We May Have (Finally) Figured Out Where to Draft DBs in IDP Best Ball Drafts
Defensive backs hurt drafters less in 2024 because we faded them appropriately.
When I started looking at the results of the best ball drafts we have completed at The IDP Show, I hoped one day IDP would get picked up by a fantasy operator so that we could play for real money. Thankfully, that’s happened with PlayerProfiler’s FastDraft app and its new D-UP contest ($10,000 prize pool with $2,000 to 1st place).
I’m not sure how much from our 25+ rounds drafts will apply to D-UP’s six round format, but it’s still good to look back at 2024 to see what worked and what didn’t. Every season is different, and we now have three years of looking at this format to see what’s changed and what’s been consistently good practice in drafting IDP leagues.
If you’re looking for the past two seasons of results to compare, you can find the 2023 results here and the 2022 results here. I do reference both years quite a bit below.
I’m also happy to report that I don’t have to spend a bunch of time coping in this article this year, as the 2024 IDP Madness winner, NotMartineau, drafted pretty close to the recommendations from the last two articles by starting with four straight defensive linemen, and drafting his first defensive backs in Rounds 9 and 11, before ignoring the position until Round 19. (Job well done, Daniel!)
Player Win Rates and Top 3 Finish Rates
The win rates look pretty close to the 2023 win rates, with a few rounds where defensive line is the best pick, followed by several rounds of linebackers until the projected starters are gone and the position falls off. The main difference is the defensive line to linebacker change occurred about a round earlier in 2024—in the middle of the 3rd round as opposed to the middle of the 4th round.
The top 3 finish rates look almost identical to the win rates and to the 2023 top 3 finish rates, except that the defensive line to linebacker transition occurred closer to the end of Round 5 in 2023 instead of the middle of Round 3 in 2024.
The shape of the defensive back trend line in both charts is pretty much the same as it has been every year: bad early and good late when all of the good defensive linemen and linebackers are gone. This year it is notable that the defensive back trend line is much flatter than past years. We waited longer than we ever have to draft defensive backs, which might contribute to the slightly better performance (or less worse, depending how you look at it) at the beginning of drafts.
When to Draft Defensive Backs
The common theme in these best ball reviews has been that drafting defensive backs early is bad. That isn’t new advice, as it’s pretty much the consensus among anyone who’s played IDP for a while. What we didn’t know before we had the opportunity to review these best ball drafts was just how bad it was to draft defensive backs early.
Each year we have looked at the number of defensive backs teams drafted in however many rounds it took (by ADP) for 24 DBs to be drafted. Drafting two by that point was considered even with the field, one or zero behind the field, and three or more ahead of the field. In 2022, that happened in Round 10; in 2023, that happened in Round 13; and in 2024, the 24th defensive back was drafted in Round 15.
This is the first time that being ahead of the field at DB wasn’t catastrophic—but only just a little bit ahead. In 2022, drafting zero, one, or two defensive backs was all pretty similar, whereas zero was clearly the best in 2023. This past year looks a little bit more like 2022, with a substantial move in how drafters treated defensive backs.
Between this and the win rate charts above, I think we may have finally hit a point where we might be drafting defensive backs in the right range of the draft. I think the takeaway for 2025 is that it’s OK to draft a few players you like as long as the draft room is waiting on the position like they did in 2024.
Linebacker or Defensive Line Early
In the first three rounds, there is pretty much no change from 2023. Drafting defensive line early and often is the best approach.
It is interesting to see that while three defensive linemen and zero linebackers is the best after three rounds, you want two linebackers by the end of Round 6. Drafting four defensive linemen and two linebackers has been good all three years we have looked at the best balls; however, the five and six defensive lineman starts were noticeably bad last year after being good the previous two years.
The ADP between 2023 and 2024 isn’t all that different either. For the most part, there were fewer defensive backs taken in early rounds and a few more defensive linemen, with one less linebacker drafted in the first six rounds.
The early linebackers didn’t even perform better in 2024. Eight players scored more than 225 points, while 13 linebackers in that range did so in 2023. There were, however, fewer busts in 202,4 with five linebackers in the first six rounds scoring less than 150 points, while eight players did so in 2023.
I don’t have a good explanation as to why five and six defensive line starts did so badly in 2024, other than to say that the number of teams with those starts was really small, and an extra finish or two would change the win rates quite a bit.
Conclusions
It’s hard to come up with anything groundbreaking in 2024. We have now seen three years of ADP and results from drafts, and I think we’re still looking at an environment where we want to take defensive linemen early and defensive backs late.
That said, watching the pace with which the draft room takes defensive backs is important, as we may have finally reached a point in these drafts where we are taking the top defensive back options in about the right ranges without giving up too much opportunity cost to take the other positions. As usual, watching the draft board develop is very important in any IDP draft.
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