- The obvious and overall premise of DFS is to make the most out of your salary.
- Look at matchups, injuries and other personnel changes that could impact a player’s performance.
- Next Gen stats could help find sleepers and low ownership players.
LAS VEGAS – As Daily Fantasy Sports becomes more popular, it’s important to know the best strategies that can help build the best possible team of the week.
From a distance, making the most of your salary cap is the most obvious piece of advice out there. At its core, it’s exactly what DFS is, but we’re not here to tell you to make the most of the salary, we’re going to show you how to do it.
Find Low Owned Players With Value
Players like Tyreek Hill and Davante Adams are always going to be among the most expensive wide receivers in a DFS format, the No. 1 way to help create the best roster is to find the week where a player like Sammy Watkins or Cole Beasley can match their stats at a much lower price. This allows the owner to spend more money on other star players.
Finding the sleeper value isn’t always easy, but a couple of ways to do so could be at looking at the injury report. Maybe an opposing corner is hurt and will miss the game which allows the No. 2 or No. 3 option on a team to find a mismatch.
Another option could be looking at Next Gen stats. It’s possible that a certain defense could have trouble covering slot receivers over the middle and there’s a speedy slot guy sitting with a low salary.
Pair WRs With Their QB
A high-risk, high-reward method is pairing a quarterback with one of their wide receivers to double up on their points.
For example, pairing or "stacking" Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams could result in some spectacular results as Adams could go for 10 catches, 150 yards and 3 touchdowns while Rodgers could have 4+ touchdowns along with 350+ yards in the same game.
The other side of this, and what makes it risky would be Week 6 for example where Rodgers threw for 160 yards, no touchdowns and two picks while Adams compiled just six catches for 60 yards.
Now, instead of one player having a disappointing week for your DFS team, it’s two.
Scan Player Props
More often than not, online gambling sites are more accurate than the public. If a player has yet to reach 80 yards rushing, for example, and his rushing yards prop is set at 85, he’s likely to have a bigger game than usual and could be worth adding to a lineup depending on the price.
On the other side of things, if a player has tallied 100 yards in four straight games but the line set on sports betting sites is well below their average, it may be beneficial to avoid using that player and spend your limited salary cap elsewhere.
Anticipate The Game Script
Although the salary of a player may look enticing, it could be because he’s a running back on a team that’s about to get blown out resulting in their offense adapting strictly to the passing attack. The same can be said for a quarterback about to play a bad team as it’s possible a team abandons the pass and just runs out the clock.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean taking a quarterback on a bad team is a good move. If a defense knows that the opposing team is going to have to throw the ball every play, it increases the likelihood of interceptions.
There’s no perfect formula available on how to build the best DFS lineup, but it’s more of a combination of many factors. This is far from an exhausting list of things to consider when building a roster, but it is a good starting point.