2025-2026 NFL Playoff Best Ball Tips and Cheat Sheet

There are a LOT of options for playoff fantasy football. So guess what? We’re going to cover them all this week. That way, you can decide what’s right for you and be armed with the knowledge and tools you need to dominate. It’s only a couple of months until football is gone for good, so we need to squeeze every bit of fantasy goodness out of the game we know and love.

In this article, we are covering playoff best ball. If you don’t know the basics of best ball, this article will get you up to speed. The short and sweet is that you draft a team, and the algorithm automatically slots in your best players. For playoffs, there’s a little more to it, though, as some teams are naturally going to get eliminated. So you have to have a bit more strategy.

In this article, I’m going to give you everything you need. Playoff best ball’s top tips. An example playoff best ball lineup. And our playoff best ball grid to help you identify where/when you’ll need to start thinking about drafting players if you want them. So let’s jump in!

P.S. If you are looking for our basic strategy for the FFPC Playoff Challenge, that can be found here!

Playoff Best Ball Tips and Strategy

• SUPER BOWL IS KING: Your points DO NOT accumulate. You have a score for each round, and then it resets. So you need to survive each round and advance. But the final week decides all the prizes. So getting players to the Super Bowl is our #1 task.
• STACK ATTACK: If you are brand new to best ball, it’s important to recognize that we are chasing spikes. And, in most cases, the big weeks for quarterbacks coincide with big weeks for their weapons. So you’ll want to lean into that narrative. 
• FIVE ALIVE: The lineup is 1 QB, 1 RB, 2 WR/TE, 1 FLEX (non-superflex). If you do not have five players “alive” with at least 1 QB and 1 RB in the Super Bowl, you are very likely drawing dead for the major prizes. E.G., if you stack Jalen Hurts, AJ Brown, and DeVonta Smith but don’t get Saquon Barkley, you’ll likely need to have the running back from the AFC Super Bowl team on your roster.
• TRICKLE DOWN: Your first couple of picks will likely decide your “main” team(s). It might be tempting to take stars, even if they are falling in the draft, but you have to recognize how they fit into the narrative of the team you’ve created. Especially if they play in the same conference as your first couple of picks. It can be smart to stack a QB and pass-catchers from one conference with RBs from another conference.
• MIND THE BYES: It can be difficult to navigate because the bye week teams have the highest odds of making the Super Bowl. You need players, especially a QB, in each round if you want to win. If you draft Bo Nix or Sam Darnold, you are likely going to need another QB that actually plays in the Wild Card round, unless you get super lucky. 

Playoff Best Ball Example Draft Based On ADP

Here is an example lineup based on ADP. This hypothetical lineup would give me “five alive” for three different Super Bowl combinations (NE vs. SEA, NE vs. CHI, HOU vs. SEA, and HOU vs. CHI). None of these teams are playing each other in Wild Card week. And I have sufficient coverage to survive the Seahawks bye week. 

Playoff Best Ball Rankings Grid

Here is our rankings grid to help identify how aggressive you need to be to get the guys you want in drafts. It factors in our personal rankings to some degree, but, for this format, it heavily considers ADP. Other players obviously understand the odds each team has of reaching the Super Bowl, and they have their own stacks in mind, so you may need to get out in front of certain players on popular teams. Others with lesser odds of going far, you can wait until the very end.