In this week's P.O. Box:

While seemingly every edge has been zapped from salary cap DFS, best ball is still in its infancy as a game type.

This means that there are still plenty of edges to uncover, and even when they feel like they’ve gone mainstream—like Week 17 correlation and Zero RB—they are often confined to only a small subset of sicko drafters and zealots.

This dynamic makes best ball ripe for exploration. The first ever Best Ball Data Bowl yielded all kinds of new discoveries and the data envelope is constantly getting pushed.

My co-host on LOLz, Brian Hooper, recently tried to predict the best ball meta for 2024 drafts—scrolling the eff down.

I was initially surprised to hear this take. The Badge Bros popularized this strategy for the daily contests on Underdog Fantasy and I had used it to win $10,000 in a Week 9 Battle Royale contest.

But I was skeptical how applicable it could be to season-long best ball dynamics where the long drafting windows and 17-game sample size complicated the thesis.

But after digging in, I realized I was wrong.

If correctly applied, “scrolling the eff down” can be another powerful lever to pull in these massive contests that are continually getting harder to win.

I’m very mad that I didn’t lean into this more last year during BBM$, when there were painfully obvious, late-breaking targets at a massive ownership discount:

In the same way the Showdown DFS format helped drive home the importance of avoiding duplication and prioritizing uniqueness, the large sample of Battle Royale contests on Underdog have provided us with similarly compelling reasons to value uniqueness in season-long best ball contests.

In my new video on the Deposit Kingdom Channel (please subscribe while you are at it, I’ll be dropping a lot more videos over there this summer), I outline how we can apply these lessons from both salary cap DFS and Battle Royales to competing for first place in tournaments like Best Ball Mania and The Puppy:

I even made a #thread about it, so you know I mean business.

Even though Jon would prefer you pay full price for the new Scroll The Eff Down merch, PO Box readers can get 10% off with promo code POBOX:

☕ Best Ball Breakfast: Big Board Drafts. Hopped in two Big Board drafts right as Free Agency got underway on Monday. Topics discussed: early TE vs late TE, when you should care about ADP, Jordan Addison vs Jayden Reed, and why Dylan Laube is low-key a stud.

📈 The Biggest Post-FA Risers/Fallers On Underdog. Highlighted all of the players screaming up and falling down draft boards and whether I’m still buying or not.

☣ DFS Data Stolen, Tom Dwan B.S., & 2024 Best Ball Meta. On this week’s LOLZ, we discuss Stokastic’s quest to shutdown sites aggregating their projections, the maddening Tom Dwan interview about his debts, scroll the eff down strat, and the updates coming to Bric’s Draft Caddy tool.

🚢 The Most Impactful Free Agency Moves For Fantasy. The crew snake draft the top moves from free agency. Topics discussed during the 6-round draft: a 180-shift in Atlanta, big dominoes falling in Pittsburgh, a massive game of RB musical chairs, and under-the-radar signings.

🏆 Fantasy Life roundup. Wrote about a few moves from the start of FA—including the Broncos shipping Jeudy to Cleveland—and recapped the surprising Calvin Ridley move. Check out our Free Agent tracker for a full rundown of a busy week.

💪 The Swolecast Recaps Free Agency. The one where we close your eyes and name RBs who changed teams.

⏰ Free Agency Fallout In The Big Board. Planted flags and chased guys up the draft board with the Badge Bros.

Book #4 for March (COMPLETE): The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

I wrapped up this up on Wednesday and I was not prepared for the ending. Not in a “surprise twist” kind of way, but just with how hard I was hit by the gruesome nature of Holmes’ final murders. Light spoilers ahead of if you’re not finished with this yet…

For much of the book, it’s easy to view the Holmes’ story through an entertaining and almost whimsical lens (“Come, Watson! The game is afoot!”). Larson repeatedly tells us what a likable figure he is and how he could charm the pants off anyone he met. This results in Holmes initially coming across more like a clever conman/pick-up artist and less like an evil murderer.

But when Detective Geyer finally tracks down the Pietzel children in that Toronto basement and we learn the exact sequence of events that led to their death, my stomach turned and I felt nauseous. Maybe becoming a Dad has made me soft, but I couldn’t even read the details word-for-word and quickly skimmed through it.

Graham asked Mrs. Pitezel whether she had seen the children since the time in 1894 when Holmes took them away. She answered in a voice almost too soft to hear, “I saw them at Toronto in the morgue, side by side.”

This dude literally went to the grave manipulating people to forget what an awful piece of shit he was:

Shortly before ten A.M. on May 7, 1896, after a breakfast of boiled eggs, dry toast, and coffee, Holmes was escorted to the gallows at Moyamensing Prison. This was a difficult moment for his guards. They liked Holmes. They knew he was a killer, but he was a charming killer.

I will have a much different lasting impression of Holmes.

Book #5 for March (10%): Recursion by Blake Crouch

Off to the races here and already hooked.

Btw, I hope to announce the April selections next week.

Book #1 (COMPLETE): Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results by Shane Parris

Book #2 for February (COMPLETE): Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Book #3 for February (COMPLETE): Gambler Secrets from a Life at Risk by Billy Walters

We got one show on tap this weekend for Youtube Members:

The one and only Cooterdoodle joins me on After Dark to talk ball, parenting, Wordle, and being Rashid Shaheed’s biggest fan. Become a YT member to watch live (top 2 tiers).

Need more newslettering? Check out the Fantasy Life newsletter I write regularly: