Most weeks, there are several ways to build a winning lineup in FanDuel because it will turn out that several players will have the biggest games of the week. But it isn’t always that way.
FanDuel: Sometimes you just have to hope you got a stud
I can give cool tips and good advice most weeks, and then learn some fun lessons from each week’s results. This week, it’s just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Jim Rogash
Every week, I spend part of my Sunday nights writing up the best performances of the week. And most weeks, it’s a thin delineation from the top guy at a position to the fourth or fifth. Maybe No. 1 puts up 26 points, but No. 7 puts up 20. Those weeks, you can pick from about 25 or 30 guys who could be on your roster and give you a FanDuel win. Basically, the standard deviation of performances is typically small, and nothing is so dominant as to be a difference maker.
In Week 8, though, that standard deviation was huge. Just at quarterback, the average performance in standard scoring in Week 8 was roughly even with the average from most other weeks. But the standard deviation across the scores was a full point higher than the previous high, and two points higher than typical. That meant that there weren’t six or seven guys at each position who could theoretically have been on a roster. There was one. Maybe two.
Basically, if you didn't have at least one of the week's dominant performers -- Ben Roethlisberger, Tom Brady, Arian Foster, Rob Gronkowski -- you weren't going very far in FanDuel. To wit: Eight of the week's top 10 rosters had Roethlisberger or Brady. Eight had Gronkowski. Six had Foster. Eight had Brandon LaFell, who didn't put up quite as much as the superstars, but with a lower salary, he could make up the difference and serve as a nice complement to the big names.
Some weeks, it’s that simple. If you invested in one or two of the big guys, you had a good week and you won money. If you didn’t, you lost money.
I’d like to offer you more insight than that, some big lesson. The best I can do is to repeat last week’s advice to save on the positions without upside -- kicker and defense. That will let you grab more stars, more guys who could have a Gronk-ian game. But I already gave you that lesson.
Sometimes, it’s just about the stars. You got ‘em or you didn’t.
(Note that this advice is tournament-centric. In my 50/50 game, I finished in the money and my biggest stars were Kyle Orton, Sammy Watkins and T.Y. Hilton, which means I broke even on the week.)
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