How To Win The NFL Battle Royale on Underdog Fantasy

Battle Royale is a DFS Draft on Underdog Fantasy that pays out $50,000 to First in Week 1 of the NFL Season.

The Battle Royale is a large field GPP DFS Contest on Underdog Fantasy & I looked at the winning trends from the 2023-24 Winners to deliver this strategy guide on how to Win the Battle Royale. In this contest, you’re drafting against 5 others and filling out 6 roster spots (1QB, 1 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, & 1 Flex.) to compete against almost 56,000 entries for the Grand Prize of $50,000. It’s only a $7 Entry Fee, The Draft takes about 5 minutes to complete, and you can submit up to 150 entries.

Let’s look at the winning trends from the 2023-24 Seasons to strategize on how to attack this Contest.

Stacking

For those people who are seasoned DFS and/or Best Ball Players, Stacking is a well known strategy. A Primary stack means a QB + one of his Pass Catchers – a Wide Receiver or Tight End and sometimes a Running Back.

A Secondary Stack could be two or more players from the same team or two or more players from the same game. Like Chase Brown + Ja’marr Chase if you want that double dose of Chase. This could also be Chase Brown or Zay Flowers on the other side if the Bengals and Ravens are playing, for example. 

When you stack, you’re correlating for a potential ceiling outcome and playing to have to predict less things, right. To win this kind of tournament, you’re essentially attempting to hit a 6-leg parlay; Let’s say you’re able to stack Baker Mayfield, Bucky Irving, and Mike Evans, and they score all the touchdowns on their way to a 40 point performance, and those are the three guys you need. Well you’ve tied all three of them together, so you now only have to hit on the 3 other players in your lineup to have a chance at winning the tournament. Correlating for a team or game going off is easier to hit than 6 individual ceiling performances. If Drake London also goes off in that same game and is included in the bring back, well now you’re really cooking.

Stacking is key but big game stacks rarely hit in this type of format, so knowing what works most often gives you the best chance to build positive expected value lineups in the hopes that positive variance will take you to the top of the leaderboards.

Correlation is how you win big in DFS, and almost all of the Winners in a Large Field DFS Contests have some sort of stack.

Of all the Battle Royale Winners in 2024, 94% of those teams had some sort of Stack

There were 6 instances (7 if you include week 18) of there not being a primary stack in the 2024 Battle Royale winning lineups. That means 35% of the time you didn’t need a primary stack to win the Battle Royale and 65% of the time you did. (This was down 15% from 2023.)

Any guess as to who those Quarterbacks were? 

Jalen Hurts, Anthony Richardson, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen (2X) Jayden Daniels, and Bo Nix if you’re counting the chaos that is Week 18. The obvious trend here is these are Quarterbacks who can run their way into ‘The Nuts Lineup.’ If you’re drafting a traditional pocket passer, I would include one pass catcher unless the team has a very spread out target share and that’s certainly a reason to not force that stack.

Way more times than not, it made sense to stack a QB with his Pass Catcher. This requires you to plan your stacks and maybe reach a bit above ADP if you want to ensure you get the right guy. Or you start the Draft Double WR and know you’ll have a solid chance stacking one of those Stud Wide Receivers with their QB if they’re both going in a similar range.

What didn’t hit as often as you think was the Quarterback with 2 pass catchers. This happened at less than a 10% rate in Battle Royale winning lineups. There are obvious exceptions like Burrow + Chase and Higgins. 

Of all the Battle Royale Winners in 2024, 47% of those teams had a Secondary Stack.

This hits at a high enough rate (Near the same totals in 2023) that you should be looking to target game environments that you think could go off or teams that you expect to score a lot of points in any given week. For example, week 1 of last year, the Dolphins had a 26.5 point implied team total and the winner started his or her draft with a Hill/Achane team stack at spots 1 and 12. I’d add it’s not something I would chase if you already have a Primary Stack – that winning team in Week 1 was the Anthony Richardson team that didn’t stack him with one of his pass catchers. Getting a Secondary Stack is imperative to your build if you weren’t able to draft a Primary Stack of a QB and one of his pass catchers because 95% of the winning lineups had some sort of correlation, but only 29% had both a primary stack and secondary stack. If the draft falls that way, sure, but I wouldn’t force it. It has to match up with the rest of the roster when we consider projections, game environments, and leverage.

Half-PPR influences Roster Construction

The Half-PPR Format favors Touchdowns; Running Backs, on average, get more opportunities to score touchdowns in the Redzone than their Team’s pass catchers, and pass catchers can’t ‘PPR scam’ their way to a high score like they can in Half-PPR because the format gives half the points that they get per reception than PPR sites like Draftkings. If a player has 10 catches on Draftkings, that’s 10 points; On Underdog that’s five points. In 2023, Wide Receiver was much more prevalent and still about 2/3 of the Battle Royale Winners had a RB in the Flex. In 2024, 88% of the Battle Royale winners had a RB in the flex.

This trend obviously favors drafting RB in the Flex in the vast majority of Drafts. Unless you’re putting in a large volume of drafts into each slate, or a stud wide receiver massively falls past ADP and you just cannot avoid zigging while others zag, I would be targeting RB in the flex in almost all of my drafts as it hits at a 75%+ rate for Battle Royale winners.

Starting Pick

While it’s important to focus on Running Backs in your draft, it’s also important to get either an elite Wide Receiver – or at least some undervalued wide receivers that are in an elite spot in any given week – in your build as you need that 30+ fantasy points ceiling that those types of Wide Receivers bring; This is evident by the number of Winning Teams that went Wide Receiver with their first pick across 2023-24 (About 53% of the time)

In 2023, about 66% of the Battle Royale Winners drafted a WR with their First Pick. 2024 was a big RB year and Wide Receiver still was picked often at 41% of the time. Running Back was picked with the first pick 52% of the time in 2024 which averaged out to about 43% of the time across the two seasons. 

I think the idea here is that while it may be enticing to take a QB or Tight End with your first pick and have a super contrarian start, that strategy worked 0% of the time in 2024 for the tight end position and 5% of the time for the QB position. I’d start my Draft with either a RB or WR in my first pick as about 95% of the winners had that kind of start across the 23-24 seasons.

Average Draft Position

I expected to see a lot of Winning Lineups with great ADP Value, but that wasn’t really the case. Sure, there were times when a player was taken 8-10 spots past ADP, but it was more of an outlier of the winning builds than within the normal distribution. I think part of this is with only 6 roster spots, there’s just fewer chances for great value unless injury news pops up suddenly and someone is able to take advantage of the field not reacting to it yet. If great value is there, definitely look at it as an opportunity because it creates a unique build with upside when you get a stud a round past ADP, for example, but it happens less often in this kind of contest than it does in traditional best ball.

Go Get Your Guys

What I did see when reviewing the Winning Lineups, was winners with the mentality of “Go Get Your Guys.” There were a lot of teams with Players taken above ADP… also known as’ reaching for Players’. While most players were taken around ADP, there were generally 1-2 spots where players were taken ahead of ADP. We have to differentiate from Best Ball guidelines because this is a single slate and it’s important to take a stand on the way you see the slate playing out and going to get those players you love.

What I did find was often times it was the Quarterback and stacks taken most frequently ahead of ADP which makes sense as Drafters are trying to get their stacks solidified.

The key is drafting the way you see the slate playing out, instead of being too restrictive of ADP Drafting.

Drafting Early in the Week Vs. Late

While there is more risk involved in drafting early in the week relative to drafting late in the week – value with injury replacements and not diving deep into the slate – I think there is an edge in drafting before Drafters have had time to consume NFL Content all week, get more clarity on injury news, updated projections, see average draft position of players, etc.

For example, let’s say JK Dobbins gets banged up in the game Sunday night so you start taking some shots on RJ Harvey in Drafts and the field is hesitant to do so because Dobbins hasn’t been ruled out for the following week. Sure, those might be wasted drafts, but if Dobbins does get ruled out, Harvey drafters have serious leverage on the field. I wouldn’t do a lot of Drafts this way, but if you have the bankroll to fire off some dart throws early in the week, you could have an edge if you’re playing this  exploitative.

Drafting with top-tier Projections

I think this is one of the most important parts of drafting teams with a legit shot to win the 50K in these Battle Royale Contests. Having consistently good player projections like the Domination Station at DFS Army does is a great way to attack the slate and plan out your Draft.

Does Kyren Williams project better than Alvin Kamara this week? Does that game environment have a high total and have shootout potential with potent offenses and poor Defenses? Which Running Back projects well that I could target if I start with Chase or Nacua? If we know that Bijan Robinson is in a smash spot against the 28th ranked Run Defense, has a top 3 fantasy points projection, and is going at the 1.1 in drafts, the leverage play in one particular draft may be passing on Bijan for a back with a similar projection and getting Drake London on the way back who I can stack with Penix in the last round. 

Week 1 of the 2024 NFL Season: DFS Army projected Anthony Richardson for 22.48 points – the same as Josh Allen. Josh Allen actually outscored Anthony Richardson on that slate (31.18 to 27.08) but Josh Allen had an Average draft position of 4.3 so there was opportunity cost there relative to Richardson’s ADP of 24. Anthony Richardson was going in the fourth round with a similar projection, so the correct move was waiting on QB, taking Tyreek Hill with the top non-QB projection on the slate, (19.06) and drafting Richardson in the 4th round with the same projection as Allen. Rosters > Players and having some of the best projections in the industry is imperative to making these kinds of decisions. DFS Army’s week 1 projections had Richardson and Hill number one in projections. Furthermore, Achane, Kamara, and Pitts all had top 5 projections.

Leveraging Ownership

One of the best ways to leverage the field in these large field contests is by looking for leverage spots. For example, If Chase  has an ADP of 3 and we know he’s in a fantastic spot this week as the game total is over 50 points and has a spread of 3.5 points, we know that this game environment could be a back-and-forth shootout. Knowing that, let’s say you’re at the 3 spot and Chase is there, but you opt to go for Bijan, Barkley, or Jefferson. You’re not only Drafting in the event that one of those players will outscore Chase, but you can also get direct leverage on those Chase builds by drafting either Brown or Higgins. Maybe Chase has a decent game but he only scores 15 and Higgins gets the Touchdowns and scores 25. Jefferson got 20 so the 2v2 of Jefferson/Higgins beat out those Chase/Higgins lineups.

You’re in a much better spot to win the tournament because you looked for leverage spots and drafted accordingly. The opposite of this is also true- Chase is more likely to outscore Higgins, but scared money doesn’t make money. If you like the game environment, you play it several ways because Higgins  outscoring Chase is within the range of outcomes. So much of winning in DFS is taking those hard stands and playing enough hands that you eventually win the tournament when variance is on your side.

Every week of the the NFL Season I’ll be covering the Battle Royale Contest with a First Look Draft on the DFS Army Youtube Channel so make sure you’re subscribed so you never miss an episode. Furthermore, in addition to the NFL DFS Draftkings and Fanduel coverage that DFS Army offers, I will be doing a weekly Underdog Battle Royale Cheatsheet for DFS Army VIPs – Top plays, games to target, value plays, and the top Leverage plays of the slate. There isn’t a better time to join DFS Army as we’re offering 20% off for Life – We’ve never done a promotion this big before!

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