FanDuel advice: The virtues of using a Monday player
Just from an enjoying-yourself standpoint, it’s more fun to have a player in the Monday games. Watch yourself go up in the standings rather than down.
Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports
This week’s FanDuel tip is for all-weekend games. It’s not insight into a player, or matchup, or game. It’s just about planning.
I’ve mentioned of late a bit of a DFS slump in my games. I cracked that over the past weekend in a big way. I entered eight different contests (two all-weekend tournaments, five head-to-heads and a Sunday-afternoon-only tournament). I cashed in seven of those, including a top-15 finish in a 6,000-person tourney. Only one of my head-to-heads failed me, and only that because I — the damn fantasy analyst — totally forgot the Saints signed Kai Forbath, and I used the unemployed Zach Hocker and lost by three points. (Bonus extra piece of advice: Don’t do that.)
When Sunday ended, my two all-weekend tournaments were staring down some big prizes. The only problem was, I was done, with no players in either of those tournaments playing Monday night. That meant I was susceptible to big games from Carson Palmer, Larry Fitzgerald, Justin Forsett, any Baltimore-Arizona players, and all I could do was watch.
Ultimately, a relatively low-scoring Monday kept me near the top of my tournaments, enough that I was more than happy with my final results. And of course, the order in which players do or don’t accumulate fantasy points is pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of fantasy; if you get 200 points in the 1 p.m. Sunday games, then you’ll profit no matter who does what in the afternoon or night or next day. But watching my standing in the tournaments fall Monday night, ever so slowly, was not as fun as the alternative, seeing myself slowly climbing.
This isn’t about strategy, or building the best roster. This is about enjoying yourself. This is about fun. And having been on both sides of the Monday night games multiple times, I can just tell you that, win or lose, it’s way more fun coming into Monday night with a chance to climb the rankings than with a chance to fall.
I wouldn’t advocate picking a bad player in a Monday game over a good player Sunday. That’s silly. But if you find yourself in a tiebreaker situation, not sure who is the better play, that Monday option (this week, Indianapolis-Carolina) is appealing. Just the chance to gain in the standings late in the game rather than lose. It’s the most fun option. Fun matters a lot.
Here’s my (tentative) Week 8 FanDuel lineup:
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