Hayden Winks urged drafters to cool off on automatic Week 17 bring-back correlations, noting the edge is tiny to begin with and gets wiped out once the field over-pairs the same combos. He used the early ADP run where almost every Ja’Marr Chase drafter tags Trey McBride in Round 2 (Bengals-Cardinals finals matchup) as an example: when pairing rates spike into double digits, the leverage flips to fading that mini-stack and instead allocating the pick to a different elite. Winks would rather tack on a fourth distinct team stack that pays correlation dividends in Weeks 1–17 than funnel extra capital into an overcrowded one-week bet he still has to survive three playoff rounds to reach.

To build tournament leverage without sacrificing projection, Hayden Winks recommended scrolling past the stale 160-180 ADP tier—players drafted in nearly 100 % of lobbies but rarely difference-makers—and instead ‘reaching’ for names in the 205-212 window who are selected in only ~25 % of drafts. Because late-round market signals are noisy, Winks believes many of those lightly drafted players offer similar weekly spike-week odds yet deliver a huge uniqueness dividend. He cautioned drafters to know the player pool ('you have to know some ball') but argued that cherrypicking two or three of these near-undrafted options each roster is a cleaner edge than swallowing chalky dead-zone assets everyone else owns.

Hayden Winks stressed that the simplest path to profitable best-ball teams is staying tethered to Underdog’s real-money ADP. He pulled four years of Best Ball Mania results and found top-finishing rosters keep nearly every pick within a handful of spots of consensus, while the worst teams habitually reach 10 or more picks ahead of ADP. The penalty is two-fold: first, you forfeit immediate value; second, there is a non-trivial chance the coveted player would have made it back, a probability Winks quantified in a table that shows 50-plus percent availability when a target sits five spots below their ADP. He conceded small strategic reaches for uniqueness later, but labeled chronic early-round reaches as an “EV leak” to eliminate.

Hayden Winks explained that not all quarterback stacks are created equal. Correlation research he published shows QB-WR and QB-TE pairings drive the largest single-game spike-week overlap, but that edge shrinks when the quarterback relies on rushing for fantasy points. Dual-threat passers siphon touchdowns with their legs, so their WR2 or ancillary TE hit rates are lower than those tied to pocket passers who distribute everything through the air. Winks therefore recommends loading two or even three pass catchers around a traditional pocket quarterback, yet slimming stacks to one premier receiver when the signal-caller is a high-volume rusher. Applying the rule tightens lineup correlation while avoiding dead roster spots.

Hayden Winks advised drafters to wait until at least Round 8 before selecting a QB2. He framed it as a pure diminishing-returns problem: lineups can start only one passer, so every premium pick spent on a second quarterback crowds out higher-leverage RB, WR, or TE selections. Using five years of Underdog Best Ball Mania data, Winks noted that teams taking two top-75 quarterbacks post some of the worst advance rates in the lobby. His guideline dovetails with his broader roster-construction rule—early capital should be spread across positions—but he added that the cutoff still holds even when he personally pushes elite QBs up his board early in the offseason. Grabbing QB2 in the Round 8–10 window lets managers capture dependable weekly floor without sacrificing ceiling elsewhere.

To create leverage without sacrificing points, Hayden Winks recommends reaching in the final round for players with ADPs between 205 and 212 rather than selecting the default names in the 160-180 range. His research shows those late flyers are drafted in roughly 25 percent of entries, meaning a single hit can place your roster in a much smaller duplication bucket during the finals, while the projection gap versus the ubiquitous 18th-round picks is minimal. The tactic sidesteps the worst of ADP tautology and gains uniqueness equity at virtually no cost.

Hayden Winks explained that QB-WR and QB-TE combinations are the strongest single-game correlations, but the quality of the quarterback matters. Pocket passers funnel more fantasy production through the air, allowing multiple teammates to post ceiling weeks together, so Winks likes building two- and three-pass-catcher stacks around them. With dual-threat QBs such as Lamar Jackson, the rushing share suppresses ancillary receiver upside, making oversized stacks unnecessary. His advice: load up on secondary receivers and tight ends with high-volume pocket arms, but trim the stack when the quarterback generates a large chunk of points on the ground.

Hayden Winks urged drafters to stick close to Underdog ADP, noting that teams with multiple selections made 10 or more spots ahead of ADP were the worst performers in historical data. Because the default draft queue pushes value downward, players slipping eight-plus spots below ADP deliver free closing-line value, whereas reaching that same distance both forfeits value and ignores the strong probability—quantified in Winks’ availability table—that the player would have lasted to the next pick. The takeaway: let the room gift-wrap falls and avoid self-inflicted wounds by jumping the queue unnecessarily.

Hayden Winks advised waiting until at least Round 8 to add a QB2. His roster-construction study across millions of Underdog entries showed that teams grabbing a second passer earlier squander equity: only one quarterback can log fantasy points each week, so early duplicative capital generates steep diminishing returns. Elite-QB builds that resisted the urge to take a second arm until Round 8 or later posted the highest advance rates, while early-QB2 teams consistently lagged because they cannibalized starter slots that could have gone to higher-ceiling RB, WR or TE picks.

Hayden Winks said he rarely employs full Zero RB builds in today’s Underdog lobbies because current ADP is already "anti-RB." Passing on the position entirely in the opening six rounds creates needless fragility: the late-round pool is short on three-down workloads, so securing at least one anchor back before Round 6 costs very little opportunity. Looking at the first four Best Ball Mania tournaments, Winks found that teams leaving the early rounds without a single running back posted noticeably lower advance rates than Hero-RB or balanced starts. He recommends capping those more balanced builds at five total backs to avoid wasting picks.