NFL training camps are about to open, meaning we are officially in the midst of fantasy football draft season. Best Ball contests on DraftKings have been open since the NFL Draft ended, most notably the $15M Best Ball Millionaire which features a grand prize of $2 million to first and $1 million to second.
In this article, I will break down the winning roster from the 2024 Best Ball Millionaire contest to see what worked and how we can potentially apply similar concepts in 2025.
Winning Roster
QB: Justin Herbert, Jared Goff, Bryce Young
RB: Derrick Henry, Bijan Robinson, David Montgomery, Raheem Mostert, Bucky Irving, Justice Hill
WR: Tee Higgins, Davante Adams, Brian Thomas Jr, Gabe Davis, Jahan Dotson, Ricky Pearsall, Darnell Mooney, DeAndre Hopkins
TE: Trey McBride, Ben Sinnott, Theo Johnson
Roster Construction
As you can see above, the 2024 $1.5 million winner went with a 3-6-8-3 build, which is by far one of the most common constructions on DraftKings.
The way this user drafted his winning roster pretty much bucks all the core tenets and trends of DraftKings Best Ball. The biggest thing you will notice is the lack of early WR firepower. He took Davante Adams in Round 2 and Tee Higgins in Round 5, but then did not select a WR again until Brian Thomas Jr. in Round 9 and DeAndre Hopkins in Round 10.
Normally, having just four wide receivers through 10 rounds on DraftKings — where full PPR scoring is in play — is quite abnormal, and some might even call it foolhardy. However, he opted to draft an elite tight end, taking Trey McBride in Round 4, and hit on late-round WR value, which, as you’ll see shortly, proved to be critical.
After starting his draft with Bijan Robinson and Derrick Henry, he did not take his foot off the gas pedal at RB, taking David Montgomery in Round 6 and Raheem Mostert in Round 7. This ultimately gave him four RBs through seven rounds, so it was evident he was fully committed to winning the FLEX at RB. This can be a dominant strategy if the RBs you select stay healthy, simply because of how predictable RB touches can be.
To round out his RB room, he took Bucky Irving in Round 14 and Justice Hill in Round 18. When you look at how last season played out, Robinson, Henry, Irving and Montgomery all ranked inside the top 17 in fantasy points per game at the position, while the former two ranked as the RB3 and RB4 in points per game, respectively.
Moving on to QB, where he double-tapped the position in Rounds 10 and 11 by taking Jared Goff and Justin Herbert. The craziest part about this team is not just that he was so light on WR through the first 10 rounds, but that he also did not stack any of his pass catchers. The only stack he had on the whole roster was Goff and David Montgomery, which of course still counts, but is usually far less effective than a QB/WR or QB/TE pairing.
This is going to come off quite simplistic, but the main reason this user won the contest is due to how pure he ran during the fantasy playoffs.
A lot of the wide outs he took really did not help his advance rate whatsoever, as Adams, Hopkins, Davis, Dotson and Pearsall had subpar regular seasons. The short of it is this: his running backs carried him through the regular season and his wide receivers/tight end carried him in the playoffs and finals.
Adams went nuclear in the first week of the playoffs, posting a 45.8-point performance, which more than made up for his underwhelming year. We know how dominant Thomas Jr. was during the fantasy playoffs as well, but just to refresh your memory, he scored 35.5, 31.2 and 23.9 points, respectively, in Weeks 15, 16 and 17. That of course brings us to Higgins and Pearsall, who were both instrumental in this user winning the contest. Higgins went off for 44.1 fantasy points against the Broncos in Week 17, while Pearsall posted his best game of the season as well, with 31.7-point performance against the Lions on Monday Night Football.
The controversial topic during the 2025 draft season is whether taking an elite tight end early is a +EV decision. The pushback is that you can often find serviceable tight ends late, and that elite options — like Brock Bowers and McBride — typically underperform relative to the wide receivers and running backs drafted in the same range.
However, pro–elite TE drafters will remind you that if you can advance a team with one on your roster, you’ll have a much better shot at winning in the playoffs. McBride scored his first two touchdowns of the season in Week 17 last year, leading to a 33.3-point explosion and making him someone you absolutely had to have to win any money in Best Ball.
Things We Can Learn For 2025
Hopefully, the main thing you took away from this article is that there is no one specific way to win at Best Ball. This guy won the contest with a very unconventional roster, but he did have all of his players healthy and contributing at the same time when it counted most. The zero-RB advocates will stand on their soap box and yell that Bucky Irving was the difference maker on this team, who was drafted in Round 14.
However, you could easily see it from the robust-RB drafter’s point of view also, because without the incredible regular seasons from Robinson and Henry, Irving’s late season breakout would not have mattered. In addition, just look at the WRs who hit his lineup in Week 17. Pearsall was taken in Round 18, while Thomas Jr. and Higgins were both taken in Round 5 or later.
Any strategy can work in Best Ball as long as you know how to draft and allocate capital properly.