Have you ever felt like the odds are stacked against you in daily fantasy football? In cash games, are you unknowingly taking head-to-head matchups against DFS professionals who do this as their main source of income? In tournaments, do you feel outmatched up against the guy who is entering over 100 unique computer-generated lineups, while you’re stuck doing everything by hand? Do you want to know the top value plays at each position based on the industry’s most highly regarded fantasy projections?
Well, if so, I’ve got some good news for you. We’ve just leveled the playing field with our new and improved Lineup Optimizer. This tool is available for PFF Elite members and can be found under your Daily Fantasy Tools tab.
Lineup optimizer
Our DFS lineup optimizer is powered by PFF’s fantasy projections, which are overseen by Director of PFF Fantasy Jeff Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe was FantasyPros’ No. 2 overall fantasy ranker last year and has four consecutive top-eight finishes to his name. The optimizer contrasts these projections with the salaries and site-specific scoring and roster settings on each of DraftKings, FanDuel, and Yahoo! to help you build the best DFS lineup possible. Next to each player's name is their salary, projected point total, and value (projections versus pricing). Each tab can be sorted, and players at each position can be added or removed based on user preference.
In addition to giving you our top lineup for each slate on each site, you’re now able to set as many as 200 different optimized lineups which are both customizable and exportable. The fact that these lineups are exportable to Excel, means they’re also importable to the DFS site of your choice. If you were a tournament player hand-selecting over a dozen lineups per slate, this should save you a great deal of time. You can customize these lineups by adjusting for diversity level, forcing certain positional stacks, avoiding certain positional stacks, and most importantly, handpicking player exposure. You don’t have to just rely on our industry-leading projections, but you can tell our optimizer how heavily you’d like to be invested in each player.
Just for fun, here’s a look at our optimized lineup for Week 1 on DraftKings.
Of this list, there were a few names that surprised me, but after a second look, seem to make a lot of sense.
Allen Robinson’s 3x projection is only 15.6 DraftKings fantasy points. In Week 10 of last season, when Robinson played Houston without their top cornerback A.J. Bouye (now on the Jaguars), he put up 28.7 DraftKings points.
The Jets’ likely WR1 Robby Anderson is $300 more expensive than Charone Peake, and could draw the tougher coverage in this matchup. Rookie and suspected Jets WR3 ArDarius Stewart has missed extended time this camp with a groin injury. Tight end Austin Sefarian-Jenkins will be suspended for Week 1. And, well, the Jets have to throw to someone.
Russell Wilson is finally healthy after suffering through ankle, knee, and pectoral injuries last season, and gets set to face off against a Green Bay Packers defense that allowed the second-most fantasy points per game to quarterbacks last season and did little to improve during the offseason.
Zach Ertz has a 3x projection of 10.5 DraftKings points, but averaged 13.5 DraftKings points last season.
Can I guarantee this lineup wins a big Week 1 prize? Well, no, of course not. That’s not how it works, and if it did, DFS wouldn’t still exist. But just over the course of looking at a lineup for a minute, I went from “Wait, these guys? Why?” to understanding how this lineup came to be built and considering using it as an entry myself. Even if the DFS Optimizer didn’t have all the other features it so clearly does have, the fresh perspective is enough to make it worth its time.
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