NFL DraftKings Daily Fantasy Tips
Daily Fantasy Opinion by Ethan Irish
Week one of the 2022-23 NFL season is upon us which means real daily fantasy is back, not the fake MLB daily fantasy. Some people like it but it's just not for me. Over my last three seasons of playing daily fantasy I have learned a lot about what is needed in order to give me the best chance to succeed and I am going to share a few pieces of my process in creating a good GPP lineup.
I will not be going over showdowns, double-ups, or other cash game strategies because I do not play those contests very often.
TIP #1:
Pick Your Tournament
Before you get into just throwing players into a lineup and trying to maximize your salary cap (don't feel like you have to do that), you are going to want to find a tournament that best suits your bankroll. When looking at tournaments, I know the millionaire maker contests are initially intriguing but the top 10 lineups win 29% of the money. To be part of that group you have to be in the top 0.000837% of all entries, it just isn't likely so try to avoid that tournament unless you get a free entry or you can actually max out your entries with 150.
I like to join the 20 max entry and 3 max entry pools. Single entry contests are fine (I play them) you just have to be a little riskier with the players you pick because most people focus on the same games for their player set. This means the chances of getting the same lineup as someone else is more likely and no one likes splitting their winnings. I usually do a 20 entry tournament, a 3 entry tournament, and a single entry tournament. So about 24 lineups a week. The tournament names are usually the same each and every week so if you don't have a lot of funds play the 20 entry quarter juke box, if you do play the 3 entry goal line tournament. This part of the process is important but it ends up being your choice.
TIP #2:
Find the Highest Game Totals for the Slate
It's easy to pick the best players on your favorite teams and assume they will get you the most amount of points and give you the most optimal chance of winning. Wrong. That strategy will not last, you might get lucky but luck eventually runs out. So don't do that unless daily fantasy is just something you want to do for fun or you want to make the games that you'll be watching mean more.
This step is probably one of the most important and definitely the most overlooked step of all. To do this step you're going to want to open up a sportsbook app on your phone or open a new tab and go to Action Network (this site gives you the numbers of some of the most prominent sportsbooks in the country). When you look at the O/Us find the games you see that have the highest total, pick out the 3 or 4 highest, and think about the teams' rosters. That said, don't choose your defense from these games, that's obviously counterproductive. Find the cheapest defense with one of the lower game totals and throw it in the lineup, the odds of your defense being the reason you win one of these tournaments is slim to none.
For week 1 this season the 4 highest game totals are:
Keep in mind these can change and these are not the only numbers out there.
Chiefs @ Cardinals 53.5 O/U
Raiders @ Chargers 52 O/U
Eagles @ Lions 48.5 O/U
Packers @ Vikings 48 O/U
These are the games that I will use to build my lineups. Bookmakers surprise me time and time again with how good they are at setting these lines, don't think you are smarter than them. You might be for a few games or maybe on sports they don't make as much money on but the NFL season is where they make a lot of their revenue so they have to be sharp.
TIP #3:
Stack and Bring Back
Correlation is the name of the game in daily fantasy. You now have the highest total games that you will use, so you just pick random players from every game and throw them in a lineup, right? Wrong. You have to have correlation. If I pick Patrick Mahomes as the only Chiefs player and no players from the Cardinals and the score ends up being 35-27, you think that I am winning the contest I am in? I am not. You have to have receivers from the Chiefs to maximize the amount of points you can get. Mahomes is not getting all the fantasy points in that game so you will have to stack him with receivers. You can double stack with different players, you can even triple stack.
Double Stack Example:
Now that you have that, however, there are still points on the other team as well and if the Chiefs are going to put up a lot of points you need someone from the Cardinals to get exposure.
Triple Stack with Bring Back Example:
This lineup obviously is not the most optimal as I have way too much money spent on these five players but you can mix and match it I am just giving an example.
TIP #4:
Running Back Ideas
Now you need a running back correlation somehow. What I usually do is look at the spreads of the games on the slate and find the largest ones. I do this because this may mean that a team might get an early lead and the run game has more usage than the passing game. Four of the largest spreads this week are:
Ravens (-6.5) @ Jets
Steelers @ Bengals (-6.5)
49ers (-6.5) @ Bears
Colts (-8) @ Texans
Looking at these lines, I know right away I don't want the Ravens running back because that room is a mess, I don't like the 49ers here just because Trey Lance is a dual threat quarterback who can take a lot of goal line carries away from our RB. That leaves us with the Bengals and the Colts. Jonathan Taylor is obviously one of if not the most hyped up player of this season and is 1.1 in most season long drafts. I can see a lot of the public maybe going to get him in their lineups week 1. So I am not going to go with him here and I will go with Joe Mixon from the Bengals. It is a nice contrarian play with a lot of people probably flocking to the Bengals wide receivers and Mixon is great in the passing game and has a chance to get 15+ carries each week.
With running backs I also like to correlate them with their team's defense. The logic behind this is: if they are running the ball more, they're probably ahead so the defense is probably playing good enough. Now, this is not always the case and I don't always correlate these two slots. You can also bring back the opposing team in the FLEX position to get both sides of the ball. For now, I am just going to go Mixon with Bengals Defense:
There are obviously other strategies that you can use in DraftKings Daily Fantasy in order to make money, this is just what I have used as my primary strategy for building lineups. Hope these four tips help you make money and become more consistent with your lineups each and every week this season.