How To Avoid Elimination

In this week's P.O. Box:

This week I released a new video on the Deposit Kingdom channel and it was the most fun I’ve had working on one in a long time.

It’s all about The Eliminator contest on Underdog—a wild new best ball tournament where each week half the field gets eliminated from contention until three teams battle it out in Week 17 for the $200,000 top prize.

The twist this year, however, is that from Weeks 2-16 every matchup is head-to-head, mano-a-mano. Instead of being in a pod with a bunch of other teams, your squads will be squaring off vs. a single opponent.

That means two very fun things:

• The prizes nearly double each week from Week 4 until Week 17

• Every week provides a clean H2H sweat

It’s as if a massive best ball tournament collided with your 12-person home league with high school buddies.

Like a lot of drafters, I generally tend to play most of my volume in the traditional 17-round contests, like Best Ball Mania VI. It’s comfy to draft in the same style format over-and-over, but it can also grow stale.

Underdog has done an awesome job innovating with various tournament structures, but it can take some time for them to really catch on—especially if there isn’t much strategy content out there to help point people in the right direction of how to attack the contest.

That’s exactly how I felt with The Eliminator. Very cool idea, but I had no idea where to begin. Then a nice fellow named Christopher Davis sent me a DM in late May about some simulations he had been messing with for the contest:

We went back-and-forth for a month, testing new ideas and reviewing teams across his 5k sims. In doing so, we stumbled upon some super cool insights, including:

• Which weeks to optimize for (spoiler alert: Week 17 doesn’t matter in this one)

• Roster construction tips

• How much to stack

• A bye week cheat code that takes advantage of the contest’s unique format

This video does not exist without Chris’ work, so big s/o to Chris (who assured me there was nothing else I could link to or promote for him) for sharing his research with me so I could share it with everyone else.

Anyways, early feedback has been tremendous:

Whether you are a grizzled best ball vet or just intrigued by the format, I think you’ll really dig the video and the contest. Check it out and let me know what you think:

It’s funny that the same week I released the Eliminator video, Fantasy Life launched their 2025 Guillotine leagues. It’s the managed league version of The Eliminator contest and it has similarly become my favorite way to play redraft:

I plan to host a few different leagues this year after having a ton of fun streaming one with the Deposit Kingdom last year.

🙏 PATRICK LAIRD REVEALS HIS POST-NFL PLANS. Davis and I are joined by Patrick Laird for our semi-annual podcast check-in. We discuss what he’s up to these days, sports betting controversies, his favorite rookie RBs, and more.

🤓 FANTASY LIFE: Super Deep Rookie RB Sleepers To Target In 2025 Best Ball. There are so many intriguing rookie RB sleepers available at the end of drafts, so I did a deep dive on 12 of them and shared whether I thought they were targets or fades right now.

I regularly write the Fantasy Life Newsletter. Get it in your inbox free every am:

☕️ BEST BALL BREAKFAST: I Battled The WR Bros With High T, RB-Heavy Teams. Also, somehow a discussion on Pokey Reese and moisture-wicking underwear.

🎉 BEST BALL BASH + RANDOMIZER: A QB Bro & A TE Bro Teach Me Their ways. Elite QB and milk chugging are involved.

⏰ OFF & ON THE CLOCK: Cryptic Coachspeak & Huge Values In A BBMVI Draft. Pretty sick team, ngl.

💪 THE SWOLECAST: A Surprise Guest Gets Glazed By The Host. Kitchen was on his best behavior.

📈 ADP CHASING: The Market Is Overreacting To These Risers/Fallers. Yes, there was somehow 25 minutes on the Steelers.

📒 NOTE: No Ship Chasing or LOLZ this week. Did a little overnight trip to NYC.

🥃 BEST BALL AFTER DARK: SHAIDYADVICE (Sat. 8pm ET). One of the best DFS players of all time joins me to discuss last week’s newsletter topic (improving/innovating), developing tools for LegUp, and more.

For After Dark shows, you can become a YT member for access or subscribe on Spotify for a private RSS feed (I post the video/audio there directly after the show).

☁️ Book #5 for June (COMPLETED): Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

As you could tell from my previous dispatches, I lost steam with this book. I think I had high expectations for sci-fi heading into it and then got frustrated with all of the disparate storylines.

Despite it feeling like more of a slog than I hoped, I did enjoy some of themes about libraries and reading. This book emphasizes the importance of storytelling in our lives and its ability to spark imagination and dream bigger.

I’ve been experiencing that joy lately reading to April. She has a shockingly good attention span for reading books. I love watching her eyes light up and seeing the gears turn in her head as I read her stories.

🚶 Book #6 for July: Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir by Craig Mod.

A transformative 300-mile walk along Japan’s ancient pilgrimage routes and through depopulating villages inspires a heartrending remembrance of a long-lost friend, documented in poignant, imaginative prose and remarkable photography.

I’ve now listened to a few podcast appearances featuring Craig and find him to be a very interesting individual. He’s a former Silicon Valley bro who uprooted to Japan and has since become a folk hero thanks to his notoriously long walking expeditions.

This description is just so perfectly up my alley that I can’t resist selecting it:

Things Become Other Things blends memoir and travel writing at their best, transporting readers to an otherwise inaccessible Japan, one made visible only through Mod’s unique bicultural lens.

🐊 Book #4 for May (COMPLETED): Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades by Rebecca Renner
🍌 Book #3 for April (COMPLETED): The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen
💉 Book #2 for March (FINISHED): Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe.
🐃 Book #1 for February (FINISHED): The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry

Got a question for me? Reply to this e-mail and I’ll get back to you…