DFS Fantasy Football: Tips For Success
Today, Joe Matz and myself will continue our “Introduction to DFS” article series by talking about DFS Fantasy Football Tips for Success!
Daily Fantasy Football is a lot like another game I love to play, Poker. It’s a combination of skills and playing the odds that lead to success more times than not. However, like with Poker, there are plenty of times you will make the right decisions, yet will not find success because luck does play a big part in winning or losing at Daily Fantasy whether we want to admit it or not.
In the same way, luck can decide a hand in a tournament of Poker. It is no different than someone being rewarded for calling an all-in with a gutshot straight draw on the turn and proceeding to catch 1 of the 3 cards in the entire deck to win that hand. I will give you a similar example in daily fantasy. In Week 9 of this past season, I entered a Captain’s Mode Entry on DraftKings for the Thursday night game between the Colts vs The Jets. I had Jonathan Taylor as my captain (he had 172 yards and 2 TDs), Elijah Moore (7 receptions 84 yards and 2 TDs), Ty Johnson (61 total yards and a TD), Nyheim Hines (108 total yards and a TD), and Ryan Griffin (4 catches 28 yards and a TD). I was in first place and winning $1,000 with only 9 minutes left in the game only to fall to a tie for 4th by the time it was over. All that because there were 3 people who not only selected Josh Johnson QB in their lineup but had him as their captain. He threw for 300 yards and 3 scores.
My anger of losing this way stemmed from the fact Johnson was not even slated to play, and if not for Mike White’s injury in the first half, he would have never seen the field. So just like the guy you wanna cuss on a poker table for calling an all-in drawing 3 cards on the river, I am still not over the fact 3 people started and used as their Captain a QB who was not scheduled to play. Luck can and will play a huge part in Daily Fantasy, but there are rules/tips/suggestions that will lead to you having success constantly in Daily Fantasy as well.
Below, Joe and I will go over some of those rules we try to follow. If you follow these tips, you will have a better chance to do well in your daily fantasy lineups.
DFS Fantasy Football Tips for Success
- Don’t follow the crowd: Searching for players that are low owned, especially in large entries, can greatly enhance your chances of winning money. There are several paid sites that offer % of lineups a player will use in projections. If you have access to these sites, go through the list of players with a low projectected usage in lineups and select the guys you expect to do well from that list. It is an easy way to get a leg up on your competition. A tip if you do not have access to the lineup usage projection numbers is to look for guys who had a bad previous game or games in recent weeks. Users are quick to abandon ship on players who have burned them the week before even if they’ve been successful more weeks than not leading to that bad performance.
- Don’t be contrarian just for the sake of it: Having high priced guys in your lineup like Mahomes, J Taylor, or Kupp led to success many weeks this past season for Joe and I despite the fact they were high priced and owned in a high percentage of lineups. An example is in Week 7 when the Browns were going to be without star running back Nick Chubb. They were also missing starting Quarterback Baker Mayfield. Many stayed away from D’Ernest Johnson despite the fact that Chubb and Kareem Hunt were out. With the Browns missing 3 key players to their offense it didn’t take a brain surgeon to realize Johnson was going to be heavily involved in the offensive game plan. Despite this and the fact he was a very low priced option at running back, many stayed away worried that Johnson would be very high owned. Luckily, I was not one of those people. Playing Johnson in all my full slate lineups at running back. He went on to score 27.8 fantasy points that week. That kind of performance from a starter in the 4K range is a daily fantasy owner’s dream. Don’t overthink certain plays, or I should say don’t be contrarian just to be contrarian.
- Pick players from games that you think are going to be high scoring games: Games with more yardage, points, etc. are going to provide more fantasy points. A good way to determine which games will have the most points scored. Reference Vegas’s over/under number for all games and go from there. To this day the single biggest payday I’ve had in a DraftKings entry was when I went heavy on Rams and Chiefs players in their 2018 54-51 classic. In that game, I used 5 of my 8 offensive positions in my lineup from that 1 game. My triple stack of Mahomes/Kelce/Hill paired with Everett and Reynolds on the other side combined for 12 Touchdowns. Ironically, the person who won that entry had 6 players from that game. Every once in a while there is an offensive matchup too juicy to worry about playing too many players from one game. The Raiders vs Chargers Week 18 matchup this season being another example of that.
- Consider Game Scripts: This will work for weekly entries but is especially true in Captains Lineups that are for one particular game. For instance, lead backs will usually do better in games their team leads throughout, whereas a third down or pass catching back would benefit in games where they are down throughout. From the same philosophy I love trying to find games that will be one sided and taking Quarterbacks/Wide Receivers/Pass Catching Tight Ends in those games. Garbage time points (points by the team losing after the game is out of hand, normally when the defense laxes because of the situation) count just as much as any other fantasy points in a game. We will go over this in detail when Joe and I pick our Captain Lineup for the Super Bowl Friday on The Daily Fix.
- Look for players with favorable matchups, particularly the second half of the season once there is a good sample size: Joe and I picked on the Detroit Lions run D most of the 2021 season. Through 10 games they had given up 100+ yards to a running back in 5 of 10 games while giving up 15 TDs to running backs on the ground or through the air in that same span. Unless a running back was priced entirely too high, we used the starting running back for the Lions opponents in at least one of our lineups.
- Look at recent trends: I spoke above about looking for favorable matchups, particular once there is a big enough sample size. However, whether it’s early in the season and there isn’t a big sample size or due to a variable (injury/player returning from injury/or a specific unit is playing well or poorly) there are trends that you can exploit. An example was the NY Jets early in the NFL season constantly giving up touchdowns to Running Backs. In their first 4 games running backs were averaging 175 total yards per game vs them combined with 30 receptions and 5 TDs. In Week 5, they were facing my Atlanta Falcons who had been one of the worst run offenses in the NFL. I played a Cordelle Patterson ($5900) and Mike Davis ($5100) stack because of the way the Jets D had been trending. I was rewarded by them scoring a combined 32.5 points and for only $11,000 of my lineup. No different than gambling trends, even if it’s a recent one. You can gain advantage by using these trends to your advantage when selecting your lineup.
- Trust your gut: This is particularly for those individuals who watch a lot of NFL football. Just because a player doesn’t have the best matchup or has not been fantasy relevant lately shouldn’t prevent you from putting them in your lineup if your gut or instincts are saying otherwise. An example for me was the Cowboys vs Raiders game on Thanksgiving this year. The Raiders had traded for DeSean Jackson a few weeks earlier and the Henry Ruggs tragedy had just occurred. I remember being mocked when I shared my Thanksgiving only lineups and they all included DeSean Jackson by my friends. In Jackson’s two previous games with the Raiders he had a combined 2 touches for 36 yards, but I thought about how Jackson was notorious for playing well in prime time or big games. Not to mention he tormented the Cowboys in his time in Philadelphia. Jackson was extremely cheap for a 3 game slate and I rolled with him anyways. He rewarded me with 3 receptions for 102 yards and a TD. More importantly, I received 22.2 fantasy points from a guy in the $3k dollar price range. Translation: I had the laugh last as I cashed in every one of those lineups.
- Use your knowledge of your local team to your advantage: I would assume most people who play any form of fantasy football do so because they enjoy watching football and therefore have a favorite team. Use your insight and knowledge you have of your favorite team to your advantage. For example, my cohost Joe Matz is a big Giants fan. Due to a combination of injuries and lack of talent he was well aware of the offensive struggles of his team, particularly down the stretch. Over the last 7 weeks, we constantly recommended the Giants opponents defense as a must play in our picks, even if it was against a bad defensive unit. Case in point the final 4 weeks of the season where the Giants offense scored a combined 20 points. In those games the defenses they played scored a combined 72 points and were in the Top 3 in scoring for that position in each of those weeks.