NFL Best Ball Strategy: Analyzing 2025 ADPs on Underdog and Drafters

This article is part of our Best Ball Strategy series.

The end of the 2024 NFL season means the start of 2025 best ball drafts, giving us our first dose of ADP data from contests with money on the line. Underdog and Drafters already have large tournaments up and running, albeit with some key format differences that provide strategic reasons for ADP differences.

I don’t want to get too deep into the peculiarities of each site right now, so the main thing to know is that Drafters uses total points (adding up scores equally for Weeks 1-17) while Underdog has a playoff/pod-based format that puts a ton of weight on Weeks 15-17. Players that are more likely to produce later in the season — e.g. rookies and guys coming off major injuries — theoretically are more valuable on Underdog and should thus be drafted earlier there than they are on Drafters. There will always be cases where it isn’t actually playing out that way, of course, and I’ll point out some of those arbitrage opportunities at the bottom of the page. The other key difference between the two sites is that Underdog uses half-PPR scoring while Drafters is full PPR. 

The chart below is sorted by average ADP, equally weighting data from the two sites. That’s found in the far left column, while data from each of the sites individually (and the difference between those numbers) is placed to the right of each player’s name (labeled as ‘UD ADP’, ‘Dr ADP’ and ‘ADP Δ‘. After the chart I’ll discuss some of the best and worst early values, relative to my personal opinions/rankings (which are far from gospel, but I’ve put a lot of time into rankings and projections already, so it’s not purely off the cuff).

Undervalued (Both Sites)

• RB Bucky Irving

ADP:  25.4 AVG, 24.0 UD, 26.8 DR

Irving averaged 16.9 PPR points from Week 6 onward, and 18.1 points after Tampa Bay’s Week 11 bye. I’ve cooled on him slightly since Liam Coen left for Jacksonville, but the potential for RB1 fantasy production still outweighs admittedly valid concerns about how much work a 195-pound RB can handle long term. My personal rankings have Irving as a mid-R2 pick, whereas early ADP puts him at the 2/3 turn.

• QB Jayden Daniels

ADP: 39.0 AVG, 38.3 UD, 39.6 DR

When you look at his stats from last season, remember that Daniels left one game after 10 snaps and another game after 26 snaps. He otherwise averaged the third most fantasy points per game at his position, behind only Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson. The Commanders are now projected for $75 million in cap space, which means there’s potential for improvement not only with Daniels but also his supporting cast. 

I wonder if his ADP would be earlier if not for the difficulty of pairing him with preferred stacking partner Terry McLaurin, who is going at the 2/3 turn. McLaurin should probably be going a bit later and Daniels a bit earlier. As is, teams that take McLaurin rarely have the opportunity to draft Daniels (unless they take him about 12-15 picks ahead of ADP). It appears very few people are doing that, which means Daniels-McLaurin stacks aren’t all that common. I have no problem drafting Daniels without his top receiver, considering he scores a lot of his points on the ground and may get a new No. 2 WR this offseason.

• WR Courtland Sutton

ADP: 57.2 AVG, 57.8 UD, 56.5 DR

I have Sutton ranked 44th, after he averaged 17.7 PPR points from Week 8 onward last season. I’ll happily draft him in Round 5 and then follow up with Bo Nix (ADP 81.6) in Round 7.

• Rookie RB Omarion Hampton

ADP: 60.8 AVG, 58.7 UD, 62.8 DR

I may have been overzealous in ranking Hampton at No. 40, but the 5/6 turn seems too cheap for an excellent RB prospect who has some shot to go in the second half of the first round. Early in Round 5 seems like an appropriate middle ground for now, pending results of the NFL Scouting Combine and pro days. For what it’s worth, I have most of the top prospects ranked a round or two ahead of their initial ADPs.

• RB Travis Etienne

ADP: 102.7 AVG, 102.7 UD, 101.6 DR

After seeing what Liam Coen did with Tampa Bay’s running game last season, I’ll happily give Etienne one last chance to live up to his first-round billing. It’s also encouraging that Coen preferred Bucky Irving over Rachaad White and Sean Tucker, as it shows the Jags’ new head coach may not care about size/weight as much as a lot of other coaches, which would favor Etienne over fellow incumbent Tank Bigsby. 

Overvalued (Both Sites)

• WR Tee Higgins

ADP: 24.0 AVG, 24.7 UD, 23.3 DR

I discussed Higgins at length in my recent article on impending free agents and franchise-tag candidates. The gist is that he’s coming off his best season in terms of fantasy points per game but still comes with a ton of risk for hamstring/thigh injuries. The only way I’d draft him at this price is if he ends up on a new team as the clear No. 1 receiver and is paired with a franchise QB. Working as Joe Burrow’s No. 2 receiver is a pretty good deal, but that’s been Higgins’ reality for five seasons now and he’s yet to combine production and durability commensurate with top-20 fantasy value. 

• WR Terry McLaurin

ADP: 24.8 AVG, 25.8 UD, 23.8 DR

Jayden Daniels may continue to improve on the sky-high standard he’s already set, but his running ability and frequently scrambling make him unlikely to rank near the league leaders in pass attempts, which means there’s not much chance for McLaurin to see more than seven targets per game. The current price feels like drafting McLaurin at his ceiling, given that he had elite per-target efficiency in 2024 but ranked just 16th among WRs in PPR points per game (or 14th if we don’t count Rashee Rice and Chris Godwin).

• QB Joe Burrow

ADP: 48.9 AVG, 48.9 UD, 48.8 DR

Teams that start off with Ja’Marr Chase are often taking Higgins at the 2/3 turn and Burrow at the 4/5 turn. The trio was best-ball gold in 2025, but that was with Chase going in the middle of Round 1, Higgins in Round 4/5 and Burrow around Rounds 7-9. They’re now priced up to last year’s production, with an additional ADP boost due to the stacking frequency. I don’t mind paying up for the Bengals stack occasionally, but there’s no way I’m taking Burrow at the 4/5 turn in any other scenario. I’m guessing he’d land closer to the 5/6 turn if there weren’t so many Chase drafters targeting him.

• WR Zay Flowers

ADP: 44.7 AVG, 44.1 UD, 45.2 DR

This is another case where stacks are inflating ADP, with a lot of the people that draft Lamar Jackson in Round 3 then taking Flowers in Round 4. That’s fine, but I’m not interested in Flowers before Round 5 for teams that don’t already have Jackson.

• WR Deebo Samuel

ADP: 74.1 AVG, 72.2 UD, 75.9 DR

Samuel saw the writing on the wall and knew he’d either be traded or released this season, so he and his agent sought permission to find a trade, potentially gaining a degree of control over the situation (TBD). A new team will mean more theoretical upside for target volume, but it will also mean stepping away from the scheme that helped make him a star, and on the heels of a 2024 season in which he simply wasn’t all that good. Plus, Samuel is 29 years old and has an unusual skill set that may not age well.

• QB Jordan Love

ADP: 112.4 AVG, 109.1 UD, 115.6 DR

Did people watch the 2024 season at all? Love wasn’t good, and the Packers relied on their defense and passing game to make the playoffs. That’s not to say Love is awful, but the superstar dreams of last offseason can probably be laid to rest. He also doesn’t run much, so it’s not like there’s an easy path to big-time fantasy scoring

Noteworthy Differences Between Sites

• RB Kyren Williams

ADP: Underdog: 34.1 / Drafters: 30.2

I’m not a fan of Williams at either price, worrying that his lack of elite traits eventually will cost him volume. But the real surprise here isn’t his ADP in general, it’s that he’s going an average of four picks earlier on Drafters, a site that uses full-PPR scoring. Williams isn’t a total zero in the passing game, but 29 running backs caught more passes than his 34 last year, while just four had more rushing TDs than his 14. It’s also worth noting that Drafters-specific strategy incentivizes swinging for the fences and finding guys that can outperform ADP from start to finish (whereas on Underdog a guy can be the key to success if he just puts up huge numbers Weeks 15-17). Williams doesn’t really fit the high-ceiling archetype for me, considering he finished last season as RB7 in overall scoring and RB10 in points per game. I’d rather draft an elite QB or a breakout candidate at WR in this range.

• RB Kenneth Walker

ADP: Underdog: 58.2 / Drafters: 49.2

Walker isn’t a player that I’d expect to show a large ADP gap between the two sites. He took on more pass-catching work in 2024, but not to an extent that makes him more valuable on full-PPR sites relative to half-PPR formats. I suppose his injury history and talent lend to a boom/bust narrative; just not to an extent that would explain a difference of nearly a full round between Underdog and Drafters. 

• WR Xavier Legette

ADP: Underdog: 131 / Drafters: 143.3

Legette and rookie Luther Burden are the only players ranked in the Top 150 that have double-digit ADP gaps between the two sites. In Burden’s case it makes more sense, as rookies tend to go earlier on Underdog due to the outsized importance of back-weighted production. The other interesting thing about Legette is that teammate Adam Thielen is reversed, going at 174.6 on Underdog and 149.4 on Drafters. It’s not even clear yet if Thielen will play another season, but he was definitely Carolina’s best receiver in 2024, and fellow rookie Jalen Coker also outplayed Legette. The biggest practical takeaway here is probably that Thielen’s a good value on Underdog (although I also like Coker on both sites at his 13th-round ADP).