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FanDuel advice: Putting in prep work for a lineup
Planning ahead makes the actual selection of a DFS lineup much easier.
Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
The list of things that aren’t better if you enter with a plan is short. Top of my head ... guest appearances on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, jazz scatting, maybe peekaboo?
Certainly not on the list is fantasy football, whether it’s season-long or FanDuel.
Entering Wild Card weekend, I ranked the players at every FanDuel position (here, here, here and here, if you're curious), with salaries taking into account. More or less, if you look at the FanDuel salary list top to bottom, that's a player list for the week, but rankings by salary incorporate more of a sense of value into the proceedings.
Well, I did that Wednesday and Thursday. Friday, it was time to set my own primary lineup for the weekend tournaments. And with the Wednesday/Thursday work in my back pocket, I had a head start.
My first move was to simply pick the top guys from all of my charts and see how much over budget I was. That meant Russell Wilson, Jeremy Hill, Marshawn Lynch, Doug Baldwin, DeSean Jackson, DeAndre Hopkins, Jordan Reed, Chris Boswell and the Kansas City defense. That also meant $63,600, or over budget. But whereas the same approach in the regular season might push $65,000 or even $70,000, having to pare off only $3,600 is (relatively) easy.
First off, my No. 3 running back is Fitzgerald Toussaint with DeAngelo Williams out. Toussaint stands to get the lion's share of carries for a strong offense, but with FanDuel unsure of Williams' status at price-setting time, Toussaint remains cheap. Right away, that saved me more than two grand. A few other tweaks (save a little on quarterback and tight end and have options I like just as much), and my lineup was good.
Below, you’ll find my lineup, made up of my first or second choices at every position for the week. The only other change I made after the ones above was flipping the Kansas City defense (facing my stud receiver) for the Seattle one (facing no one on my roster). The actual lineup-picking part of my week was short. It was all about the preparation:
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