There are two basic ways a week in football can go. Each of the three means a different prognosis for FanDuel results:
FanDuel tips and advice, Week 12: How to deal with low-scoring games across the board
Sure, there were a couple huge days in Week 11, but by and large the NFL just didn’t go crazy this weekend. What does that mean for your weekly investments?Use FanDuel promo code SBNATION100H, get 100% deposit bonus
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1. You can have a huge week, where a handful of different names put up big performances -- say, 30-plus for quarterbacks, 23-plus for other positions. In those weeks, the best FanDuel teams will be filled with those guys, and the top rosters will all look pretty similar.
2. You can have a much rougher week, with the scores hovering lower. You can’t stifle every single player, but the ones who do produce are much more random. That makes the best FanDuel rosters nigh-on impossible to predict, and the top FanDuel scores will be much less impressive.
In Week 11, we got option 2. There was no dominant quarterback. Of the three great running backs -- Jonas Gray, Le'Veon Bell, Jamaal Charles -- Gray was too anonymous to be on many rosters and Charles was too expensive, so only Bell was widely owned. There weren't any special tight ends.
That left Mike Evans at wide receiver as the sweet spot. He came into the week on a hot streak, so he was intriguing, but he was still affordable enough to wind up as a prime option for FanDuel.
If you recall, I go through the top 10 FanDuel rosters in a different massive tournament every week. With the aforementioned issues this week, that meant no quarterback was owned on more than two of those 10 rosters, and those two -- Aaron Rodgers and Shaun Hill -- could scarcely be more different. In fact, outside Bell and Evans, the top FanDuel rosters were a ridiculous mishmash of unpredictability in Week 11. (The top 10 rosters did all utilize the Green Bay defense, with no other unit offering any special production, but defenses are defenses are defenses.)
The less impressive weeks mean you can make some mistakes, as well. A week ago, I had a strong roster, but a swing-and-a-miss on one running back and a defense kept me from making serious money. This week, one of the top 10 rosters used Colin Kaepernick (193 yards, 1 touchdown), and another used Brian Hoyer (330 yards, 1 touchdown, 1 interception). Brent Celek showed up on a roster, as did Shane Vereen. Heck, the absolute best roster of the week got 1.1 points from a wide receiver (Pierre Garcon) and 1.0 from its kicker (Billy Cundiff) -- the top rosters this week would get laughed out of the mythical FanDuel Winners' Club.
Personally, I had $25 in various FanDuel tournaments last week. I pulled back exactly $2.50. It was ... bad. It was really bad. Percentage-wise, it’s the worst I’ve ever done when getting at least something back. But in a week that is full of mishmash, you just have to hope to stumble into things.
Ultimately, none of this -- the NFL’s struggles or mine -- changes strategy much. You are generally going to splurge on your quarterback, your top running back, your top receiver, and you are generally going to scrimp on kicker and defense.
The takeaway from this week in FanDuel, then, is that sometimes you're just screwed. You can make all the right selections (maybe you read my Saturday column?) and things just don't work out, because the NFL has a weird, dumb week. So the advice? "Don't get discouraged." Yeah, sometimes I'm a fortune cookie.
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