook’s workload in 2025.
While the Bills are a good offense, and we want to make bets on good offenses, it needs to be congruent with the talent and opportunity level of the player. James Cook is a wildly talented player on the field, who should be used more than he is. But the reality is that he isn’t, and most likely will continue not to be. And if those touchdowns regress back to the mean… He’s a far too expensive cost for his range of outcomes, especially with how deep the third round is otherwise.
(Honorable mention to Chase Brown, who doesn’t have enough NFL Draft capital attached to him to truly feel secure about his future workload and outlook. But, he’s an absolute smash if he does get that workload again. We just don’t know this early on, which makes him quite the gamble.)
Round 4
(Spoiler alert) Xavier Worthy was the best pick you could get in Round 4 of the Big Board. And the worst is unfortunately his teammate, Rashee Rice.
The more and more information we learn about the extent of his injuries in 2024, the less confident we should be feeling about his ability to suit up right away in 2025.
There is a very real, and very scary, chance that Rice won’t even be healthy for the start of 2025. He could easily start the year on the PUP or IR, then have to work himself back into the offense after that.
That also doesn’t even take into consideration the looming threat of suspension over his head, after the events of the 2023 off-season heading into 2024. If Rice does get suspended, that won’t even take effect until after he has been cleared to return to the field from injury.
His entire 2025 outlook comes down to injury recovery from an injury that is very difficult to rehab and return to form from. Also keep in mind, despite how early the injury was in 2024, Rice didn’t get surgery until pretty late in the season because of how long it took for the swelling to go down. He’s not operating on an early injury timeline. There is a real, legitimate chance that Rice misses more than 50% of 2025. And at that point, will he even be healthy enough to be impactful for fantasy? My bet is probably not. Rice is a full fade for me in the single digit rounds, especially as early as the fourth.
Round 5
Speaking of Chiefs, we have to stop this with Patrick Mahomes. The cold reality is that as long as the Chiefs can win games with their defense and dinking and dunking on offense, they most likely will. It’s been 2 full seasons now since Mahomes was good for fantasy, and only one of three seasons with Tyreek Hill (2022) have been even above average in the yards or touchdowns department.
That’s certainly not to say Mahomes can’t still be a good fantasy QB, he absolutely can and probably will multiple more years of his career. But he is no longer guaranteed to do so year in and year out like he once was.
His name carries him incredibly high up the ranks, but from a functional standpoint, what is the difference between Patrick Mahomes and Dak Prescott for fantasy? Dak is the Q 18 right now by the way, going in the 11th-12th round in the Big Board. What does Mahomes do that Prescott does not? In fact, Prescott has had a great fantasy season more recently than Mahomes has.
Stop letting the name caché get in the way. There is no good reason to take Patrick Mahomes this high. He has average weapons, he doesn’t run or score rushing touchdowns, and he no longer plays for a high octane offense.
Round 6
Plain and simple. Deebo Samuel. The Niners recently granted him permission to seek a trade to a new franchise, coming off his worst season in recent memory.
Deebo had all the opportunity, had no Ayiuk or McCaffrey for most of the season, and was wildly mediocre while other targets around him did very well.
What is unknown is how much of that can be blamed on the spell of pneumonia he overcame in the middle of the season. But Deebo was noticeable bigger and slower the second half of the season, and to be honest he looked it on the field.
He’s entering his age 29 season of the worst production of his career, and will either be in a crowded, complicated target share that the 49ers currently have, or will be on his first new team in his career. There’s no telling what his usage would be, or how he would fit into a different scheme. That much unknown would be worth taking an upside shot on in the early teen rounds, but not in the 6th.
(Honorable mention to very replaceable, very late round NFL Draft selection Tyrone Tracy, for a Giants team that needs help everywhere and are in no way inclined to keep Tracy as the primary back this year if a better one falls in the draft at all.)
Round 7
It may seem like I’m a Chiefs hater, but I promise I am not. I enjoy Patrick Mahomes as a QB, just not as a fantasy asset. I also don’t enjoy the prospect of taking Isiah Pacheco in the 7th round of the Big Board.
Pacheco broke his leg early in 2024, but was able to return in time for the playoffs. And he looked absolutely putrid.
He suffered the same injury that Tony Pollard, Tank Dell, and Mark Andrews all returned from, in which they all looked and played slower and less sudden than they ever had previously. It took Andrews and Pollard more than a year to look truly healthy again, and Dell hadn’t even reached that stage yet before his unfortunate catastrophic knee injury late in 2024.
Players who need tightrope surgery don’t seem to return to form until 1-1.5 years after the surgery, and that fact alone makes Pacheco a bad pick here.
But then we go into the fact that the Chiefs need a good running game in order to play the way they want, and Pacheco simply hasn’t provided that since returning from injury. Factor in that he also is a very late round NFL Draft pick with little investment, and it’s frankly very likely the Chiefs draft someone better in the NFL Draft and replace Pacheco outright. I’m not touching him at cost with a ten foot pole, that can be someone else’s risk to take for what projects to still be a mediocre offense anyways.
Round 8
I could very easily continue to pile on and say Travis Kelce here, but I won’t, because there’s another player in this round that I simply don’t understand the Big Board ADP of at all.
At first glance, Jaylen Warren seems like a decent bet to make. Najee Harris is most likely gone in free agency, and Warren is a restricted free agent, meaning the Steelers can and most likely will bring him back for 2025.
But this draft capital seems to pre-suppose that he’ll be brought back as the lead back in Pittsburgh, when he’s built much more like a tertiary change of pace back.
Warren has never handled a full NFL workload before, and the odds that the run-heavy, QB-starved Steelers don’t bring in another good RB to get at least part of the work feels very unlikely. We all know and hate Arthur Smith as a play caller, primarily because he refuses to lean on talented running backs. Smith loves committees to a fault, and Warren has very little capital attached to him to be seen as the favorite to head that committee.
What is more likely to happen is the Steelers draft a good young back in the NFL Draft, especially with the class’s depth at the position. And Warren will once again be relegated to the change of pace back on a bad projected offense with, at best, a huge question mark at QB. In the 8th round? Yeah, no thanks, y’all can have him there.
Round 9
As said in the Best Of article, the 9th round of the Big Board is pretty vanilla. There aren’t really any standout picks one way or the other. They are all, for the most part, perfectly fine at cost. But, there is one Running Back here who, at least compared to what we know about the other backs in this round, isn’t even the projected starter for his own team.
Zach Charbonnet is the clear handcuff to Kenneth Walker, and has been since the day he was drafted by Seattle.
Now let’s be clear, drafting him is a very, very good move for fantasy. Two rounds later than this. Every other running back in this range still has a conceivable, believable path to being the starting running back on their current team, or is a solid free agent in a pretty star-less RB free agency class.
Charbs is just a handcuff though. Albeit a great one, possibly the best in the NFL. He’s been a stud for fantasy whenever Walker misses time. But he has almost no stand-alone value as long as Walker is healthy, at least up to this point in their careers. And with other backs around him that could be starters for their teams and have weekly point upside, Charbs is just too expensive for what he gives you.
Round 10
Let’s just be honest here, Rashod Bateman has no place in this round of the Big Board, end of story. Bateman caught 9 touchdowns last season, which was 20% of his total receptions for the entire season.
Lamar Jackson was an absolute monster in 2024. He had the best passing output of his entire career by a longshot, despite a slow-starting Mark Andrews and an inconsistent Zay Flowers. And Bateman still only put up 45 receptions for 756 yards.
If he caught 3 touchdowns instead of 9, he’d be going in the 15th round (where he should be going). The odds that the Ravens stick with their somewhat lackluster receiver core in 2025 feels shaky to me. Even if Andrews leaves, Likely is waiting in the wings to take just as big of a target share. Throw in the small chance of Devontez Walker taking a step in Year 2, and the odds that Bateman even repeats what he did in 2025 is incredibly low.
And even if he does that, he’s not worth a 10th round pick for that performance. Bateman is a great WR 7-9 for the end of the bench on a Big Board team. Taking him in the 10th most likely means he’s somewhere from your WR 4-6, and that’s just unacceptable use of a draft pick. I could get the same production out of Travis Hunter on 25% of offensive snaps if he goes to the right offense.
To Be Continued…
In Part 2, we’ll look at Big Board rounds 11-20, aka the money rounds of best ball contests. It’s essential to hit on these picks as much as you can, so it will also be important to avoid some of the obvious traps and red flags along the way.
If you made it this far, consider joining our charity league Super League, and donate to children and families in need through the Extra Life organization! You get the chance to compete in a league against a bunch of smart, savvy, incredibly good-looking… (well, definitely smart at least) fantasy football aficionados like myself, and you get to give money to a wonderful cause to people who truly need it.
