Daily Fantasy Football Strategy: Week 7's best FanDuel lineup, Week 8 advice

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Daily Fantasy Football Strategy: Week 7's best FanDuel lineup, Week 8 advice image

"Todd Gurley Week" — also known as NFL Week 7 — ended as one of the highest scoring this season in daily fantasy football contests.

At over 50-percent owned in the largest tournaments on FanDuel and DraftKings, Gurley is a great example of simplifying your DFS strategy and not overthinking a value play in a favorable matchup. In fact, with Gurley's soft pricing on DraftKings specifically, there was less of a need to reach for secondary plays. To win a big GPP last season, you often needed to predict the outlier players — such as the Matt Asiata three-TD games (yes, plural) — but so far this season, putting together a winning lineup in large tournaments has mostly been about picking the optimal combination of well-known plays.

MORE DFS: FanDuel tournament lineup | Cash-game lineupBest Week 8 values

What's the best lineup strategy for winning on FanDuel and DraftKings?

A strategy of picking the correct "good" players seems simplistic — and it is — but it's also terrific because it's very hard to roster a fringe player when you're new to DFS and working with a small bankroll. Knowing you don't have to go far off the radar to build a winning GPP lineup is a major advantage to a small bankroll because it allows for more chances to profit. If the salary cap is accommodative enough to select a lineup of consistent performers, you'll be positioned to cash more often than choosing a boom-or-bust player who may ruin an otherwise good lineup. This ties directly into Gurley last week: While popular, you were just overthinking if you chose not to own him, especially on DraftKings.

The loss of DFS players in Nevada and uncertainly surrounding the DFS community as a whole was undoubtedly the reason the Sunday Million prize pool was reduced this week, but I don't think "brettg83" is mad that he turned his $25 into "only" $500,000. Let's take a look at his winning lineup:

See our optimal Week 8 FanDuel lineup for big-money tournaments here

All the Gurley talk due to his high expected and actual ownership overshadowed the best performer of the week, Lamar Miller. The Miller/Gurley tandem was needed to win most GPPs and was rostered by nine of the top 10 Sunday Million teams.

Even at a cheap price and coming off a good week, Miller was able to go less than nine-percent owned due mostly to extremely high ownership of Gurley and Devonta Freeman. At 54 and 44 percent, respectively, most users had at least one player locked into their lineup, which made roster construction very similar at the RB position. These situations can be forecasted, allowing for a pivot in tournaments; however, with four teams on bye and two teams playing at 9:30 am ET (thus making their players ineligible in many contests), the options were more limited than any week so far. 

With so many users flocking to Larry Fitzgerald at a similar price point, T.Y. Hilton was an excellent play vs. a poor Saints defense. Andrew Luck was unpopular due to his price and recency bias, but the matchup against the Saints was very appealing. A fairly tight salary cap on FanDuel has driven many to save money at the QB position this season, meaning "brettg83" needed to save money elsewhere. Enter Stefon Diggs. No longer a secret, Diggs was 15-percent owned, yet he proved to be the key to allow for the expensive talent. 

However, once again kicker and D/ST were major differentiating factors in the Sunday Million contest. Kickers will absolutely drive you crazy trying to predict, but defense this week was very simple. The Rams defense was a) minimum priced, b) at home, c) coming off a bye, and d) facing one of the worst offenses in the league. Picking them should have been an easy call unless you outsmarted yourself.  

What are the best daily fantasy football contests to enter?

The NFL DFS season is roughly one-third complete, meaning it's time to reevaluate and possibly change your strategy if you're not winning. Do you feel like you're constructing some great lineups that perform well, but your overall account balance doesn't reflect the same strength?

Perhaps you're entering too many lineups chasing the million bucks when you should be entering "triple ups" that would be a much more profitable way to multiply your return. The threshold to cash in the Sunday Million starts with the 20th percentile, but you only double your money until reaching the ninth percentile . A triple-up contest provides a 3X return to roughly the top one-third of entrants. Sure, you're trading the upside by capping at a 3X return, but that's precisely the reason you should be playing both. Multipliers can be a great, safer way to build a bankroll than larger field tournaments.

I play multiple entries in the Sunday Million each week, but instead of focusing on the long-shot GPP strategy, let's discuss overall profitability. A score of 145 cashed in many of my triple-ups, but the same score would've returned $0 in the Sunday Million. In order to triple your $25 in the Sunday Million, you needed a score of 174. This correlates to just the top 5.5 percent of lineups returning triple or more on their buy-in. You don't need me to tell you it's easier to finish within the top 29 percent (threshold to cash in big triple-ups factoring in the rake) than the top five percent. Think about how many times your scores fall in between those two thresholds — and how entering different types of contests could've tremendously improved your bankroll — when entering contests for Week 8.

Week 8 daily fantasy football picks and tips

While it's too early to decide upon my cash-game favorites for Week 8, there are some underpriced plays that caught my eye for FanDuel this week: 

Running Backs: A group of cheap tournament plays stood out to me, including Justin Forsett, Danny Woodhead, Jonathan Stewart, Darren McFadden, and Eddie Lacy. (He burned DFS players last time out and season-long players the entire year; recency bias would only be stronger if the Packers didn't have a bye last week.)

Wide Receivers: This group feels safer than the RB's, making them acceptable for cash games: 

Stefon Diggs: The best WR on the team facing the Bears — not much other reason needed. 

T.Y. Hilton: Last week's performance will make him more popular, but it didn't move his price much. The Colts didn't look great against the Saints, so going to Carolina does scare me a bit. 

Demaryius Thomas: Peyton Manning can't get the ball to him like in years past, but Thomas has at least seven receptions in all but one game. Priced a tier below other No. 1 WRs, Thomas seems like a bargain among the elite. 

Steve Smith, Sr: He did just fine against the best-rated cornerback in the league last week, so no worries against a strong Chargers secondary. 

Best of luck in week 8! 

Sporting News contributor maddox2 has been playing Daily Fantasy Sports for two years and was a finalist in the 2015 Playboy Basketball Championship. When not tending to his full-time job in Finance, he's grinding DFS all year long in the three major sports. Follow him @maddox2DFS on Twitter.

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