NFL Playoff Weekly Winners is a brand-new format at Underdog Fantasy. It’s much simpler than Playoff Best Ball, yet the edge is immense. Let’s talk about the structure and strategy for Underdog Fantasy NFL Playoff Weekly Winners.
Underdog Fantasy NFL Playoff Weekly Winners Strategy Guide
Weekly Winners Structure
There are a few similarities to Playoff Best Ball:
It starts with 1,860 drafts, with six managers in each. The drafts are sequential, so managers are essentially grouped into drafts with whoever entered around the same time as them. Once six managers have entered, the 10-round draft begins within a minute.
Each manager drafts 10 players, and then they are done. There is no adding, dropping, or trading players. No setting lineups. Each week your team is active, your top scoring players–based generally on the same scoring as a standard half-point-per-reception season-long league– will accumulate points automatically, within a roster of one quarterback, one running back, two pass catchers (wide receivers and tight ends both qualify) and one flex player, which can be from any position other than quarterback.
That’s where the similarities to Playoff Best Ball end.
In Weekly Winners, you are immediately competing with all 11,160 teams in the contest, not just your pod. And you don’t have to advance. Your team will be active for all four rounds of the playoffs.
Each week of the playoffs is a new competition in Weekly Winners, with every team starting at zero. The payout structure is the same for each week, too. $5,000 to first, every week. $10 to 500th, every week. So there is no benefit from a payout standpoint to prioritizing one week over another. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do so anyway. Let’s discuss strategy.
Weekly Winners Strategy
The biggest advantage you can give yourself in Weekly Winners is to build to win one specific week. Sure, it’s fun to have teams that are live to win every week of the playoffs. But if you take a few players you expect to spike in the Wild Card round, and then also take a few Ravens (who have a bye in the Wild Card round), you are immediately putting yourself at a disadvantage to anybody who built for a specific week. And in a contest with a very steep payout structure, you can’t afford to put yourself at a disadvantage.
So, which round should you prioritize? That’s up to you! Maybe you can even do a mix, prioritizing the Wild Card round (Kupp! Kyren! Evans!) in one draft and focusing on your expected Super Bowl matchup the next.
In my opinion, though, the biggest edge is in building for the Super Bowl, and the smallest edge is in building for Wild Card Weekend. Why? Well, Wild Card Weekend is six games. So you basically have to hit the nuts across 12 different teams.
The Divisional Round is a little bit easier. Now it’s just four games and eight teams. The 49ers and Ravens are guaranteed to play in the Divisional Round, as they’ve earned first round byes, and there are some other teams that will be large favorites once brackets are set.
The Conference Championship round is just two games and four teams. If you build for this round and correctly predict the teams that will play in it, you will be at a massive advantage over all the teams with multiple players from eliminated NFL teams.
The Super Bowl is, of course, just two teams. If you can correctly predict the Super Bowl matchup and draft all ten of your players from those teams, you will be able to cover many more combos in the Super Bowl than teams that didn’t draft for it. Of course, if it’s a Ravens-49ers Super Bowl, for example, you probably won’t be able to get all of the best players from both teams, as several have average draft positions (ADPs) in the first round or two. So if you think the two Conference champs will both make the Super Bowl, you might want to try a couple different drafts with different combos.
If you think it will be a Cowboys-Ravens Super Bowl, on the other hand, and draft with that specific matchup in mind, you might be able to get every single player you want, based on ADPs.
A side benefit of drafting for the Super Bowl: if the teams you pick even make it to the Conference Championship round, you will have more active players than the vast majority of teams in the contest. If they make it to the Super Bowl, your team will be live to win both weeks.
Of course, like in any Best Ball draft, you have to be agile. If you start drafting for one specific Super Bowl matchup and then get sniped on both quarterbacks, it might be a good idea to switch your focus to the Conference Championship, for example.
It’s a new game, of course, and part of the beauty of new games is that they aren’t solved. This means it’s softer, but also means we may not have uncovered the perfect approach yet. Give it a shot! And if you want to talk strategy, hit me up any time. I’m @playerqdfs on Twitter/X, and my DMs are open.
