The Sims are in the Sidekick
One of the cool things about having ShaidyAdvice on the LegUp team is that we tackle some pretty complicated math problems.
Namely, we could simulate an entire season of NFL best ball. So... that's what we did.
We simmed the 2025 best ball season.
This is something we've been working on for over a year.
To achieve this, we overhauled the Legendary Upside ranking process this offseason, creating ranges of outcomes for every player in the draft pool, in the process quantifying front-weighted vs. back-weighted production profiles. We accounted for injury, bench, and suspension risk, as well as a number of other factors. Then, we (Shaidy) created week-by-week simulations, accounting for the effects of both in-game and season-long correlation. The end result is a set of sims that predict exactly how many points every relevant NFL player will score in each week of the season.
The Sims are in the Sidekick
Below, I'll dive into the details of how the Sidekick now works, how this upgrade allows us to support new features and formats, and what we can learn from the sims about the 2025 draft environment.
But I don't want to bury the lede. And the top line takeaway here is that the Sidekick's player recommendations are now sim-driven.
More Formats, More Dialed-In Recommendations
As detailed below, Sidekick's best ball recommendations have been upgraded. But that's not all. It also supports more formats.
Wish you could use Sidekick in formats like Eliminator? Sprint, Marathon, Weekly Winners, Superflex? Well... now you can.
How about dialing in recommendations specifically for contest structure, tailoring recommendations to a tournament's exact advance structure and final size?
For example, DraftKings' $20 Best Ball Millionaire has a 1-of-12 / 1-of-12 playoff structure (Weeks 15 / 16), followed by a 1,021-team final. The $555 has a 2-of-8 / 1-of-8 playoff structure with a 52-team final.
This should be taken into account when building out teams, right?
The Sidekick now accounts for final size and advance structure.
Your Sidekick Has Been Upgraded
If you are an existing Sidekick subscriber, utilizing the new features and functionality is as simple as entering a draft.
The sims upgrade has been included in your existing Sidekick subscription at no additional cost.
Free Trial
If you're not a Sidekick subscriber... we would like you to consider changing that.
To help with that, we're currently offering a 5-Day trial on Yearly Sidekick tier subscriptions.
- Current LegUp subscribers:
- Send an email to: legendaryupside@gmaill.com
- Pat will set you up with a free trial.
- Send an email to: legendaryupside@gmaill.com
- New subscribers:
- You can start your free trial by signing up for either the yearly or monthly Sidekick tier plan.
As much as I'm excited to tell you about the details of the upgraded Sidekick... nothing beats trying it out for yourself.
Installation and Features
Installing the Sidekick is very easy; simply follow this link to get started:
Sackreligious
Here's a short video explaining the installation process and highlighting some key features
Building Better Teams
Ok, let's dive into the details on the new sim-driven Sidekick.
First, let's discuss what this new process enables the Sidekick to do that it couldn't do before.
Fundamentally, now that we have realistic scoring distributions in hand for every week and every player in the pool, we are able to start looking at the question we care about most... how do we build better teams?
Coherent Team Building
One weakness of every available best ball tool, before now, is that player recommendations weren't truly impacted by who you've already drafted.
Sure, the Sidekick accounted for correlation. But neither Brian Thomas nor Travis Hunter is 'Jaguars WR', they are... Brian Thomas and Travis Hunter. They are both exciting plays, but are also very different plays in critical ways.
We can now account for that, treating players differently based on their ranges of outcomes and which weeks of the season they are likely to score the most points.
If you've drafted with the Sidekick in the past... I know you have some teams with too many rookies on them. I do too. Rookies provide crucial and often underpriced late-season upside. As a wise man once said, Week 17 is all that matters.
And, in general, the normal LegUp rankings tend to be hot on rookies; they tend to be targets.
But we can't overload our teams with back-weighted production. We still have to get to the dance. The new sim-driven recommendations will do a much better job of balancing Week 17 upside with sufficient advance-rate firepower.
Likewise, if you utilized custom rankings with the Sidekick that tend to have more of a lean toward veterans, you likely built some teams that were underpowered in the best ball playoffs.
Advance rate screenshots are cool.
Tournament-winning screenshots are better.
The nature of this rankings bias depends on the ranking set, but the issue is inherent to dynamic rankings... unless you're using a sim-driven approach.
With the addition of sims, the Sidekick isn't just accounting for surface-level information (e.g., team or position). It's now able to factor in the potential scoring distributions for the players already on your team and how that base of points fits with the players still available to you as the draft progresses.
The Sidekick is then able to recommend the players most likely to help you win the tournament.
Understanding the Draft Landscape
Player archetypes aren't the only nuances we can account for now.
Before now, we were limited to backward-looking analysis. What worked in past seasons? How do we apply that to the current season, while also adjusting for a new player pool and new prices?
As ADP prices have fluctuated significantly from season to season, and with WR prices reaching unprecedented highs both this season and last, this type of analysis has become increasingly challenging.
By contrast, simulating an NFL season is a forward-looking exercise. We won't be able to perfectly predict the season. But the information this analysis provides is directly related to the current player pool at current prices.
We're not looking at what would have worked; we're predicting what will work, given this year's unique draft landscape.
What Can I Get Later?
As I recently outlined in my early summer draft plan, I think it's vital to understand how the available options in a given round compare to the positional options available later in the draft... in every round. This is because the old ADP rules have been scrambled by recent WR pricing that is truly, by fantasy football standards, revolutionary.
The Sidekick is now able to help make sense of the new ADP landscape.
In addition to giving the Sidekick realistic week-by-week scores for every relevant player, we've used the ADP of a given tournament to tell it which players you are likely to be able to draft later.
The Sidekick now knows what you can get later.
This allows us to get a little weird.
One of the limitations of the original Sidekick is that we were limited in terms of which branches of the game tree we could comfortably explore. Are there +EV builds that truly punt WR4? Probably. Are you going to get any with the original Sidekick? No.
We built the Sidekick to help keep drafts on the rails. If exploring particular structures was likely to do more harm than good... you were going to need to venture down those dimly lit paths at your own discretion.
But Shaidy just turned the mother fucking lights on.
With the entire season simulated, we can confidently explore builds we've never touched before. And you know what? There's a very good chance those builds wouldn't have worked if we'd tried them in the past.
That's because we're not building for the past.
We're building for this year.
We're building to win this year.
Putting Rules of Thumb to Bed
Let's think through an example.
Let's say it's the early 6th round.
So far, you've drafted:
- Nico Collins
- Brian Thomas
- Jaxon Smith-Njigba
- Breece Hall
- Chuba Hubbard
You're now deciding between Chris Godwin and TreVeyon Henderson. Godwin would be your WR4. Henderson would be your RB3. Structurally, you can justify either pick.
Godwin and Henderson are back-to-back in ADP, and the LegUp rankings have them two picks apart. We're ahead of ADP on both.
Kind of a coin flip situation... right?
Maybe not.
Now powered by sims, the Sidekick is more likely to push you to Henderson in this situation.
Henderson is part of an RB tier that is likely to be wiped out by the time you pick again in the late 7th round. Meanwhile, Godwin doesn't look that different than the WRs available in the late 7th—especially given the immediate production we can expect from your top three WRs, which again, the Sidekick will be weighing.
The Sidekick wouldn't be recommending Henderson over Godwin because of a rule of thumb.
It doesn't matter that, in the past, it's generally been a good idea to take your WR4 before your RB3.
Instead, the Sidekick is examining Henderson's and Godwin's projected point totals in every week, and comparing both distributions to what is available later in the draft at every position and what is already on your team.
Every draft is a new puzzle. The Sidekick is built to help you solve it.
It's Better to Punt Than Capitulate
As another example, suppose you're in Round 11... but you only have four WRs.
The original Sidekick would likely nudge you toward a WR. Because, as a rule of thumb, it's a good idea to build out WR depth before the position gets wiped out.
But what if WR has already been wiped out?
What if you're in a room full a WR slappies who have been snapping up every available WR with a pulse since the draft began?
These drafters have created some serious values at RB, QB, and TE. Are you supposed to pass on those simply to service the gods of structure?
In that type of setup, the sim-driven Sidekick won't nudge you to WR. If anything, it will think taking a WR is kind of... crazy.
The sim-driven Sidekick's view is roughly—if your available WR options aren't much different from guys available in the final rounds, you're not going to "fix" your team by forcing a WR5.
That's a spot where the sims are likely to steer you to the best player available.
If structural "rules" are leading you to a bad pick... throw out the rulebook.
Adapting to New Formats
At this point, it's probably helpful to note what we did not tell the Sidekick.
As part of shifting to a sims-driven process, we did not tell the Sidekick how to draft.
We did not demand stacks.
We did not ask for bring-backs.
We did not say what structures were good or bad.
We did not insist on when to take three QBs or when to stop at two.
We didn't... tell the sims-driven Sidekick very much at all.
The upgraded Sidekick has the following information:
- Realistic week-by-week fantasy scores for every relevant player.
- The contest details for the specific tournament you've entered (ADP, scoring, prize structure, format).
That's it.
This simplicity allows us to support a variety of formats, including contests like Eliminator, and is what allows us to dial in recommendations to specific tournament structures (e.g., DK's $20 vs. DK's 555).
Would you like a draft overlay that is able to dial in recommendations based on the final size of a contest?
Good news... the Sidekick is now able to do that.
What the Sidekick Doesn't Do
With a ton of new features now online, I want to make sure we cover what the Sidekick does not do.
First and foremost, the Sidekick does not have any information about your specific draft room other than who you've drafted, and which players are gone vs. which are available. And although it knows which players are no longer available... it doesn't know which opponent selected them.
So, if there is a team that looks like this...
... the Sidekick does not know that.
If I were in a draft room with a team like this, I'd be a lot less inclined to push QB.
Or, to use a less extreme example...
Let's say I were drafting a Trey McBride team out of the 1.03, with the drafter at 1.01 having Joe Burrow and the drafter at 1.02 having Jalen Hurts. I'd be inclined to judge those opponents as less likely to select my stacked Kyler Murray at the end of Round 8. And so, I'd probably push Kyler around the turn, with the plan to take him at the 9.03. Murray might be the best pick for my team in Round 8... but I can squeeze more value out of the room by pushing him there.
By contrast, I'd be much less likely to push Murray if neither of the drafters in 1.01 and 1.02 had taken a QB and one of them had Marvin Harrison Jr.
Obviously, as drafters, we can get even more nuanced with this type of draft room planning.
When considering positional runs, dictating the turns, or pushing for more ADP value, you're going to add a lot more value than you'd get by simply following the top recommendation in the Sidekick every time.
LegUp's range-of-outcomes inputs also drive the Sidekick's sim-driven recommendations. So, if you're – to use a randomly selected example – not a fan of Drake Maye, you may want to take less Maye than the top recommendation would suggest.
This is one of the advantages of having a list of +EV picks available to you in the Sidekick.
There are multiple good picks in virtually every round of every draft.
Structural Lessons from the Sims
We're already seeing some somewhat surprising recommendations from the sims, which aren't tied to conventional wisdom, just the math of when we expect players to score points. I'm planning an article on some of the high-level takeaways from the current landscape.
For now, though, it's safe to say that the sims are a fan of 3QB builds. This isn't to say that you'll be flooded with QB3 recommendations in every draft. But it does appear very likely that we've been undervaluing both the regular season and playoff value of a third QB in best ball. This appears to be true even on teams with elite QBs.
In part, third QBs likely represent safer investments in June/early-July than a lot of the other late-round options.
Even after signing with the Steelers, Aaron Rodgers can be had in the final three rounds. He might be a lot of things... but he won't be a Week 17 zero unless things go completely off the rails in Pittsburgh. Many other late-round picks are more likely than not to be Week 17 zeroes, which really hurts in a format with locked rosters.
One of the cool things about the sims is that I can only tell you that 3QB builds look undervalued right now. If prices change and/or more FLEX targets become available later in the summer, we could see 2QBs as a dominant structure.
Additional Perks and Features
In the coming weeks, I hope to announce some additional minor upgrades to the Sidekick, including the ability to use our sims to view the strength of your previously drafted teams.
I also expect to announce a new perk for Sidekick subscribers (if you're already subscribed, don't worry, this perk isn't just for new subscribers).
With the sims tested and ready to go we wanted to get them in your hands without any further delay.
Drafting is more fun with a Sidekick.
Pat Kerrane
