CeeDee Lamb & The Case Of Getting Unique

Those that have watched my best ball streams, know I’m a strong proponent of drafting unique teams to attempt to give myself an easier time of winning a best ball tournament. When it comes to Best Ball Mania 4 on Underdog, or similar sized tournaments on DraftKings etc. we’re competing against literally nearly a million teams.

We’ll use Underdog’s BBM4 as an example:

Teams drafted: 677,376.

Playoff teams: 112,896.

Finals teams: 441 teams.

First place: $3million

10th place: $30K

51st - 100th: $5k

As you can see not only are we competing against many many teams but if we are lucky enough to make the finals, we’re facing an incredibly top heavy prize pool to try and win life changing money. Don’t get me wrong, winning $30k is awesome! A year's salary to some (hello fellow teachers!), but when you’re only 9 places away from winning $3 Million dollars or 7 away from 10x the amount, it’s a bit of a gut punch to come so close yet so far!

All of this is to say that if there is anything we can try and control to give ourselves a better chance of winning the tournament we NEED to try this.

If we have our choice, we’d of course prefer to get unique via taking players we like, who have fallen past ADP (Average Draft Position). This reminds me of my team that won BBM2 - I took advantage of a news cycle (Wentz injury caused Jonathan Taylor to fall + Aaron Rodgers rumors caused Aaron Jones/Davante Adams to fall) that allowed a rather unique pairing of Jonathan Taylor and Aaron Jones.

For those who draft throughout the summer I highly recommend taking advantage of a fearful market when these opportunities arise. Sure you can be burned if the fear is justified but far more often it’s people being overly cautious in an extremely top heavy tournament!

The problem is, it’s quite rare for players at the top of the draft board to fall significantly past their ADP to allow us to draft those unique combos. So instead we can reach, usually at the turns (1st/2nd pick or 11th/12th etc.) for players whose usual draft position is at the opposite turn. I did this several times last year by taking AJ Brown or Stefon Diggs with the 1-3 picks, when their ADP was closer to 7-9.

It’s important we reach for players who we generally believe can either be a top fantasy scorer or put up a score to win us the tournament week 17. I particularly liked AJ Brown and Stefon Diggs because the ADP of their QBs was more aligned with the 2/3 turn, so it wasn’t common to have them stacked with their QB unless you reached on Allen/Hurts.

Let’s now take some examples of how you could have done this and profited last year in Best Ball. We’ll first view a draft board of pretty standard ADPs.

We'll use CeeDee Lamb as our example of a player you could have reached on at the 1.01 to give yourself unique pairings. Although CMC and Tyreek Hill were the regular season champions and had decent playoffs. Lamb was the guy who not only had a great regular season but put together playoff, and more importantly, championship winning scores (week 17) last year.

I also believe it was feasible going into the year a drafter could have viewed Lamb as a worthy target to reach on. Not only is he an elite Wide Receiver on a Cowboys offense we've seen be elite for fantasy in the past, but he was also facing very questionable pass catching competition going into the year.

CeeDee Lamb was often taken at the 1.08 - 1.12 range. AKA firmly a 1/2 turn guy, and almost never at the 1.01 and never falling to the 2/3 turn. As a note, it’s pretty important if we reach on a player that they never do naturally fall to the next round. So for our example Lamb never did fall to the 2/3 turn. It’s not 100% essential, as we’re still getting a unique combo of players but we’re not thrilled if opponents are getting the consensus 1.01s - 1.03s AND the player we think can produce like the 1.01 to reach on.

For this reason it can sometimes be helpful to implement this strategy later in the Summer, to see if any high fantasy picks have seen significant movement. I believe you can be thoughtful about this however and execute this strategy from day 1 if you would like.

CeeDee Lamb Pairings in BBM4

Let's now take a look at some combinations of players Lamb was paired with for BBM4:

Total number of CeeDee Lamb teams in BBM4: 56,448

Source for data: bbmd.com / Underdog Fantasy

CeeDee Lamb + Amon-Ra St. Brown: 11,201 (20% of Lamb Teams)

This combo was very popular because not only were these players natural ADPS at the 1/2 turn all season, but they also were week 17 opponents - something I helped popularize after winning BBM2. Fantasy drafters were rewarded with this combo as both Lamb and Amon-Ra had strong seasons, playoffs, and finals! 

Some of the other players paired with Lamb near his ADP were:

Lamb + Garret Wilson: 6,924 (12% of Lamb Teams)

Lamb + Saquon Barkely: 4,014 (7%)

Lamb + Davante Adams: 7,052 (12.5%)

Lamb + Nick Chubb: 5,788 (10%)

Bear in mind that if Cooper Kupp didn’t fall from the 1.03, and some other players climb to nearly the 1/2 turn like Calvin Ridley, the Lamb chalk combos would have been even higher. This is noteworthy because this type of movement is not guaranteed each year at the top of drafts.

We’re clearly seeing that Lamb + non Amon-Ra stack partner was a less common pairing. We may eventually get to a point where the opposing week 17 partners is too common of a pairing, that we can take anyone else and comfortably profit from a more unique pairing. That's probably a long way off though.

However let’s take a look at some combos of Lamb with some guys who went at the 2/3 turn more commonly!

Lamb + Devonta Smith: 348 (0.61% of Lamb Teams)

Lamb + Derrick Henry: 402 (0.71%)

Lamb + Tee Higgins: 227 (0.4%)

Lamb + Chris Olave: 1,015 (1.7%)

Wow! When we take a look at the players who largely lived at the 2/3 turn, we can see Lamb was paired with these players roughly 10-20x+ less common than his 1/2 turn partners, not counting Amon-Ra. That’s incredible.

Simply put Devonta Smith, Tee Higgins etc. are not 10-20x less likely to put up a winning fantasy score compared to the Garret Wilson’s and Nick Chubbs of the world in a given week. The exact results of these pairings last year isn’t as important to me as the thesis of the idea. 

Closing Thoughts

The point is the fantasy market is not exact enough that we should allow ADP to fully drive home our starts at draft time. You’ve seen how top heavy these contests are and how large they are. You need to play for first, especially if you’re a volume drafter. To think that the projection of a singular round is strong enough to make us do something 20x more often is pretty crazy to me! All the time we see the fantasy market fail, and it sets us up to benefit from the chaos of football with injuries etc. 

It’s also important you don’t over do this idea. If you took Lamb at the 1.01 last year and then you reached at the 2/3 turn again for a guy who largely went at the 3/4 turn, you’re fighting your own uniqueness! You’re combining two players who are already very common! So if you reach big time at the top of the draft you’re allowed to draft near ADP the rest of the draft and benefit!

I do however think it’s a tempting idea to do this a couple times in a singular draft. An example is you take Lamb at the 1.01 (rare) then pair him with common 2/3 turn guys, THEN at the 4/5 turn you select one guy who’s usually a 4/5 guy and another guy who’s usually a 3/4 guy (if they fell) or “reach” on a 5/6 guy. Now you’re pairing Lamb and a typical combo at the 3/4 or 4/5 with with the rare pairing of 2/3 + 4/5 guys. 

It is my belief that if you implement this strategy correctly you can give yourself not only an easier time to reach the finals but a unique combination, or potentially just low ownership on one of your top picks for the finals, to give yourself an edge on the field and an easier time at winning the contest.

An example from last year would be if Lamb had had a bad fantasy playoffs, but still put up his monstrous score for week 17 AND most of his common turn partners also had poor weeks 15 and 16. Then his ownership for week 17 would be near zero or literally zero, if other first round picks smashed the previous weeks.

However if Tee Higgins, Devonta Smith etc. put up strong scores week 15/16 they could have allowed us to drag a low owned Lamb to the finals where we now have great leverage on the field and a great shot at winning. We not only would have a low owned 1st round pick but we also would have unique partners with that 1st round pick.

As I could go on for much longer about this topic I'll end with the following. I'm not saying you need to do this 100% of the time! Just last year CeeDee Lamb + Amon-Ra St. Brown was a winning "chalk" combo. However much more often than that I think we can give ourselves an edge by being brave and "reaching". So while I do think someone who made unique combos at the top of drafts for 150 "bullets" would win the contest more often than someone who made mostly chalk combos, I think it feels worse this year to implement the strategy with picks 1-5 as we feel so good about those players.

So while you could absolutely implement this strategy at pick #1 with a 1/2 turn player, maybe something we'd prefer is implementing it at the 1/2 turn or the 2/3 turn, the 4/5 turn etc. That way we're not passing up our opportunity to get the CMC & CeeDee Lambs of the world but we're still creating unique combos to help us win the tournament & place higher in the finals.

For those that are uncomfortable implementing this in a contest like BBM5, or higher buy-in tournaments (I am not, the larger the contest the bigger the reason to get unique) I suggest you first try it in a contest like the puppy on Underdog or a similar lower buy-in tournament. Those tournaments typically fill extremely fast, so you don't have to even think about where players ADPs will move over the course of the Summer.

I hope you enjoyed this free article and will consider subscribing to my site! For my subscribers I will have an article released later this Summer with my favorite players to implement this strategy on & which parts of the draft!