Last year, we dabbled with FanDuel as a way to try to cash in on our fantasy football research during the season, with moderate success–this year, we decided to take it a little more serious. Here’s a few things we’ve picked up on FanDueling so far:
One thing we picked up from a friend of ours who has been playing on FanDuel for longer than us is to stick with 50/50 leagues. Obviously payouts aren’t as high as winning a standard league, but all you have to do is finish in the top half of the league. Given that we have the 17th foremost fantasy expert on the whole of the internet in our back pocket, we’re pretty sure that we should finish in the top half of our leagues frequently.
We prefer to have at least a couple different leagues going, but we use different lineups in each league rather than the same one in each league. This hedges our bets a bit, in case we are off on one of our player picks.
There are numerous approaches to picking your lineups, but the one that we’ve settled on using most frequently is to grab at least a couple of top line starters, then we actually fill in our Defense, Kicker and TE with some mid-tier spots. Then we go back and fill in the rest of our starting offense, generally trying to find 4 guys who are average out the remaining dollars (ie, if we have $28k left, we try to find 4 guys in the $6700-$7300 range, rather than grabbing another guy in the $8k range). We don’t always stick to that last part, but we try.
Generally speaking, we also only set lineups on Sunday morning, rather than trying to jump on Thursday games. No need to end up with Adrian Peterson in your lineup the week that he goes and gets arrested.
Week 1 this year saw great success–we jumped in a couple leagues late Sunday morning, in one league riding Calvin Johnson and AJ Green to #9 out of 100, and Matt Ryan and Matt Forte and some spare parts to a #11 out of 100 in the other.
This week, so far we’re only in one league, riding Andrew Luck and Jamaal Charles as our big dogs–we’ll let you know our remaining picks next week, when we have our results in, but feel free to post your thoughts on who we should be using in the comments below.
A lot of what we’re watching this week deals with how teams respond to circumstances that have arisen on or off the field over the last week. Week two lacks sexy match-ups, but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of story lines. Here are a few things we’re watching this week:
How tough is Baltimore?
No team has been more distracted this week than Baltimore. The Ravens are under fire for their handling of the Ray Rice situation. Can they win a near must-win game against rival Pittsburgh and keep pace in the AFC North?
Can Goodell survive?
Furthermore on that situation, the Rice situation left the NFL with a major black eye — and it was all so avoidable. Commissioner Roger Goodell has mishandled this situation from the start. It’s his job to protect “the shield,” and he has failed miserably in this case. Public sentiment is squarely against him and there are reports that he has lied about whether the league had access to the elevator security tape. The owners probably aren’t inclined to rock the boat considering that they’ve been printing cash during the Goodell era. But they also know the Rice situation has hurt the NFL’s brand they’ve worked so hard to build. (more…)
After a mostly putrid 2013 season of betting, Tony and I actually both start the season ahead after one week. We took completely opposite paths toward getting there – Tony was aggressive out of the gate, laying more than 20 percent of his hypothetical opening bankroll on the line. I took it easy a bit, wagering less than 10 percent. Between us we hit five of eight picks and added a push.
Every week during the 2014 NFL season I’ll post my weekly position rankings to help you set your fantasy lineup (just like Anthony). Adjustments will be made throughout the week to account for news, injuries, etc. Post questions in the comments below or on Twitter @Bo_Mitchell. (more…)
Playing in an NFL Survivor Pool? Zoneblitz has you covered. Our four writers are playing a slightly modified version to help you make your weekly decisions, and hopefully we’ll all make it through Week 17 unscathed. However, in our version, we’re giving each writer ONE strike to make things more interesting. Whoever’s left standing at the end will be declared the winner.
Three of us head into week two 1-0, as John and Maggio rode the Jets to wins while Andy flew with the Eagles. The Bears ate Tony up last week, but he gets a mulligan with our two-strikes-and-you’re-out policy on this pool. Here are this week’s picks.
Last minute comebacks, upsets, meltdowns and questionable coaching decisions dotted the Sunday and Monday NFL landscapes. It’s great to have football back again.
Given the weirdness that took place last weekend, particularly at the end of some of the early games, I’d say we came out of the weekend relatively intact. Nobody embarrassed themselves too badly and Tony, who thrives on picking the unpredictable, nailed the week with a 12-4 mark. He’s in control of the leader board after one week. Dr. Phil from the audience also made picks last week – if my count is right, he hit an 11-5 mark — maybe he should join the staff.
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@Brian - I don't think the Vikings lowballed Darnold as much as told him up front "We'd love you back,…
100% agreed Paul with what you said and BTW appreciate the clarification on plunkett
I don't think we bring up Plunkett that often but Raiders fans online certainly do! LOL Winning SBs is a…
Good Enough answer for me Brian i can see the logic behind your use of plunkett in certain cases, Your…
Haha ... messing with Paul. Because winners always get discussed for the HOF, Robert. It helped get Warner and eventually,…