How to Build a Weekly Fantasy Football Lineup on the FanDuel App

Pick players based on performance., Study the status of individual players in your lineup., Factor prize structures in your lineup strategy., Strive to build more balanced lineups., Spend as much time as you can looking out for sleepers., Utilize...

7 Steps 6 min read Medium

Step-by-Step Guide

  1. Step 1: Pick players based on performance.

    One of the very first things you need to realize about fantasy football is that fandoms and rivalries will matter little in victory.

    FanDuel contests draw players from all the games that will be going down in a day and will award fantasy points based on their performance.

    If you put your personal preferences above the hard numbers that the players are generating in their games, then you are all but guaranteed to lose against other managers who are not so discerning about their fantasy football lineups., FanDuel uses a daily contest system, not a weekly or season-long system.

    This means that every FanDuel contest will base their results on a single day’s matches.

    This is relevant to your lineup because you want to maximize points for that match you are participating in.

    An elite quarterback who scores brilliantly during the season will not generate points for you if an injury forces him to skip the game on your contest’s date.

    In short, you will want to draft a lineup that has the most potential to score the highest on a day that you hold your contests in., The way a particular contest determines pays out winners is a huge factor in determining your overall strategy in picking a lineup.

    There is no guarantee of victory, of course, but adopting the right strategy will help increase your win rates in the long run.

    You will want to swing the odds in your favor, and picking the right lineup for each prize structure will help you do just that.

    Head-to-head and 50/50 contests will pay out cash to players who manage to beat either their opponent or half of their total opponents in a particular contest.

    Their prize structures thus encourage forming a lineup that is able to generate a decent amount of points in any given week—a low-risk “high floor” lineup, as the term goes.

    The payout is low, so you’ll want to win as often as possible with lineups that are able to generate enough points to beat out the opposition.

    This is because these kinds of contests pay the same amount of cash whether you gain a one-point or one hundred-point advantage over your opponents.

    By contrast, league and tournament contests will only reward players who manage to place on the top spots of their contests.

    These kinds of contests have prize structures that pay out big for lineups that are able to score the highest.

    Picking “high ceiling” lineups for these contests are thus recommended, as you only need to win once to win big., This is because FanDuel takes a more balanced approach to scoring—awarding 1 point per 25 yards instead of per 20 yards, 4 points instead of 6 per touchdown,
    -1 instead of
    -2 points per interception, and
    0.5 points instead of 1 point per reception.

    Going elite-heavy and filling the rest of your lineup with low-scoring unknowns in FanDuel will thus reward you with less points than when you seed your lineup with one or two elites and the rest with decent players., Low-scoring unknowns and high-scoring unknowns are two different breeds of football players.

    The latter type are called sleepers, and finding them before other FanDuel competitors pick up on their potential will allow you to create a high-scoring lineup without maxing out your salary cap too soon.

    This is why it is important to use the FanDuel app during your spare time to review the stats and latest updates on players that you are not quite familiar with.

    Simply browse through the available players while reviewing their performances in past games, and you raise your chances of finding sleepers that you can use to augment your FanDuel lineups. , You can find a lot of information within the FanDuel app, but third-party sources provide tools that can help you learn more about your potential picks.

    These can help you spot a ton of useful information at a glance, from a player’s Opponent Ranking (OPRK) in coming matches to a consistency calculator to show you how the player has performed throughout his career.

    Rotowire’s NFL Optimizer toolis useful for making informed guesses.

    Its money-line definition and point spread tools help you out by projecting how well a player’s team will do in their upcoming game.

    FFToday’s Consistency Calculatoris best used to see how a specific player has been doing in his career—and whether that player is surging up to elite status or slipping in performance as the years grind on by.

    FantasyPros has a nifty Value Plays tool.This tool will be useful in determining whether a specific player is worth the salary that he demands when it comes to your FanDuel lineup. , The last thing you can do to create better-performing lineups is to objectively assess their performance after a game ends.

    This is because the occasional victory can mask your burgeoning losses in the long run.

    The opposite is also true, where multiple defeats can discourage you and prevent you from realizing that those few big wins bring in more cash than you pull out.

    Create one worksheet to list down your lineups.

    List down the players of your lineup and use a system to assign them codes.

    One simple but useful system is to use the date and time of the games that your lineup participated in.

    For example, you can use the code “100415_01” to designate the first lineup that you picked to play on October 04,
    2015.

    Add a line detailing your explanation for picking this lineup to help refresh your memory when you review the spreadsheet.

    Create another worksheet for performance and accounting purposes.

    List down the code of your lineup (e.g., “100415_01”) in one column, then the total fantasy points that lineup generated in another column, the entry fee you paid in the third column and the total winnings you gained in the fourth column.

    Use these numbers to determine just how effective your lineups are, and whether your strategies are working or if you need to tweak them for future contests.
  2. Step 2: Study the status of individual players in your lineup.

  3. Step 3: Factor prize structures in your lineup strategy.

  4. Step 4: Strive to build more balanced lineups.

  5. Step 5: Spend as much time as you can looking out for sleepers.

  6. Step 6: Utilize third-party analytics and optimizer tools.

  7. Step 7: Track the performance of your lineups using a spreadsheet.

Detailed Guide

One of the very first things you need to realize about fantasy football is that fandoms and rivalries will matter little in victory.

FanDuel contests draw players from all the games that will be going down in a day and will award fantasy points based on their performance.

If you put your personal preferences above the hard numbers that the players are generating in their games, then you are all but guaranteed to lose against other managers who are not so discerning about their fantasy football lineups., FanDuel uses a daily contest system, not a weekly or season-long system.

This means that every FanDuel contest will base their results on a single day’s matches.

This is relevant to your lineup because you want to maximize points for that match you are participating in.

An elite quarterback who scores brilliantly during the season will not generate points for you if an injury forces him to skip the game on your contest’s date.

In short, you will want to draft a lineup that has the most potential to score the highest on a day that you hold your contests in., The way a particular contest determines pays out winners is a huge factor in determining your overall strategy in picking a lineup.

There is no guarantee of victory, of course, but adopting the right strategy will help increase your win rates in the long run.

You will want to swing the odds in your favor, and picking the right lineup for each prize structure will help you do just that.

Head-to-head and 50/50 contests will pay out cash to players who manage to beat either their opponent or half of their total opponents in a particular contest.

Their prize structures thus encourage forming a lineup that is able to generate a decent amount of points in any given week—a low-risk “high floor” lineup, as the term goes.

The payout is low, so you’ll want to win as often as possible with lineups that are able to generate enough points to beat out the opposition.

This is because these kinds of contests pay the same amount of cash whether you gain a one-point or one hundred-point advantage over your opponents.

By contrast, league and tournament contests will only reward players who manage to place on the top spots of their contests.

These kinds of contests have prize structures that pay out big for lineups that are able to score the highest.

Picking “high ceiling” lineups for these contests are thus recommended, as you only need to win once to win big., This is because FanDuel takes a more balanced approach to scoring—awarding 1 point per 25 yards instead of per 20 yards, 4 points instead of 6 per touchdown,
-1 instead of
-2 points per interception, and
0.5 points instead of 1 point per reception.

Going elite-heavy and filling the rest of your lineup with low-scoring unknowns in FanDuel will thus reward you with less points than when you seed your lineup with one or two elites and the rest with decent players., Low-scoring unknowns and high-scoring unknowns are two different breeds of football players.

The latter type are called sleepers, and finding them before other FanDuel competitors pick up on their potential will allow you to create a high-scoring lineup without maxing out your salary cap too soon.

This is why it is important to use the FanDuel app during your spare time to review the stats and latest updates on players that you are not quite familiar with.

Simply browse through the available players while reviewing their performances in past games, and you raise your chances of finding sleepers that you can use to augment your FanDuel lineups. , You can find a lot of information within the FanDuel app, but third-party sources provide tools that can help you learn more about your potential picks.

These can help you spot a ton of useful information at a glance, from a player’s Opponent Ranking (OPRK) in coming matches to a consistency calculator to show you how the player has performed throughout his career.

Rotowire’s NFL Optimizer toolis useful for making informed guesses.

Its money-line definition and point spread tools help you out by projecting how well a player’s team will do in their upcoming game.

FFToday’s Consistency Calculatoris best used to see how a specific player has been doing in his career—and whether that player is surging up to elite status or slipping in performance as the years grind on by.

FantasyPros has a nifty Value Plays tool.This tool will be useful in determining whether a specific player is worth the salary that he demands when it comes to your FanDuel lineup. , The last thing you can do to create better-performing lineups is to objectively assess their performance after a game ends.

This is because the occasional victory can mask your burgeoning losses in the long run.

The opposite is also true, where multiple defeats can discourage you and prevent you from realizing that those few big wins bring in more cash than you pull out.

Create one worksheet to list down your lineups.

List down the players of your lineup and use a system to assign them codes.

One simple but useful system is to use the date and time of the games that your lineup participated in.

For example, you can use the code “100415_01” to designate the first lineup that you picked to play on October 04,
2015.

Add a line detailing your explanation for picking this lineup to help refresh your memory when you review the spreadsheet.

Create another worksheet for performance and accounting purposes.

List down the code of your lineup (e.g., “100415_01”) in one column, then the total fantasy points that lineup generated in another column, the entry fee you paid in the third column and the total winnings you gained in the fourth column.

Use these numbers to determine just how effective your lineups are, and whether your strategies are working or if you need to tweak them for future contests.

About the Author

C

Catherine Hughes

Experienced content creator specializing in home improvement guides and tutorials.

57 articles
View all articles

Rate This Guide

--
Loading...
5
0
4
0
3
0
2
0
1
0

How helpful was this guide? Click to rate: