2025 Best Ball Playoff Schedules

In most leagues, Weeks 15 through 17 are the money weeks for fantasy football. That’s even more true when you’re competing in a top-heavy best ball tournament like Best Ball Mania VI, where a strong playoff run can turn you into a millionaire overnight.

One problem: It’s very hard to forecast who’s going to score the most fantasy points in Weeks 15, 16, and 17 when we’re drafting in the summer. Last year in this article, I noted that the Lions were projected to be one of the highest-scoring teams in football but pointed out they had merely average team totals in a Week 16 matchup in Chicago and a Week 17 game at San Francisco.

Detroit scored 34 points in Week 16 and 42 points in Week 17.

Still, with how important those money weeks are, it’s worth trying to quantify which teams have the best and worst schedules during those games. You don’t want to go overboard and completely ignore everything besides Weeks 16 and 17, but it’s useful to be aware of each team’s matchups during those weeks, possibly to use as a tiebreaker if torn between two players.

So let’s break down each team’s schedule during the fantasy playoffs. First, a bird’s-eye view of each team’s matchups (which can also be referenced for game-stacking purposes when drafting):

We have a general idea of which teams and offenses will be good, but sportsbooks have to set a spread and total for each game of the NFL season and stand to lose money if their numbers are bad. Lines for games in December and January have low limits and are generally not very efficient markets — at least compared to lines in-season — but they are likely better than the average football fan’s finger-in-the-air estimates. With that in mind, let’s glance at each team’s implied team total for Weeks 15-17 (via DraftKings), sorted by average implied team total during those weeks.

That table shows us which teams are expected to score the most in Weeks 15-17, but it doesn’t totally tell us if the teams at the top actually have a soft schedule, or if they’re just good offenses. For example, Buffalo has the fourth-highest average implied team total in Weeks 15-17 because their offense is a juggernaut, but their schedule during the fantasy playoffs is actually quite difficult. The final step is to compare each team’s average implied total during the fantasy playoff weeks to their average total during Weeks 1-14.