When entering NFL GPPs on the two major daily fantasy sports sites, you will notice that there are roster format and scoring differences between them. As a result, each brings enough of its own flavor to make simply plugging your “go-to team” for the week into each site an unworkable solution.
The main roster format difference is the flex position on DraftKings, which FanDuel does not offer on its NFL contests. This roster spot presents a far more complex set of pre-lock decisions than the kicker position on FanDuel does. With your FanDuel kicker spot, you have a maximum of 32 players, which gets automatically cut down when removing large underdogs and bad weather kickers until you are really only choosing among a small handful of players at most.
The DraftKings flex roster spot is open to all WR, RB, and TE, and, as a result, you are choosing from among a pool of more than 150 players and you must take game flow and expected ownership into consideration.
Using deconstruction of previous winning rosters in the DraftKings Millionaire Maker for the first 11 weeks of the NFL season, let’s first take a look at what the flex position on those teams looks like:
Week 1 – Eddie Lacy, RB, 17.9 points
Week 2 – Larry Fitzgerald, WR, 40.2 points
Week 3 – LaGarrette Blount, RB, 28.2 points
Week 4 – Demaryius Thomas, WR, 18.3 points
Week 5 – Doug Martin, RB, 39.8 points
Week 6 – Steve Smith, WR, 29.7 points
Week 7 – Lamar Miller, RB, 41.6 points
Week 8 – Jonathan Stewart, RB, 14.3 points
Week 9 – Lamar Miller, RB, 33.1 points
Week 10 – Charcandrick West, RB, 31.1 points
Week 11 – LeSean McCoy, RB, 24.3 points
Through the first 11 weeks of completed action, the flex has been represented by a RB eight times, and a WR three times. No winner has used the TE as a flex do date in 2015.
In terms of trends, the flex has been used for a RB on the winning roster for each of the past five weeks.
In addition to the work that goes into deciding which position, and then which player to roll out as your flex, the flex position on DraftKings serves another extremely important strategic purpose. Due to the late swap option on DraftKings, where you can sub out a player whose game has not yet started for another player who hasn’t played yet, a sharp tourney player will put one of his later playing guys in the flex instead of an early game player.
If late breaking news regarding a Sunday late game or the Monday night game comes across, the tourney player can sub out his flex for anyone playing WR, RB, or TE as long as his salary will not put his team over cap.
How big an error would it be if you used a 1pm player in your flex and then it comes out at 2pm that the Sunday night starting running back facing the worst run defense in the NFL woke up with a migraine and is now inactive, but you have two stud RBs locked in and your so-so WR that you just wedged into your lineup due to low salary is blocking your flex? You probably won’t want to watch football on Sunday night, that’s for sure.
Another strategy involving the flex position is in the tournament endgame. There are people who, when deciding between two players they project similar point per tournament dollar out of, will pivot towards the one who is playing the Sunday or Monday night game over the Sunday afternoon starter. When their tournament team has a big day and they are near the top of the leaderboard, these players will do a scan of the tourney teams above them and project what will be needed for their team to take the tournament down.
On DraftKings, you cannot see who your opponents have rostered if their games have not yet started, but by taking the total salary allocated of the rest of their roster and subtracting this from the DraftKings NFL salary cap of $50,000, you can get a very good idea of who it is that they still have left.
As an example, if you are in third place and have Antonio Brown left to play on Monday night and the two players ahead of you both have Brown as well, which will be obvious due to his large salary, you know that even if he goes for 200 yards and three scores, you cannot win. If you have him in your flex as the late starter, then you can pivot off of Brown and sub in virtually any other WR, RB, or TE in the game, as his salary will afford you every option. Of course, you also must decide whether the potential loss of third place to other Brown owners chasing you is worth the shot at glory; but that’s a story for another column.
Visit DraftKings today and apply what you’ve learned.