Daily Fantasy Football Strategy + NFL DFS Tips

By Kurt Boyer

Daily Fantasy NFL Games at FanDuel

Football video game players poke fun at Fantasy GMs for their obsession with stats. Why spend a Sunday rooting for individual players when you can have your “fantasy” team play a full season with a copy of Madden? But a Daily Fantasy Sports GM’s plight is remarkably similar to what real GMs go through. In either circumstance, football GMs utilize long-term thinking to make annual draft selections. Consistency and durability are the keys to a successful 17-week roster. 

You might draft a talented wide receiver who puts up 400 yards and 3 touchdowns in the opening 2 weeks of the football season, but a severe injury could leave you without his production for the remaining 15 weekends to come. It’s all about making “big picture” decisions, boring or not.

Perhaps that’s why football fans are turning to DFS, or Daily Fantasy Sports betting games. 

DFS battles let players draft a brand-new roster every week. Injuries and on-field disqualifications can still affect the outcome of the contests, but there’s no such thing as a DFS season-killing blow. If your QB, Tom Brady, is hurt in Week 7, feel free to get Lamar Jackson in Week 8. 

What are the rules of DFS pigskin at FanDuel? 

General Fantasy Football Rules & Draft Strategies

Competitions at FanDuel grant players a 60,000 “dollar” budget to draft a roster for a given NFL weekend. Contestants are asked to fill out a roster of picks that includes a QB, running backs, WRs, a tight end, and a kicker. Customers may also choose a “flex” or variable roster spot from eligible skill football players and a team-defense pick to go with the lineup for their game.

Like any similar sport, NFL DFS can be mastered. Veteran players have draft strategies on how to rack-up small advantages before Sunday, saddling a beginner opponent with an uphill battle. 

FanDuel lets you choose a level of competition right for your experience level. Ex-football coaches may compete in scientific Sunday duels on FanDuel, but that doesn’t mean beginners must walk the plank against the “Chiefs and 49ers” of the NFL Daily Fantasy landscape. 

Fantasy football sign-ups can register with FanDuel as beginners and take part in special contests against fields of fellow novices. Prizes can be won by even the newest of competitors!

For more on strategy and tactics on how to play the game within the game, visit our Fantasy Football Strategy page.

NFL DFS at FanDuel: No Stress Over Who to Start

Traditional Fantasy Football gurus always have a “sleeper” starter in mind. Once, all rosters included 2-deep or 4-deep skill position players in the lineup. From that, a GM could choose “starters” and “backups” for the upcoming weekend—even though it wasn’t kosher to put a “backup” in the game when your starter was dropping passes and drawing penalty flags.

Daily Fantasy competition simplifies the game. DFS football players may draft a new, compact roster every week, streamlining their picks into a handful of key performers. 

Instead of “starters” and “backups,” competitors must learn to think in terms of priorities. Want to spend most of the FanDuel dollars on an All-Pro quarterback and running back combination? It could cost you at other positions crucial to racking-up a balanced and prolific DFS point total on Sunday. Most experts also believe that drafting a quarterback and a top wide receiver from the same football team is a beneficial fantasy football draft tactic. 

Click to find Running Backs Rankings (RB) for ratings of tailbacks in a potential DFS lineup.

How to Calculate Fantasy Points in Games

FanDuel’s scoring system includes numerical rewards for passing, rushing, receiving, and touchdowns scored, in addition to small penalties for fumbles and interceptions. 

There are no penalties for 5, 10, or 15-yard penalties taken by football draft picks, though penalties taken by an offense can stall a drive and prevent points from being scored—on the field and in DFS games. 

Team defenses can earn fantasy points by pitching a shut-out or holding an opponent to minimal points-scored on the gridiron, but can also saddle the GM with subtracted points for bad outings. Defenses can also earn fantasy sports points by creating a turnover, sacking the QB, or scoring a safety. 

Don’t forget special football teams. Not only can NFL kickers score 5 points at a time for teams with long field goals, but a successful 2-point conversion play also earns double bonus points when it’s a pass. 

Head on to our NFL Daily Fantasy Scoring page for the complete point-scoring chart to play a game or two.

Draft Day Rules and Strategy To Help You Win

In the landscape of DFS games, a starting quarterback or a wide receiver pick on a team with a terrific defense is likely bound for an average football DFS point total. If the Ravens are leading 21-0 in the 3rd quarter, 2019’s NFL MVP Lamar Jackson will probably throw fewer passes and rack-up fewer yards and TDs in the 4th quarter than if Baltimore trails 35-21 and needs a hurry-up offense to come back. 

QBs saddled with sketchy defenses are considered stronger DFS draft picks. Winning often depends on how many great passing plays a QB is expected to make in that Sunday’s game, whether or not it’s in a winning cause. Running backs are very different, flourishing in DFS points whenever the team is leading and must utilize its running backs or “tailbacks” to grind the clock. (As John Madden says, of course 100+ yard running backs usually play for the winning team. They likely had the lead, and more touches.)

Find out which QBs are most likely to light-up the scoreboard by checking FanDuel’s QB Rankings.

Play-making “team defense” draft picks can be more valuable to a competitor than front-7s who may hold opponents out of the end zone without accumulating sacks and turnovers in the process. Your defense pick can allow 30 points, sack the opposing QB 5 times and pick off passes, and rack-up a better score than a defense pick that gives up 10 points the game but does not pressure or intercept the QB. 

Our drafts ignore long-term injury cases, but week-to-week injury reports are still an important tool for those who play. You don’t want to draft a player at 80% effectiveness unless you have already considered the alternatives and decided that the wounded athlete could still produce a fine stat total in a game.

Points-Per-Reception DFS Scoring by NFL WRs

Old-school games relied on yards and touchdowns for point-scoring. Often, a wide receiver would make several nifty catches around the line of scrimmage, but his total would be puny. 

The advent of points-per-reception scoring has changed that. Now, receivers can accumulate points by simply catching passes in a game—even if it’s for no gain or a loss of yardage! 

PPR (or points-per-reception) scoring has sparked a new rating system for wide receivers, tight ends, and backs used as pass-catchers out of the backfield. 

Learn more at our PPR Rankings page.

Fantasy Football Draft Strategy: Drafting Quality TEs and WRs

Fantasy football draft strategy relies on knowledge of all positions, including the position of NFL head coach. Some clubs use TEs and wide receivers as interchangeable parts, always toying with the depth chart from year to year, like the Seattle Seahawks. Other teams, like Seattle’s NFC West rival Arizona Cardinals, utilize long-term standbys at the wideout position, like future HOF’er Larry Fitzgerald. 

Fitzgerald is an anomaly in the NFL, since most franchises don’t try to make WRs a center of the team’s nucleus. It is thought that since a receiver is the final link in the chain of a successful pass play, from the snap, to blocking, to reading, to passing, to catching, it is a fool’s errand to work to cultivate a 10-year star receiver whose name becomes synonymous with an NFL brand. 

However, connoisseurs of DFS running backs are beginning to notice the trend of game-changing, consistent WR threats now starting to sweep The Shield. WRs like Amari Cooper and DeAndre Hopkins have transformed the offenses they play on over a relatively-short time period. Also, a DFS expert knows to “partner” a strong QB pick with his top WR pick more often than not, giving great passers like Tom Brady and Drew Brees the chance to “double-bonus” their FanDuel points on TD throws.

Speaking of Tom Brady, TE Rob Gronkowski has seen a late-career resurgence in Tampa Bay in 2020, thanks to joining forces with his old partner-in-crime from New England. TEs were under-utilized in the NFL for many seasons, even decades, before “Gronk” and Travis Kelce of Kansas City began to put up consistent stats that no DFS general manager could resist. 

Watch out for the “double-edged” sword of choosing a “finesse” TE hoping for lots of reception yards. It’s true that much of a good TE’s “dirty” work doesn’t show up on the DFS scoreboard, like run blocking, decoying, and protecting the edge. But an end playing without those skills is a liability to his offense, and could result in the team getting whipped in time-of-possession, unable to take enough snaps to spread the rock around through the air. Meanwhile, a TE who knows the ground game and can help his offense dominate a contest, like George Kittle of the 49ers or Mark Andrews of the Ravens, is often able to help himself get targeted more often by the QB, as successful drives march up and down the field.

Tips on Fantasy Football Draft - “Budget” Picks for Success

One easy way to get “bang for the buck” with a draft choice is to look for players likely to trend-up in the coming weeks. Salaries are based on past performance more than a player’s raw upside. The successful DFS GM looks for budget draft-choice options on pros who are about to get handed a bigger role with their teams. 

For instance, New York Giants QB Daniel Jones looked like a poor pick at the beginning of 2019-20. Typically, 1st-year quarterbacks struggle when not surrounded by elite talent, and the Big Blue’s pass protection was so poor that Jones took a beating in the pocket. But drafting players who took a chance on the Duke product’s low dollar-figure late in the season were richly rewarded. Jones turned out to be cool and competent under pressure, and Saquon Barkley’s injury woes put more responsibility on the QB’s shoulders. His stats–and point totals—soon rivaled established QBs of The Shield.