What is Upside Score?
One number, 0 to 100, that measures pure upside — how high you can go, not how safe you are. Higher is better; 50 is average. There are two: a Player Upside Score for every player, and a Team Upside Score for every roster you draft.
They build on each other. A player's score rates his ceiling — how big his best weeks get. A team's score starts with the upside of its players, then adds three things one player can't have on his own: how the roster is built, the value you drafted at, and how it scores in the fantasy playoffs.
Why you can trust it: both are backed by five years of Best Ball Mania research and thousands of simulated seasons — real projections, real historical swings, real matchups — so your score reflects what tends to happen across many outcomes, not one lucky guess.
1Player Upside Score, illustrated
Take Tee Higgins, a wide receiver going around pick 35. His Player Upside Score is 95 out of 100 — near the top of the position. Here's what drives it.
95/100
Tee Higgins
CIN · WR · ADP 35 · Player Upside Score
Ceiling
What is it? How high his best weeks get.
How is it calculated? His real weekly scores, reduced to a single-week ceiling.
What does it mean? He tops out around 18.3 points in a big week — a high individual peak.
Spike weeks
What is it? How many league-winning weeks he posts in a year.
How is it calculated? Counting each week he clears the winning-week bar (20 points for a WR).
What does it mean? About 2.3 league-winning weeks a season — repeated shots at the kind of score that swings a tournament.
Upside swing
What is it? How far above his own average he spikes — the good surprises only. Spike weeks count how often; this counts how big.
How is it calculated? His weekly scores, measuring only the swings above his own average.
What does it mean? His scores swing well above his own baseline — a fat top end, which is where upside lives.
2Team Upside Score, illustrated
Now a whole roster — a real team with a Team Upside Score of 93 (50 = average). It starts with the combined Player Upside Score of everyone on the roster (each bar is a player's ceiling):
RosterCeiling Score
QB · 3
RB · 5
WR · 7
Jaxon Smith-Njigba SEA
339
TE · 3
Then it adds three things a single player can't have on his own:
Built like a winner
What is it? How closely the roster's shape matches proven Best Ball Mania winners.
How is it calculated? Five years of tournament results on roster construction, as a small bonus or penalty.
What does it mean? This team's 3/5/7/3 build fits the shape of proven winners (+1.0).
Draft value
What is it? Whether you drafted players below their market price.
How is it calculated? Each pick's slot vs its closing Underdog ADP, averaged across the roster.
What does it mean? It landed its players at a discount (+2.3) — cheaper than where the market closed.
Winning the playoffs
What is it? Expected points in Weeks 15–17, where the prize money is.
How is it calculated? Simulated playoff weeks on the real 2026 NFL schedule, so two players in the same game rise together.
What does it mean? About 400 points across the three deciding weeks — strong where it counts most.
The research behind the formula
Data: player scoring 2025 (nflverse, with 2024 fallback) · volatility & correlations 2021–2025 · projections (Fantasy Points) · live Underdog ADP · 2026 NFL schedule (NFL.com). Scores come from thousands of simulated seasons.