The Daily Grind - Daily Fantasy Contest News: Week 17

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There is absolutely no question that the biggest area of growth right now in fantasy football is with the explosion of Daily Fantasy Contests.  With several top sites out there already and more entering this space each day, Footballguys is expanding the coverage in this arena to give Footballguys Insiders exclusive coverage of the latest news and information of Daily Fantasy Football.

Over the course of this football season, we will talk about numerous aspects of Daily Fantasy Football.  From articles on these sites, strategies to win daily contests, bankroll (money management) strategy, different league and game types, signup and reload bonuses, players to target each week and even contests that look to be undersubscribed ("overlays"), we will cover it all.  Welcome to the one-stop shop for Daily coverage.

Please note that even though the NFL has weekly Thursday games and DFS sites have contests that start on Thursdays, in general we will be looking at the majority of the contests and DFS games that do not begin until Sunday.  Our weekly coverage does include Thursday DFS information if you are looking to get a jump on the DFS action for the week with the first game on Thursday.

DFS LESSONS OF THE WEEK - BAD BEATS, WEEK 17 AND PLAYOFF LEAGUES

Let’s get this out of the way – for a lot of DFS players (and fantasy players as well), last week (Week 16) was supposed to be a big week.  Lots of major DFS contests and fantasy football seasons were wrapping up, tickets that had been acquired to play in big invitational tournaments were in play, and it was supposed to be a big, joyous culminations to a great DFS season. 

And then the wheels all fell off.

Sunday was about as lackluster of a day as I can remember in recent fantasy football history.  Scorews were down all across the board, and it seemed like all the usual suspects in fantasy decided to take the day off.  I mean, if you had a stack of Ryan Tannehill and Mike Wallace – hats off to you, but most of the DFS community was looking at the same games Las Vegas was, and players like Drew Brees and Andrew Luck were major disappointments.

So what are the lessons to be learned from all of this?  What are the takeaways we can use from such a bad outcome?

I like to summarize things in “rules of thumb”, and store them for future use.  The next one is one of the biggest, and has to be remembered:

DFS Rule:  There will be bad weeks along the way.  You cannot predict them, but you have to plan accordingly. 

Bad stuff happens, and it always feels like the worst time for it.  In reality, during the course of a football (or any sport, for that matter) season, games will go sideways from the common expectations.  Players will fall short of the end zone by a yard.  Injuries will occur.  Coaches will pull players for strange reasons.  Backups will vulture touchdowns.  Stuff happens – and there is not a single thing you can do about it, except to accept that these things happen, and you have to deal with it and plan for the unexpected.  What that means is to not overinvest in any single week or day for DFS purposes, because anything can happen on any given day.   This goes back to bankroll management and limiting your exposure to each contest and weekend, subjects covered well in DFS articles right here on Footballguys ("Growing Your Bankroll").

What else can we learn from bad weeks?  Let me start by relating some of my own personal experience.  Often fantasy sports writers do not want to use personal experience in their writing, because of the “no one else cares about your team” mentality.  That is not what this is about.  What it is about is that I had lots of GPPs to enter (and tickets from qualifiers) so I was focusing the days before last weekend on who to target for GPP lineups.  I did all the right things, or so I thought – I looked at Las Vegas lines and saw which games had high totals.  I looked at the players on the teams expecting to score a lot of points that had favorable matchups.  I made short lists of players at each skill position to be my pool of players for the weekend.  After all of that, then I went out to the rest of the DFS community, including several of the Footballguys’ staff, checked a few other sites and read all of the staff’s DFS articles.  Lastly, I conferred with John Lee – one of the best of them out there, and he writes great articles for us here at Footballguys – and I have to say, I was pleased with what I saw and read.  All of the sources tended to match the same players I had on my short lists, so I thought I was on to something.  I knew the right guys, or so I thought.  Las Vegas said so.  Our staff said so.  Other sources in the DFS world said so.  What could go wrong?

To use a poker analogy for a moment – there are bad beats.   Every so often, a pair of aces does lose a hand.   Week 16 was a bad beat.

The takeaway from a losing week like this should be the following:  If you did everything right in your own preparation for the week and the fantasy players did not cooperate, do not beat yourself up over it.  Take pride that your strategy and prep work was solid and that the elements of luck and chance – two things that cannot be controlled or eliminated – did you in.  As long as you did the right things, like play a pair of aces the right way – you will win more often than you lose, but you will do both in the future.  Not every outcome is in your favor, but if you play the right way, over the long run, you will win more than you will lose.  Losing stings, but do not let the bad taste left in your mouth steer you wrong.  Stick to your methods if they are solid and they will lead you towards winning weeks in the future.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk about Week 17.  This week can be one of the weirdest weeks in the NFL, and one of the hardest to predict.  With that said, and if you do have a bad taste in your mouth from Week 16 bad beats, keep a cool and level head.  There is a saying that you do not throw good money after bad, and in NFL wagering circles you do not chase lost Sunday money by wagering even more than you planned on Monday Night Football.   That’s a bad plan.   Reactionary actions are often poor choices, so if you planned to play only moderately for Week 17, you should stick to that plan, even if you had a bad Week 16.  I am not saying to not play at all, just temper expectations and do not try and make up for lost ground from Week 16 – as you will not enjoy January if you have two bad weeks in a row with even more spent on Week 17 than you originally intended.

Now, let’s talk about January, shall we?  The NFL playoffs are coming, and that presents three weekends of DFS action on most of the major DFS sites.  Playoff contests for the NFL are much like Thanksgiving or Prime Time games, as there will be contests containing players from only two or four NFL games for the DFS contest.   These “limited slate” games create problems, just like on Thanksgiving (see my Week 13 article about that one), where a restricted amount of player choices exaggerates outcomes.   To say it simply, picking the wrong kicker or defense or tight end can cost your entire lineup, as there are only 2-4 of each to choose from, so you better get them all right else your team will suffer greatly in the standings.  Winning January DFS teams will have perfect or nearly perfect lineups, so keep that in mind.   I recommend playing a limited amount within reason, and sticking to GPPs for the most part (results exaggerate even further in 50/50s and other cash games), but make sure you are having fun either way, and all wins are a bonus to what hopefully was a successful 2014 DFS NFL season.

Finally, I just would like to say thank you to all of the readers of The Daily Grind this year.   This was the first season for The Daily Grind, and I enjoyed writing it each week for your reading pleasure, and I hope that you got something from it each week.  It was a pleasure spending some time with you throughout the NFL season, and I appreciate everyone who took the time to read this article this year and/or drop an email or tweet to me.  Thank you and Happy Holidays. 

See you next year in The Daily Grind!

INDUSTRY NEWS

Final Weeks for NFL Regular Season Contests

As the NFL regular season winds down, many DFS sites are still rolling with several big contests and tournaments throughout December.

Be sure to frequent your favorite sites and see what end of calendar year tournaments are on the slate for Week 17.

Also be on the lookout for NFL playoff contests as well, as many sites offer additional contests for postseason play.  As long as there are at least two NFL games, there will be a DFS contest associated with those games.  Ring in the New Year with some extra winnings!

DAILY CONTENT AROUND FOOTBALLGUYS.COM

NFL WEEK 17

Halfway into the NFL season, and we have had some big, big contests in DFS so far - and the fun continues.  Let's dig into some of the big contests out there.  If there are any that I miss, please drop me an email (pasquino@footballguys.com) and I will update this article.

FANDUEL - WEEK 17 BIG CONTESTS

All of these contests can be found in the lobby at FanDuel.

In addition, here are their featured contests.