Best Ball Mock Draft: Is True Zero RB Dead In 2025?

One of the (many) reasons I love best ball drafts is because they are essentially the ultimate "mock draft."

When all of the drafters have skin in the game, it results in a serious draft where no one is messing around.

After knocking out a handful of best ball drafts, you will be more than prepared to dominate a home league draft.

In this mock draft diary, I want to highlight an extreme Zero RB team I recently drafted on Underdog.

This team was very unusual for me because I'm generally taking at least one or two RBs in the first seven rounds, but I wanted to experiment with a true Zero RB build and see how it felt.

Spoiler: it didn't feel good.

This is my story …

Zero RB Best Ball Mock Draft Review

Rounds 1-2 (Justin Jefferson, Tyreek Hill)

Welp, we got autodrafted Jefferson at 1.03 because I didn't realize the draft had started and I was in an Uber. Great start! I would have otherwise taken CeeDee Lamb here because Jefferson is routinely falling to the 1.05 and 1.06 spots due to his hamstring injury.

At the end of the second round, Hill is clearly the best WR available, although he seems on the verge of a massive meltdown that could make this pick look absolutely horrendous in hindsight.

I'm really not sure why I decided to write up this draft, but we are pot committed at this point.

Rounds 3-5 (Trey McBride, DJ Moore, Jaylen Waddle)

We finally get to make a click that feels good when McBride falls to me in the third round. Getting an Elite QB or Elite TE is a big part of making a Zero RB squad work, so I'm happy to secure the consensus TE2 here, even if his QB is too short to see him and he never scores TDs.

In the fourth, Moore slid to me at pick 46. I prefer to play the Bears through the rookies (Luther Burden and Colston Loveland), and there is legit concern that Caleb Williams just isn't good, but hey, they got Ben Johnson, right?! RIGHT!?

I normally would take DeVonta Smith at 5.03, but since I had already locked in Hill, I figured I'd set up a Dolphins double stack and select Waddle. If this offense returns to form, then all of the pass catchers are undervalued. If it doesn't, then I found a very creative way to light money on fire. At least I will have gotten a piece of #content out of it.

Rounds 6-8 (Jordan Addison, Emeka Egbuka, Kyler Murray)

I wasn't really tempted to break my RB seal in the sixth or seventh round. This is the portion of the draft board where I like the RBs the least—guys like D'Andre Swift and Brian Robinson Jr. strike me as extremely fragile picks—so I went ahead and pulled the trigger on Addison and Egbuka.

I clicked Addison, knowing full well the suspension was coming (it came!), but he sets up another double stack on this team when paired with Jefferson. If this stack doesn't hit, I'll be sending Thor a Venmo request for this team (don't worry, Thor, it was only a $3 Pomeranian).

Egbuka is an easy click in the seventh once the Packers WRs are off the board. He's been dominating camp and should get off to a fast start with Chris Godwin likely to miss a few games at the start of the season.

In the 8th round, I pulled the trigger on Kyler to stack up with McBride. Rounds 8 and 9 are absolutely disgusting right now, so getting a stacked QB at a nice price is a no-brainer.

Let the record show … I still do not have a running back (Thor, remind me what your Venmo handle is?).

Rounds 9-10 (Jaylen Warren and Tyjae Spears)

Alright, I finally selected two RBs … and neither of them is the starter for their own team.

I will say this, though … I think both Warren and Spears are live for 50/50 touch splits with Kaleb Johnson and Tony Pollard, respectively. They are both solid pass catchers, as well, so the high-value touches should be there. Toss in the contingent value of turning into an RB1 in the event of the injury, and you have some solid Zero RB selections.

Truth serum: The paragraph above is pure copium. I do legitimately like Warren and Spears, but would much prefer them as RB3s and 4s than my No. 1 and No. 2.

Rounds 11-14 (Drake Maye, Trey Benson, Tua Tagovailoa, Hunter Henry)

One of the tricky things about Zero RB (aside from needing to rely on guys like Jaylen Warren to be your RB1) is locking up stacks with your QBs. Because you are done taking WRs after taking six early, it isn't viable to set up back stacks. This puts additional pressure on locking up the QBs who correlate with your early-round receivers.

After getting sniped on J.J. McCarthy, who I planned to take in the 11th, I was running out of options:

McBride - Stacked with Kyler
Jefferson/Addison - McCarthy sniped
Hill/Waddle - I HAVE to get Tua
Moore - I took Spears over Williams because RB2 was more pressing
Egbuka - Baker went one pick before I took Warren

Because a 2-QB room with just Kyler and Tua feels slightly thin to me, I decided to pull the trigger on Maye. He's a QB who rushes, so stacking is slightly less important, and it also opened up an opportunity to stack him with Henry as my TE2, which I did in the 14th.

In the 13th round, I grabbed Benson at pick 142. I love this selection because it fulfills a position of great need (RB) and correlates with my bet on the Cardinals (Kyler/McBride). The fact that the team (and James Conner) continue to hype him up is also a bonus.

At 147, I selected Tua. In hindsight, this was a big mistake for 2 main reasons:

Because I had Hill and Waddle, there was a really good chance that Tua would fall back to me at pick 166.
With only 3 RBs on my team and the RBs flying off the shelves, I should have locked up my RB4 here. Rachaad White, Tyler Allgeier, Jaylen Wright, or Austin Ekeler all would have been great fits for this RB-needy squad.

Idiot.

Rounds 15-18 (Miles Sanders, DJ Giddens, Justice Hill, Trevor Etienne)

At this point, the mission was clear: click green over and over until the end of the draft.

I took Sanders in the 15th. While the buzz on Blue sounds legit and he represents the highest upside option for the Cowboys, I still think Sanders is going to lead this backfield in touches to start the season. In a thin RB room, this type of "chaperone" is nearly mandatory for locking up some early-season points.

Giddens has long been one of my favorite rookie RB handcuffs to select, even if more trendy options are emerging of late.

Hill, like Sanders, is another high-floor chaperone that this team desperately needs. I'm salivating at what his six to seven weekly points could do for this squad.

In the 18th, all of the fun, buzzy rookie RB selections were gone, so I took Etienne, who I do think has a sneaky shot to win the RB2 role in Carolina over Dowdle. He has an underrated Super Model score and is likely the best pass catcher of all the Panthers backs.

Final Review

I hate it. Don't try this at home, folks.

In all seriousness, it is a tricky year to pull off a true Zero RB build. It's also particularly tricky to pull off on the left side of the board when you don't get access to some of the best Zero RB picks in Rounds 5 and 6 on the other side of the board (RJ Harvey, TreVeyon Henderson).

There will be some rooms where I will still execute these types of builds, but it is better to do so with a modified anchor in Rounds 3-5 than a true punt where you wait until Round 9.