USFL DraftKings DFS Roster Construction, Strategy, & Scoring Overview
It’s here – and it’s glorious!
Yes, I am talking about daily fantasy football in the Spring. While the XFL is currently on hiatus and scheduled for a re-launch next year, this year’s football focus is on the 8-team USFL. All regular season games (10 of them for each team) will be played in Birmingham, Alabama, and all games will be televised on national TV. Since all of the games are at the same location, obviously only one game will be happening at a time across Saturday and Sunday. This setup makes for a weekend long sweat every main slate, and plenty of time to adjust lineups between games. There is big money up top this week on DraftKings…
…and at RotoGrinders we will have all of the USFL content and projections that you need to take down a big tournament! Our USFL product will be part of the Combo package, and for a limited time, we’re knocking $20 off the monthly price.
Now without further ado, let’s talk some football!
Rule Differences from NFL
First, let’s take a look at the major rule differences compared to the NFL, and how they will actually impact how we approach daily fantasy:
3-point conversion: In addition to the traditional extra point and two-point attempt, the USFL includes the option of a three-point conversion from the 10-yard line. This will likely only be used in late game situations, but it does theoretically make an 18-point game a “two-score game” forcing teams to be less likely to fully waive the white flag in late-game scenarios.
Alternative to Onside Kick: Teams can still onside kick if they like, but another option is to try a 4th and 12 from their own 33-yard line (after a score of course). If you convert, you keep the ball; if you don’t, the other team gets it where the play ended. During this type of play, full player stats will be accumulated and also gives teams a direct path to keep a late game push rolling without having to rely on that perfect bounce of an onside kick.
Shootout Style Overtime: Overtime in USFL is kind of like a penalty shootout in soccer. But instead of five shooters for each team, it’s three plays from the two-yard line for each team. Alternating plays at the two-yard line, the team who has the most scores after three series is the winner. If tied, play is continued until the tie is broken. Players only can accumulate fantasy points in overtime for scoring (two points each) via a pass, rush, or reception (no fantasy points for receptions or yards).
College Clock Rules with 2 Minutes: Like in college football, the clock will stop after a first down when the clock is under two minutes at the end of the 1st half or the game. This is just another rule designed to keep games more interesting for a longer period of time. It also allows Jeff Fisher to call running plays on 2nd and short during a two minute drill – an unintended consequence indeed.
In summary, the rule changes won’t really change how we play daily fantasy or construct lineups. However, it pushes out the limits of what is considered a comfortable lead, as there is a more realistic path to bigger comebacks late. With all of that said, the QB play in this league will likely be fairly poor, making this potentially just wishful thinking that a team can come back from a 16-18 point deficit late in the 4th quarter.
Roster Construction
Now, let’s talk about how lineups are constructed.
For the NFL, lineups consist of 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 1 FLEX, and 1 D/ST.
In the USFL, lineups consist of 1 QB, 1 RB, 2 WR/TE, 2 FLEX, and 1 D/ST.
The major takeaway here is that we are getting a lot of flexibility with our USFL daily fantasy lineups, which is great considering it’s only an 8-team league and this will drastically reduce potential for duplicated lineups. Tight ends are likely going to be ignored, as we are not forced to consider them here (which could leave them to be interesting, cheap contrarian plays). But really, how often would you roster an NFL TE if you did not have to? Probably not too often. In addition, we only have to play 1 RB, allowing us to load up on four high upside wide receivers. If RB play and rotations are anything like they were in the XFL, the 4 WR builds will likely become fairly standard once large pricing inefficiencies are removed at the RB position.
Lineup Building for Week 1
Now that we have some of the basics down, how should you approach Week 1 lineup building?
Given that we have very limited news, no beat writers with boots on the ground, and no official team depth charts as of this Wednesday, April 13th, the first thing is to understand the context of the mean projections. Week 1 will be the lowest confidence level we have in the projections, in the sense that there are extremely wide ranges of outcomes for most players depending on how playing time and usage shakes out. In the large-field tournaments, don’t be afraid to leave some salary on the table (many of the $5,000-$6,000 WRs can compete directly versus the $9,000 WRs) and stray into the second level of players for a given team.
Creating rules that limit playing negatively correlated players together in the same lineup will be key. Stacking will be important, but you may not want to be overly focused on making sure you have a “bring back” on the opposing team until we are more confident in player roles as this is a good way to kill a low owned stack by trying to be too perfect.
We will get into a lot of these lineup building topics and more on our weekly premium USFL show at RotoGrinders. Best of luck this season!