Optimizer Groups: Sunday Update Week 1 Optimal Lineup Strategy

Week 1 of the NFL season is finally here, now the hope is that Thursday’s spectacular opening game wasn’t already the season’s high-point. With gargantuan prize pools available across the industry in massive-field tournaments, anything is possible as the season gets started. The best way to cut through the noise and get to the data points that truly matter about a slate is through Awesemo’s NFL DFS projections, tools, and expert NFL DFS advice articles. Utilizing weapons like the Top Stacks Tool to view the slate as a whole and quickly identify high-value leverage spots is a major advantage on a slate that everyone and their grandmother will be playing. With fields this large and soft, proper lineup construction and major differentiation are the keys to construction. With that in mind, we’ll be using the best Week 1 NFL DFS optimizer picks and groups for stacking and differentiating lineups on DraftKings and FanDuel.

This article focuses on building lineups with a quality foundation by utilizing the powerful Groups and Rules/Limits tools within Fantasy Cruncher. All of the concepts and pairings included below can be applied to hand-building as well, the goal is to create lineups that have high scoring correlation and take advantage of combined outcomes within stacks while limiting the likelihood of building inefficient or negatively correlated entries for a full slate of NFL DFS lineups.

Week 1 NFL DFS Optimizer Picks & Groups

Overview

The rules and limits that follow are applied in Fantasy Cruncher’s Advanced Options menu. Notes are included to elucidate the reasons behind each rule and explain what it does within a crunch. These settings can be saved for re-use, which is highly recommended. Saving the Week 1 groups that will be created below is also a very good idea, they can be exported from Fantasy Cruncher as a DAT file that can be reloaded and updated week to week. These groups are created manually, but utilizing the Auto Groups Creator in the PRO upgrade is viable for these constructions as well.

Week 1 NFL DFS Optimizer Picks Groups stacking optimal lineup strategy advice predictions best bets free expert — **Rules & Limits can be found in Advanced Options under Position Stacks**

**After creating settings, rules & limits, save for future use via a multi-click process.**

DraftKings + FanDuel General Settings (in Advanced Options)

Unique Players Per Lineup – This setting forces Fantasy Cruncher to utilize at least X new players who were not in Lineup 1 when it creates Lineup 2, and so on. It is recommended to utilize at least two, and more can be applied depending on the degree of differentiation desired within lineups. For gigantic early-season GPP play, it is recommended to utilize additional unique players.

Team Salary – a minimum or maximum salary spend can be applied here as needed, though this is not a part of the recommended process in this space as leaving salary on the table is an easy path toward creating unique lineups while not necessarily making a negative expected value play.

FLEX position – this will allow restrictions on what positions can be rostered at the FLEX spot. The only position to consider in this case is tight end, but that is something to be restricted at the individual level via Groups, rather than at the global level.

Global Exposure Setting – this allows caps on the maximum percentage of lineups a player can appear in within a given crunch. This is a powerful tool that will also limit the available pool of lineups. If you see error messages that not enough players are available, it is likely because caps are set too low. The options to calculate at the end or continuously through a crunch tell Fantasy Cruncher how it can create lineups. If it is calculated continuously, Fantasy Cruncher will not use a player who appears in Lineup 1 but has a 25% cap again until Lineup 5, and so on. If it calculates based on the total lineups created it will land on those distributions by the end of the crunch but may utilize the same player in the first 30 lineups that are built.

Randomness – randomness provides a random multiplier to each player’s projected point total based on the set values. This is a valuable tool that helps differentiate lineups instead of simply creating them in order of highest median projected scores. It is recommended to use randomness, the degree to which it is applied is down to personal preference, but 15-25% is fine to get started. Typically, I will apply heavier randomness to more event-based players like wide receivers while tracking volume-based positions like running backs more toward their median projections.

DraftKings + FanDuel Stack Rules

This set of rules will force Fantasy Cruncher to build lineups with certain combinations. We are looking to always stack at least one skill player, ideally a pass-catcher, with his quarterback while also playing a skill player from the opposing team in the lineup. The theory behind this build is that a high-scoring stack will require some response from the opposing team to truly deliver a ceiling score in most situations, otherwise the team that is ahead will simply slow down and run out the clock. These rules are applied by completing the sentences with selections from the drop-down menu, they follow a very straightforward logic. Exceptions can be made for teams at the bottom of the rule creation window. After a rule is set, click the blue bar to add it, it will appear at the bottom of the screen as a completed rule.

Week 1 NFL DFS Optimizer Picks Groups stacking optimal lineup strategy advice predictions best bets free expert

QB with at least one WR/TE from Same Team (note: It’s fine to make this two or to utilize two of these, one with WR/TE and one with RB/WR/TE, but we can refine that and get it exactly how we want it for each team via Groups)

QB with at least one RB/WR/TE from Opposing Team

QB with at most zero DST from Same Team (this is more of a personal preference, high scoring teams and quarterbacks tend to leave their defenses on the field exposing them to simple point-scoring negatives)

Limit Rules

Limit rules can be applied to restrict certain combinations from coming together. This is powerful for limiting multiple running backs from the same team, or getting overweight to a certain stack within a lineup.

Limit QB/RB/WR/TE from Same Team to three

Limit RB/WR/TE from Same Team to one unless paired with QB from Same Team OR Opposing Team

Limit RB from Same Team to one (I’m also doing this with WR in a separate rule that adds an “unless paired with QB or opposing QB” but it’s a personal preference for NFL DFS)

Construction

These groups are built by utilizing the quarterback as the KEY player (by clicking the key icon next to his name), with the thinking that the quarterback play is the driving factor in which stack is utilized in that lineup. Built to specification, each team will have two groups, a team group, and an opponent group, both of which utilize the same quarterback, so four groups per game. This is the best approach to truly capture the requirement of playing individual “run-back” plays from the opposing team. A more basic approach would be to include all of the skill players from a game in each quarterback’s group and rely on rules and limits to restrict any potential overflow. It is highly recommended to save the Week 1 groups as a foundation that will be updated for the rest of the season. The recommended groups will include skill players who have an active role in their offense and provide significant correlation with their quarterback’s scoring, quite often bell-cow running backs who do not specialize in the passing game will not be included in groups as they are projected highly and appear on their own in correct distributions, while also not always providing the strongest positive correlation plays. Stacking quarterbacks with pass-catchers and allowing running backs to fall into the lanes then crated by settings, available salary and randomness should create a well-distributed set of quality lineups.

Week 1 NFL DFS Optimizer Picks Groups stacking optimal lineup strategy advice predictions best bets free expert

Sunday Updates

All active/inactive information that is available as of 6 AM Sunday morning is incorporated. The positive and negative boosts are included to increase or decrease shares of players within their stacked teams. For example, an unchanged Clyde Edwards-Helaire in the original settings would come up in more than 70% of Chiefs stacks that begin with Mahomes. Adding negative bumps to suppress this will reduce those shares and naturally increase shares of the other skill players as rules and limits are enforced.

A few questions have come along that I will address quickly. I typically utilize very heavy randomness on receivers, with less on running backs and tight ends. I use quarterback ownership to control much of the stack distribution outcomes within the pool of created lineups while allowing skill players room to exceed their public ownership projections and capping defenses at a relatively low number with an eye toward value and leverage plays. Running backs are capped between 25 and 45 percent, while tight ends and defense are capped between 12 and 25 percent. These ranges should be expanded to include larger shares of premium individual plays. These thresholds do not represent the overall entry caps that will be in filtered entries, only what is arrived at across a crunch including hundreds of lineups prior to sorting.

The goal here is to create a large pool of well-built lineups that can be utilized in any large field GPP contest. As part of my process, I will typically crunch far more lineups than needed and utilize a sorting table in Excl to filter to the best set of lineups for entries. The lineups created in these crunches should provide a broad distribution that includes some of the lower-owned skill players from each stack. Applying boosts is critical in pushing and pulling ownership on individual players within their team’s stacked lineups.

The groups below are designed so that each quarterback will have two groups to create, one with his skill players and another with the opposing team. A more basic approach would be to add them all to one large group with an “at least three” and let rules and limits set things, but there is a more granular level of control in creating them separately.

NFL DFS Optimizer Picks: Team Groups

Arizona Cardinals

Key Player: Kyler Murray

Setting: At least one

Group: DeAndre Hopkins (-20%), Christian Kirk (+10%), AJ Green (+10%), Rondale Moore (+10%), Chase Edmonds (+15%)