The Weekly Winners contest on Underdog Fantasy is an exciting new contest that is really a marriage between Best Ball & DFS.
You aren't drafting or building a lineup each week for a specific slate, but you're drafting a team for a shot at being a Weekly Winner in any of the 17 weeks that the contest pays out $20,000 to the top score, so you need to attack it with the potential of a top weekly score in mind. I looked at all 17 Weekly Winners to identify trends that we can take into our Drafts to have the best shot to win this contest in 2024.
Roster Construction
While it varies a bit from week to week, we obviously want to have a guide on the type of roster construction that appeared in most weekly winners. What I found by looking at all 17 Weekly Winners, was on average the winning Lineup had at least 2 Quarterbacks, 5 Running backs, 7 Wide Receivers, and 2 Tight Ends. (Numbers were not exact whole numbers, thus averaged out.) You're filling out 18 roster spots with 1 QB, 2 RB's, 3 WR's, 1 TE, 1 Flex, and 10 Bench Spots. With the requirement of starting 3 Wide Receivers, it’s not surprising that it was the most drafted position among the winners. The 2, 5, 7, 2, Roster construction is a guide we’ll want to be cognizant of when drafting a team.
The Flex Spot
Running Back, Wide Receiver, and Tight End are eligible for the Flex and with the NFL being such a pass happy league, I was a bit surprised at first to see Running Back dominate the flex by appearing in 70% of the winning lineups. Wide Receiver appeared in the flex 18% of the time, and Tight End only 12% of the time. For those who don’t know, Underdog will automatically score the position with the highest points to the flex spot, so it will either be a 3 RB Week, 4 WR Week, or 2 TE Week. Given Underdog’s Half-PPR Format, Touchdown equity matters, and I believe this was a reason why RB was in the flex so often. In fact, 10 out of 12 teams that had an RB in the flex, had touchdowns from each of their RB’s that week. The only exceptions were Week 17 (Kamara had 12 receptions for 91 yards) and week 16 when Bijan had 7 receptions for 50 yards. They both added a lot in the receiving game in addition to their rushing work that day.
Draft Strategy
How many of the winners were Zero RB Teams? How many were Hero RB? Well, when I dived into the rosters, I was surprised to see that none of the teams were Zero RB builds. In fact, they were more often Hero RB or a hybrid between the two. Most of the teams had at least 3 Wide Receivers in their first 5 picks, so going Wide Receiver heavy was important, but so was targeting an elite QB, and what was most important was getting a Running Back in the first 5 picks. In fact, 100% of the Winners Drafted at least one RB in their first 5 Picks; those Running Backs were: CMC, Jacobs, Henry, Barkley, Walker, Etienne, Pierce, Etienne, Gibbs, Walker, Dobbins, Mixon, Harris, Harris, Barkley, CMC, Bijan, Mixon, Ekeler, CMC, Pollard, Bijan, Hall, and Hall. You’re probably thinking, "That is more than 17 listed." and that’s because Some teams even took 2 Backs in their first 5 picks - 41% of the teams did.
58% of the teams took a QB in their first 5 picks; Those QB’s were Herbert, Fields, Mahomes, Mahomes, Burrow, Hurts, Hurts, Hurts, Lamar, Burrow, Fields, Burrow & Hurts were both taken in the week 8 winner’s top 5 picks. Surprisingly, even though more than half of the winning lineups took at least one QB in their first 5 picks, that QB was only in the winning lineup 41% of the time. (Meaning he wasn’t starting because a QB drafted later outscored him that week.)
I think the takeaway here is that you want to make sure you draft an RB in the first 5 picks and most of the teams also made sure to get 3 Wide Receivers in their first 5 picks. The Week 5 Winner was the perfect example of this Strategy.
Stacking
It goes without saying that Stacking is important in DFS & Best Ball and Weekly Winners is a marriage between the two formats so obviously it’s important in this contest as well. Just how important and what kind of stacks? Let’s take a look:
100% of the Weekly Winners had some sort of Stack - whether it was a primary stack, team stack, or a game stack like Breece Hall and Jerome Ford in Week 17. 82% of the Weekly Winners had a Primary Stack - the 3 teams who didn’t have a Primary Stack each had a QB who rushed for over 45 yards in that game - Russell Wilson in Week 2, Lamar Jackson in Week 14, and Justin Fields in Week 17. It makes sense that their lack of a need for correlation came when a lot of their scoring was coming via their legs.
By the Numbers, 69% of the teams with a Primary Stack didn’t use a bring back. For the 31% of the teams that did have a bring back, it’s really hard to say if they were targeted stacks for specific weeks without talking to the specific player who drafted the lineup, but with less than a third of a hit rate, it’s not something I would target.
However, of the 52% of Weekly Winners with secondary stacks, 66% of them were game stacks with a player on each side. 33% of those teams were team stacks. So, if you’re tracking, 35% of the Weekly Winners had a Secondary Game Stack. I think there is definitely merit to adding correlation via a game stack so looking for game correlation while drafting is certainly a solid strategy, but it’s not hitting at a high enough rate that I’ll force it. I’m more likely to force a stack if I really like the potential of the two players for the entire season and they happen to face each other on the schedule - even better if it’s twice like Division foes Ceedee Lamb and Devonta Smith, for example.
Otherwise, I think it’s a good probability that with all the combinations of players, several of the Weekly Winners just happened to match up in a game stack on a random week - rather than it being targeted Week 8, for example.
Most Drafted Players
Who had the most spike weeks? Or more importantly, who’s spike weeks coincided with the most appearances in the weekly winners? Keenan Allen led the way appearing in 6 winning lineups. (Averaged 25.7 FPTS.) Ceedee Lamb was a close 2nd by appearing in 5 winning lineups. (Averaged 29 FPTS) At RB, Brian Robinson was in 4 winning Lineups. (Averaged 23.5 FPTS) Rachaad White (20.9 FPTS) and Raheem Mostert made 3 appearances. (32.3 FPTS) At Quarterback, Tua, Fields, and Goff all tied for First with 2 appearances. (They all averaged between 25-29 FPTS.)
The key takeaway here is we want to target players with frequent spike weeks. Lamb, Allen, Amon-Ra, etc. We also want to target guys who can vastly outperform ADP as their spike weeks will be more impactful.
Bye Weeks
Much like drafting in Best ball, paying attention to Bye weeks is important. You want to maximize your chances of being one of 17 Weekly Winners by making sure you have a starting QB every week and the same can be said for Tight End. Also, if you draft 7 Wide Receivers and 4 of them share the same Bye, it’s going to be really difficult to win that week. That also may be your strategy if you really care about accumulating the best set of players and are okay with knowing one week you won’t have a shot at it because a large portion of your team is on a Bye Week. For example, the team below made sure its core players weren't on the same bye week as they were spaced out, so they had a shot to win in any week. They were all there week 10 when this Lineup won 20K. The Quarterbacks and Running backs all had different bye weeks. The big 3 of Lamb, Allen, and Amon-Ra all had bye weeks at different times which was great because this lineup never had less than 2 players at any time... not forecasting injuries of course (Weeks 5, 7, and 9.)
Week 10 Winner
Looking forward to 2024, 6 teams are on bye weeks for weeks 12 and 14 this season. One strategy would be to maximize expected value during those weeks by drafting a team that would target players and specifically stacks for those week 12 and 14 games. The week 14 game between the Packers and Lions has a 48-point game total. Targeting a Packers/Lion stack is definitely the kind of strategy I’d be looking to employ in order to maximize my chance of winning during the bye week gauntlet.
These are some of the winning trends that I identified by looking at all 17 Weekly Winners of 2023. Keep in mind that even though 17 weeks is a good sample size, it's only one year of the contest so we will continue to see what is working each week of the season; Subscribe to the Fantasy Fling Youtube Channel as each week I review each Weekly Winner of the 2024 Season.
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