With the advent of daily fantasy sports (DFS), the college football world can now take its rightful place as a popular form of fantasy football.
To play the game, one must first know the rules. The full list can be found at DraftKings.com, but the quick primer is fantasy owners use a $50,000 salary cap to draft nine players in that week's contests. A key element here is there is no D/ST or kicker slot, so the game revolves around quarterbacks and skill-position players.
That is only one of many subtle differences between this setup and season-long fantasy football, so it takes a different approach to put together a quality college football DFS lineup.
With that in mind, here are 10 tips that can help fantasy team owners compile the types of rosters that can win in college football daily fantasy leagues.
(Note: For a glossary on some of the DFS terms used below, check out Dr. Renée Miller's DFS dictionary.)
Three general tips
Make high-percentage plays in cash leagues
The bar for success in most cash leagues is to finish in the upper half of the fantasy owners participating in that contest. Placing in the top five or even top one percent won't pay any extra dividends, which means upside potential is not nearly as important as consistent, upper-tier production.
For skill-position players, this means finding candidates who frequently post 100 or more yards from scrimmage. Since the DraftKings field is composed of players from the big 6 conferences (SEC, Pac-12, ACC, the American, Big Ten and Big 12) and occasionally teams outside of those conferences, there are normally a variety of choices along this line. Put together a good mix of top-name stars and lower-name workhorses and the odds of ending up in the upper half of a contest should be very good.
Aim for home runs in guaranteed prize pool leagues
The overwhelming majority of players won't win in these types of leagues, so this setup requires swinging for the fences on at least a few picks. To use an example from last season, team owners in this format need to aim for the Melvin Gordon-types with high point floors (Ohio State was the only team to keep him out of the double-digit scoring category) and with very high point ceilings (67.8 points versus Nebraska). Those players tend to cost a lot of salary cap dollars, but it is next to impossible to win in this format if another team has that player and you don't have someone of a similar caliber.
Don't forget that starters trump rotational players
This tip serves as a reminder that, generally speaking, it is best to stick with starting players who are likely to generate a large volume of plays. There are enough high-volume players that, outside of rare cases, it should not be necessary for any daily fantasy team to roster quarterbacks in two-QB setups, or start secondary or tertiary wide receivers, or running backs in a backfield with any type of split-carry situation.
Seven specific player-selection tips
Look for dual-purpose quarterbacks
Quarterbacks who are equally adept at passing and running the football have long been winning games in season-long fantasy leagues, and they are just as valuable in DFS contests.
Think of the rule of thumb for a dual-purpose quarterback as 300 and 100, as thirty-eight quarterbacks had at least 300 pass attempts and 100 rush attempts last season. Don't get too aggressive looking for ground gains, however, as only 13 of those field generals racked up 150 rush attempts. Get someone in a passing offense who will run the ball around 7 or 8 times per game and they will be a great sweet spot for DFS scoring.
Also note that a good dual-purpose quarterback is usually better than a quarterback on a rush-heavy offense. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, but having a player who has two ways to post points is usually better than having one with a single way to post points.
Be on the lookout for really poor defenses
Former NFL head coach Tony Dungy once said that games are lost more often than games are won. Part of what he meant by this is that bad defenses often do as much damage to a team as good offenses do to help it.
This line of thinking can also be applied to daily fantasy football. There were 158 games last season where a defense allowed 300 or more rushing yards, and a mere eighteen teams accounted for 73 of those games, or 46.2 percent. Some of those teams were outside of the big six conferences, but when those clubs are playing against a powerhouse, it can mean unsurpassed upside.
Red zone visits equal touchdowns for running backs
A handy rule of thumb for choosing between running backs is to go for the one whose offense is racking up red zone drives. Last season, the average college football team had 23 rushing touchdowns, and 18 of those scores occurred on plays that began in the red zone. This shows red zone volume means everything for running backs, so check sites like CFBstats.com or NCAA.com to see how a running back's team is doing in red zone drive volume before putting that ball carrier into your DFS lineup.
Yardage trumps receptions, even in a points-per-reception (PPR) league
Last season, receiving yards accounted for 16.6 percent more points than receptions, so daily fantasy team owners should pay more attention to a wide receiver's yards per reception total than to his reception volume. There are cases where a low-cost wide receiver PPR insurance policy play is the way to go, but in general always value big plays over receptions.
Start wide receivers over tight ends
Tight ends are no longer a separate roster option, as the new DraftKings lineup has folded tight ends into the wide receiver positional ranks.
This almost eliminates any reason to put a tight end into a lineup. The math on this is simple -- tight ends just don't tally enough receptions or yards to justify a significant salary cap investment. Last season, only five tight ends averaged four or more receptions per game and only five averaged 50 or more receiving yards. By contrast, there were 66 wide receivers that averaged four or more receptions per game and 83 that averaged 50 or more receiving yards.
This means when in doubt, always pick a wide receiver over a tight end.
Don't worry about interceptions for quarterbacks
Unlike many season-long fantasy football leagues that take away two points for an interception, DraftKings only takes away a single point. Since the average quarterback throws about one interception per game, this element isn't costly enough to justify keeping a player out of the lineup.
The low point impact isn't the only reason to forget about interceptions. Studies I have done over the years indicate that roughly 40 percent to 50 percent of interceptions occur due to factors that are out of the quarterback's control (tipped passes, dropped passes, and so on). That means luck is a huge factor in interceptions, which is another reason to not try to predict them.
Don't overvalue home/road splits as tiebreakers
Home/road splits are sometimes tallied as a strong tiebreaker, but the facts show this is not generally something to be concerned about. For example, take a look at how home and away quarterbacks did on average last season:
Home quarterbacks - 238 yards, 1.8 touchdowns, 0.9 interceptions.
Away quarterbacks - 224 yards, 1.5 touchdowns, 1.0 interceptions
The home quarterbacks did post more yards and touchdowns and fewer interceptions, but only by marginal amounts.
What this means is home/road splits can be a good tiebreaker in close roster calls, but it should rarely be used to justify vaulting a lower-rated player over a higher-rated player.