Friday Freeroll: Week Six

George Kritikos

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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.

freeroll1I 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 Draftster 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 an fine week, but finished outside the money. Here are a few takeaways I had from week five and my strategy:

  • Don’t second guess yourself – The tinkering can work against you and by picking Markus Wheaton over Brian Quick, it hit me hard. That was the difference between winning money and watching it go away.
  • Smart values can pay off – Austin Davis looked criminally underrated against a generous pass defense in Philadelphia and I couldn’t have been more right. Sometimes opportunity can trump talent.
  • Pace setting – I went heavy on Pittsburgh players thinking they would score early and often only to see Jacksonville grind down the pace. In the future, I want to focus on teams that are more expedient in their play calling.

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

FanDuel.com

This week, Fan Duel does not have any available freerolls available now but they did have a $1,000 freeroll they opened up late last week. Keep your eyes open around Friday or Saturday as this may be a trend.

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) like interceptions and fumbles so less worry about that here. Also, they have two flex spots they use but only a 0.5 PPR format so runners have a little more incentive.

Draftster.com – $150 NFL Freeroll

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.

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Draftkings.com – $10 NFL Freerolls

Draftkings has a few $10 freerolls for the NFL in addition to several more for college football. There are also some small paid games with large payouts for those of you who don’t like free.

FantasyAces.com – $100 NFL Freeroll

FantasyAces has a 1,000 person contest with payouts to the top 20 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. Let’s not forget the ability to use a kicker which all fantasy purists love!

Draftday.com – Various

[inlinead]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 if you have free time, blitz it with a lot of entries. There is also a $300 “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 the traditional enthusiasts.

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 the diversity is nice.

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. There is also a college football freeroll for those of you looking to learn a few names that will be in the 2015 NFL draft.

Fantasyscore.com

There are no freerolls on fantasyscore.com this week but they have a variety of smaller free entry leagues. They are making some changes to their interface so my hope is that they also start to introduce some freerolls into the equation.

Scorestreak.com – $180 NFL Freeroll

Scorestreak continues their year-long promotion of winning a Tesla but they continue their weekly freeroll as well. The $180 freeroll is now unlimited 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.

This will be the freeroll I try out this week. The strategy is much different here as the matchups matter in a different way. Is going up against a bad defense going to let a quarterback throw for four touchdowns or do you need to be sure that the opponent has an offense that can score as well? My lineup below utilizes quarterbacks with bad secondaries and/or teams that will be faced with a shootout on Sunday. All purpose yards focused on versatile players that either have a hand in special teams or are running backs with receiving skills. Receptions went with players who I expect to see a large share of targets due to injuries or ineffective secondary play from the defense.

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

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