Levitan: Closing Line Value Targets on Underdog Best Ball

Last Updated: May 17th at 12:42 p.m. ET

Reminder: Can find our Top 300 for Underdog Best Ball here and our Best Ball ADP report here.

A fantasy football draft is essentially a market. How much are we willing to pay for a player compared to our opponents?

So how do we know if we’re beating the market, or “winning”, without simply looking at results? I’d compare it to sports betting, where we know if we’re beating the closing line then we have won – regardless of outcome. In other words, if we bet Patriots -2 on Monday and it closes -6 on Sunday, then it’s a huge win. Because markets trend toward efficiency over time, repeatedly beating the closing line lets us know we are printing expected value (EV).

A good example of this was Will Fuller last season. In May, he was going around Round 9. By September, we had to spend a Round 5 pick to get him. In 2019, Chris Godwin went from Round 6 to Round 3 as draft season progressed.

For those of us drafting Best Ball or season-long teams early, the biggest edge is this player ADP (average draft position) movement. By putting a team together of guys at good prices, we know we have won Skalnsky Bucks before the season even starts.

Here are players I think will be going higher than they are right now come September:

1. Tyler Higbee, TE, Rams – ADP 106.5
It’s a perfect storm situation for Higbee. Gerald Everett is gone, Josh Reynolds is gone, he’s getting a massive QB upgrade in Matthew Stafford and we already know he has a sky-high ceiling. There just aren’t many TE-eligible players even capable of doing what Higbee did at the end of the 2019 season: 7-107-1, 7-116-0, 12-111-0, 9-104-0, 8-84-1. With DeSean Jackson and Tutu Atwell actually threatening defenses deep, there will be more room over the middle for Higbee.