Weekly Winners 2025 · A Full-Field Study · 186,832 Entries

The Redundant Running Back

How the pick that looked like a mistake won a $20,000 week — and what every entry, every pick, and every week of the contest says about drafting it in 2026.

Download the deck (PDF, free) Tip on Venmo

−69%

0 RBs early

−21%

1 RB

+2%

2 RBs

+86%

3 RBs

+488%

4 RBs

ROI by running backs drafted in rounds 1–4 · all 186,832 entries · field average −9%

186,832

entries analyzed — the full field, not just winners

charts, from the staircase to the round-by-round 2026 map

+13.7%

portfolio ROI with the $20K win removed (field: −9%)

7 of 175

max-entry drafters profitable without their best week

What you're downloading

A 23-slide deck: an 11-slide talk track plus a 12-slide appendix of pull-up charts. Built from a complete crawl of Underdog's Weekly Winners contest — every roster, every weekly result, all 17 weeks.

ROI by round each running back was drafted

Inside

The staircase: ROI climbs monotonically with early RBs — and survives capping every payout at $1,000
Who supplied the spike weeks: why QB ceiling was free in round 9 and TE ceiling was one guy
The position-by-round heatmap: where every pick should go, rounds 1 through 18
The 2026 repricing: what the market fixed, what it overcorrected, and the one elite it forgot
The bar to clear: ~206 wins a week — and byes don't lower it
Correlation: stack your byes, stack your quarterback — 16 of 17 winners did
Every winner's stacks, every slot's floor, and the season in one chart

Pay what it's worth

The deck is free. The data wasn't.

If this wins you a week — or just saves you from a round-3 running back — send a slice. No account, no paywall, honor system.

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