Friday Freeroll: Week Five

Editor’s Note: This article is part of our new Daily Content section in DLF. Daily leagues are growing in the fantasy community and we’ll cover them throughout the regular season. Remember, you can get a DLF Premium account free for a year (or your current subscription extended for a year) just by signing up with FanDuel and making an initial deposit. For more information on that special offer, click here.

As the season approaches, some of us lose the best part of our fantasy football season – the draft. Well, thanks to daily fantasy football leagues, we are able to draft a team every week and test ourselves against thousands of other players. The drafts take minutes, the lineups are easy and the prizes can be huge. Here at DLF, we will share with you some of the best free tournaments that have amazing prizes to the winner.

For those of you looking for advice on daily leagues, including those highlighted here, I urge you to check out the weekly series “Daily League Bargains” on DLF. It is a great resource for those of you looking for some sneaky additions to your daily lineups.

I will also choose one each week to participate in and share my experiences and urge each of you to do the same. Also, share any freeroll contests we may have missed!

Let’s start this week with a little reflection on the FantasyAces freeroll I participated in. Here was my team from a week ago. No lineup shuffling this time so I went with the team I shared last Friday.

I had a good week but finished just outside the money (finished in the top 15%, but outside the top 100). Here are a few takeaways I had from week four and my strategy:

• Remember the rules – Since this contest penalizes more for interceptions (-2) than most, a guy like Jay Cutler can hurt you. A few untimely interceptions lowered his score. A good lesson to remember when the rules are a little unique.
• Fear the injury prone – My savviness (claimed) got the best of me as I thought DeAngelo Williams would be a great value pick. Instead, he pulled a Williams and got hurt early in the game, giving me a black hole at a wide receiver spot.
• Even the best can fall short – Julio Jones had been a terror for the first three weeks, but underperformed relative to his price. This can be harder to predict but don’t always assume the top players are going to always give you big points.

Now, on to the freerolls for this week and a preview of my team that I will be “rolling” with in week five.

FanDuel.com

This week, Fan Duel does not have any available freerolls but there are always free games that allow you to keep your skills sharp and be active on player pricing and strategy.

Victiv.com – $500 NFL Freeroll

There is a freeroll contest on Victiv this week that has a $500 payout. They also do a second that starts with Thursday’s game so if you jump on that early enough, you can participate. They penalize less for negative plays (-1) so don’t be afraid to go after a gun slinging quarterback.

Draftster.com – $150 NFL Freeroll

[inlinead]This week, Draftster has a $150 freeroll with a second that includes the Thursday game. The rules give some nice bonuses for 100 yard rushing/receiving and 300 yard passing games (+3) so you can pick players a bit less touchdown dependent here. They also use full PPR so there may be some values here.

This will be the freeroll I enter this week. My strategy was to go after high volume players and key matchups. My running backs have receiving abilities which make them extra valuable in this scoring system. Antonio Brown and Markus Wheaton are playing the Jaguars defense that is last in receiving yards and touchdowns pass allowed per game. Austin Davis looks like a tremendous value here given his matchup with Philadelphia (second in passing touchdowns allowed and bottom ten in passing yardage allowed). Julius Thomas was a little pricy but the matchup against the Arizona defense that is notoriously soft on tight ends should be worth it.

Draftkings.com – $10 NFL Freerolls

Draftkings has four $10 freerolls for the NFL in addition to four more for college football. Two of these started with the Thursday games, but there is plenty of opportunity to go around here.

FantasyAces.com – $100 NFL Freeroll

FantasyAces has a 1,500 person contest with payouts to the top 50 finishers this week. A few differences here include a heftier fine than other sites for interceptions (-2), two starting quarterbacks, and more emphasis on a playmaking defense as opposed to one that can keep the score low. Also, for the kicker fans, this one has a spot just for them.

Draftday.com – Various

Draftday continues with their variety of freeroll options. They have a $100 freeroll that is open to the first 3,000 entrants. This is your more standard type of contest so if you like to have no gimmicks with your football, I would choose this one. If you’re feeling really lucky, they are hosting a $1M perfect lineup contest that sounds exactly like what it is. The entries are limitless so competition here will be high. There is also a $200 “Target” contest where you are trying to score more than 300 points for the week. The prize is split amongst all winners that accomplish the feat. Last, there is a $5 pick ‘em contest for those of you more interested in the team sport and less interested in the players.

Sportstradex.com – Variety

Sportstradex once again has a few “winner take all” NFL freerolls. They vary from the standard salary cap contest to the pick ‘em contests so pick your poison!

Statclash.com – $20 NFL Freeroll

Statclash tends to prefer smaller freeroll contests both in terms of prize money and entrant size. This week is similar to last week as the smaller prize is limited to the first 200 entries. Don’t be afraid to get to know your enemies, there aren’t many of them.

Fantasyscore.com

There are no freerolls on fantasyscore.com this week but they have a variety of smaller free entry leagues. It simulates more of a typical fantasy league in size (usually around ten people) so it can be a nice introduction into the world of daily fantasy football.

Scorestreak.com – $180 NFL Freeroll

Scorestreak continues their year-long promotion of winning a Tesla but they continued their additional freeroll from last week. The $180 freeroll is limited to the first 200 entries with the top 100 being paid out. The game is a little quirky as you pick nine players to hit key thresholds and get points for each one you attain.

Next week, we will highlight some of the freerolls for week six of the season and I will provide a recap of my performance as well!

[ad5]