The Weekly Winner Contest on Underdog Fantasy

The Weekly Winners contest on Underdog Fantasy is dubbed as a Best Ball contest with Weekly Prizes and is essentially a marriage between Best Ball & DFS. You’re drafting as many as 150 teams into a large field GPP Contest and competing for weekly prizes. Each week, your teams you drafted prior to week 1 are playing for the top prize of $20,000. The highest weekly score wins the top prize of $20,000 with a generous prize pool to award the top 10 finishers. Think DFS but you have to play the same 1-150 lineups for the entire season. Think Best Ball but it doesn’t matter that you had the top scoring team across the entire season if you didn’t have a top 10 score in any of the 17 weeks. It’s the perfect marriage between the two Fantasy Sports so roster construction, draft strategy, player takes, and correlation will heavily matter in this style of contest. Let’s take a look at the winning trends from the 34 Weekly Winners of the 2023-24 seasons.

Roster Construction

You will certainly have your outlier, unconventional builds like the 2024 Week 15 Winner who drafted 4 Tight Ends, and 3 Quarterbacks, to only 3 Running Backs, but it’s important to have a guideline to what has been the average winning roster construction across the two seasons of this contest. For example, in DFS you wouldn’t have all of your builds be double tight end on a main slate – even though it wins about 10% of the time. You’d be chasing something that rarely happens and thus hemorrhaging money by having ALL of your builds that way. The same thing can be said for unconventional builds in the Weekly Winners – certain drafts will call for it if they fall that way but you want a portfolio of many Drafts that have been proven time and time again.

The Weekly Winner contest is drafting 18 roster spots. 1 QB, 2 RBs, 3 WRs, 1 Flex, 1 TE, and 10 Bench Spots. Despite 2024 being a big year for the Running Backs which was a flip from 2023, we saw the same type of roster construction win out most weeks in 2024 that we did in 2023: About 2-3 Quarterbacks, 5-6 Running Backs, 7-8 wide receivers, and about 3 Tight Ends was the baseline that you want to target in your Drafts. The one difference between the two seasons being at tight end. In 2023, 2 Tight Ends builds won about 8 times out of 17 weeks. In 2024, that number was cut in half to 4 times. We had a 4 tight end builds win 3 times, and 3 tight end builds won 10 times! The results were clear – either take a Bowers or Mcbride type and only draft 2, or draft 3-4 tight ends, preferably 3 in most drafts. If you take an Elite QB like Allen or Lamar, you only want to take 2. If you wait on QB, you’ll want to normally draft 3. Elite QB or TE aside, going RB and WR heavy is important. Most Teams drafted 5-6 running backs and 6-8 wide receivers.

The Flex Spot

One of the biggest, and most surprising shifts from the 2024 Weekly Winner was seeing RB in the Flex less than 2023; It’s only surprising because 2024 was such a massive year for Running Backs, but I don’t think it tells us a whole lot as it’s really just variance. You will draft more wide receivers, on average, than running backs so it’s not a big deal that Wide Receiver made it in the flex more than Running Back. Across the 2023-24 seasons, running back was in the flex about 64% of the time, Wide Receiver in the Flex about 30% of the time, and Tight End was in the flex about 6% of the time. The majority of your drafts should emphasize drafting Running Backs and Wide Receivers the most, as they’re the bulk of your team, and far more likely to end up in the flex than the Tight end for an outlier spike week that can result in winning the 20K.

Draft Strategy

What kind of Draft Strategy wins these contests? Hero RB? Zero RB? Robust RB? Hero RB (or anchor RB) wins a lot in this format, which isn’t a big surprise on a Half PPR site like Underdog Fantasy. Robust RB has its place as well as there were several winning drafts that had 2-3 RBs in the first 4-5 picks. There were also many winning drafts that had 3-4 wide receivers in the first 4-5 picks, but arguably only one of those teams was close to a Zero RB build. Zero RB, by definition, means no Running Backs in the first 7 rounds or so, so maybe one of the winning teams deployed a Zero RB Draft Strategy as he/she took an RB in the 7th round. As opposed to getting locked into specific type of builds, there’s a few constants that I would try to remember when doing your drafts since you’re really looking for an outlier performance and there are some key winning trends to follow.

1. You typically want to avoid Zero RB starts as it has worked only 2% of the time in this contest in 2024. (1% between 2023-2024 seasons.)

2. You want to take at least one RB in your first 5 picks. 32 out of 34 winners took a RB somewhere in their first 5 picks. (94%) Just Draft Running Backs Early and Often because 58% of Teams took at least 2 Running Backs in their first 5 picks.

3. You want to take at least one WR in your first 5 Picks. 32 out of 34 winners took a WR somewhere in their first 5 picks. (94%) Just Draft Wide Receivers early and often because 52% of Teams took at least 2 wide receivers in their first 5 picks and 17% of teams took 4-5 Wide Receiver in their first 5 picks.

4. 58% of teams took a Tight End in the first 5 picks. Those names were most often the Mcbride type. You either get a Mcbride or Bowers type or are generally waiting on TE and taking 3-4.

5. Down 11% from 2023, 47% of Teams took a QB in their first 5 picks. Getting an elite QB still has its place. We saw Josh Allen have multiple ceiling games this year and when he scores 40-50, you aren’t winning the 20K that week if you don’t have him. 2024 was a big year for a deep rookie QB class with late ADPS, (average draft position) so with a much weaker QB draft class, I think having more of an emphasis on QB in the first 5 picks will be important in 2025 compared to 2024. (52.5% across 2023-2024.)

Stacking

Anybody who’s ever consumed any Best Ball and/or DFS Content knows how important Stacking is, so it goes without saying that Stacking will be heavily factored into your Drafts when playing in a contest that is a marriage between the two Fantasy Sports. Stacking is so paramount in these contests that in 34 weeks of winners, the winning lineup had some correlation in it 100% of the time. If two or more players from the same roster appear in the same game, that lineup had correlation – either a team stack or a game stack. A Primary stack is defined as a QB + one of his pass catchers. Normally a WR or TE but this can be an RB too. A Secondary stack is another stack with two players from either the same team or same game. One example is Ja’Marr Chase and Zay Flowers when the Bengals and Ravens play each other.

The league has seen a shift over the past decade or so with dual threat QBs who can sometimes get in the winning lineup without one of their pass catchers. The idea is their rushing ability brings such a floor that they don’t need to carry a pass catcher with them like a pocket passer would. Also, some teams spread the ball out so well that it’s hard to bring a WR with them, so it’s better to not force a stack if it’ doesn’t line up in your Drafts; Josh Allen for example in Buffalo if you miss out on Shakir because none of the other pass catchers are reliable from week to week.

Across 34 Weekly Winners, we’ve seen 6 lineups win with naked QB Builds – 17% of the time. In every instance, it was a QB with big rushing production like Lamar, Hurts, Daniels, Fields, etc.

In Summary, 100% of teams Drafted had some sort of correlation in the lineup. 82% of teams had a Primary Stack, 73% of teams had a secondary stack, (94% in 2024.) and 17% of teams were Naked QB Builds, i.e. a QB without a stacked pass catcher.

Drafting Players with the most Spike Weeks

This is a nuanced conversation as it’s a combination of drafting good players on good teams, having strong player takes on some of the unknowns like rookies, and also knowing which teams may have the magical combination of a great offense and a poor defense like the Cincinatti Bengals did in 2024. In Best Ball and in DFS, you’re playing for the spike weeks that can help bring your roster to a ceiling performance that you need to win a large field GPP. Saquon Barkley vastly outperformed his 2nd round ADP last year to the point that he won people Fantasy Championships, and GPP contests in DFS & Best Ball. He made the most appearances in the 2024 winning Weekly Winners with 4 – alongside Trey Mcbride. Mcbride got there on skillset and volume; Barkley got there by being one of the league’s best players on a great team – drafting good players on good teams is a winning strategy.

Chase and Higgins are the best WR duo in the league and both made an appearance in the Weekly Winners three times as their team was consistently in shootouts and Burrow was slinging it all over the field; It’s looking like that may be the case again in 2024 as they didn’t do much to upgrade their Defense. Speaking of the Bengals, Rookie RB Chase Brown made just as many appearances as Chase & Higgins. If you had strong exposure to Chase Brown and Bucky Irving, you probably had some really high scoring finishes along the 2nd half of the season as they both were in multiple $20,000 weekly winner lineups.

One of the best ways to prepare for your Drafts is having Player Rankings you trust that bake all of these factors into the rankings; DFS Army Subscribers have Best Ball rankings courtesy of Geek who is doing Live Best Ball Streams all offseason. Those rankings can be found HERE.

Bye Weeks

In traditional Best Ball contests, I don’t give much consideration to bye weeks as long as I make sure my 2-3 QBs and 2-3 tight ends aren’t on the same bye week. In the Weekly Winners, I think you need to think more deeply about Bye Weeks. There are a few ways to look at this:

1. You can have a team with balanced bye weeks, so that you give yourself a shot in all 17 weeks. For example, if I drafted 6 RBs, I’d hope that I never have more than 2 Running Backs on bye, and in a perfect world, I have one on Bye at a time.
2. You could also look at it like I’m okay drafting a bunch of players who have a bye week within the span of 2 weeks and knowing that the squad I drafted will be out of it for 1-2 weeks, but will have a really strong roster for the other 15-16 weeks.
3. The third consideration is drafting a team to attack heavy bye weeks. In 2023 there were 6 teams on bye in weeks 12 and 14. In 2024, the one bye heavy week with 6 teams on bye is Week 8. The Cardinals, Lions, Rams, Raiders, Seahawks, and Jaguars are all on Bye. Those are 6 teams with big names who will be out of commission on the slate so drafting a team to specifically target week 8 could give you a strong chance to take down the $20,000 that week.

These are some of the winning trends that I’ve found studying the 2023-24 Weekly Winners. To review, you have 17 shots at the $20,000 with every Draft as it pays out $20,000 to the top score in each week. In your drafts, Target wide receivers and running backs early and often, 2-3 quarterbacks, 5-6 running backs, 6-8 wide receivers and 2-3 tight ends is generally what you want to leave most drafts with. Elite Quarterbacks bring the ceiling, but at opportunity cost so don’t draft more than 2 if you get an elite QB. The same can be said for elite tight Ends like Bowers and Mcbride. Stacking is King and if you miss out on your primary stack because someone sniped your QB, just make sure your lineup has correlation in it, and it’s even better if you can get a high upside running QB that you can run naked (unstacked) like Cam Ward this year who’s going late in drafts. Correlating good players on good teams is positive expected value and don’t leave your drafts without a secondary stack. Again, Correlation is king in these contests.

Draft good players on good teams and lean into your player takes. If you nail this year’s version of the Chase Brown or Bucky Irving player take, you have vastly increased your chances of winning this tournament in 1 of the 17 weeks. Remember in normal DFS Contests, the Price of these unknown players goes up each week as the sample size grows. In this contest, you get the discount the entire season, so you need to decide who your breakout candidates are. Pay attention to bye weeks as it pertains to your strategy; Have some fun with these Drafts and let’s win some money. Helmets up!

Make sure you’re subscribed to DFS Army’s Channel, so you don’t miss an episode – especially on 05/28 when Geek and Fling go live to break down the Weekly Winner and stream a Live Draft!