How to Treat Suspended and Injured Players in Best Ball

Every year, there are big-time NFL players who enter the season injured or suspended, presenting an interesting dilemma for fantasy gamers. In 2023, Jameson Williams has already been hit with a six-game suspension, while others like Alvin Kamara and Joe Mixon await their fate. Kyler Murray and Breece Hall are elite fantasy options when healthy, but their early-season effectiveness is in question after both suffered season-ending injuries last season.

These players should be valued differently — sometimes significantly — in different formats. It’s incorrect to treat Williams the same way in both your 12-team home league and Best Ball Mania IV. And even without the same tournament, players who are set to miss the early part of the season should be valued differently based on your team roster construction. Today, we’ll dig into the factors that affect a suspended or injured player’s value and discuss how to appropriately draft around a player who won’t contribute early in the year. Let’s get right to it.

WHAT FORMATS BENEFIT SUSPENDED/INJURED PLAYERS?

The playoffs are the most important time of the year for any fantasy football league, but the extent to which that is true varies based on the format.

As a rule of thumb: The less exclusive the playoff structure, the more valuable suspended/injured players are. The more top-heavy the payout structure, the more valuable suspended/injured players are. In a 12-team home league where six teams make the playoffs, spending a non-negligible pick on a suspended player isn’t a death blow because 50% of the teams in the league qualify for the playoffs. If only two teams make the postseason, missing six weeks from a weekly starter is a tougher sell.

This idea applies to best ball tournaments as well; that is, suspended and injured players are more palatable in the Dalmatian where four teams advance from each league as opposed to BBM4 where just 2/12 move on. With that being said, suspended and injured players are appealing in most tournaments simply because there is so much weight on the playoff weeks. Adam Harstad has written at length about how most fantasy players underestimate just how much more the playoffs matter compared to the regular season, and that difference is even more exaggerated in best ball tournaments. It is a slightly different equation this season for BBM4 specifically with so much of the prize pot going to the highest-scoring teams in the regular season, so suspended and injured players aren’t quite as powerful in this year’s Best Ball Mania as they’ve been in past seasons. Still, the top-heavy prize pool for the tournament weeks means these players are still appealing despite only two teams advancing from Round 1 in BBM4.

Another reason suspended players are interesting in tournaments is that they could provide enormous leverage on the field for the teams that manage to escape the regular season. All of these players are likely to have below-average advance rates, so any team with them in the playoff rounds would benefit enormously if they end up posting usable scores in Weeks 15-17. Unlike most players for whom a poor advance rate is likely highly correlated to additional subpar performance during the fantasy playoffs, a below-expectation advance rate for a suspended or injured player says little about how they’ll do in the playoffs.

This is especially critical for ETR subscribers because we only have one set of rankings per format. For example, we only have general Underdog rankings rather than specific sets for BBM4, Puppy, cash leagues, etc. Because of that, you may have to mentally massage some players up or down in the rankings based on the specific league or tournament you are playing.

HOW SHOULD YOU CONSTRUCT YOUR TEAM AROUND SUSPENDED/INJURED PLAYERS?