FanDuel Lineups Strategy Series: Vegas Under/Overs

Welcome to the first in a 24-part series on FanDuel lineups Strategy (give or take 19 to 20 parts of this series). My goal here is to share some of my favorite tips for Daily Fantasy Football on FanDuel, for different types of games on the site.

This past summer, I joined the FanDuel Insider staff, and I’ve been writing strategy pieces over there for the past four months, from Daily Fantasy Baseball to Daily Fantasy Football.

This series is meant to supplement the stuff I post over there with some basic FanDuel lineups strategy thoughts and opinions. My columns over there are a little deeper in context, as I’ll dig down into something like, say, which quarterback salary tiers gave FanDuel players a better chance in tournaments last year?

So to start this series off, we’re going to look at how those fine gentlemen in the sportsbooks of Las Vegas can help you fill out your FanDuel lineups each week.

Vegas Helps Your FanDuel Lineups

When I say Vegas is going to help you and your lineups, I don’t actually mean Vito and his buddies. I mean the point spreads posted each week and updated daily will be helpful in your efforts to fill out a winning FanDuel lineup.

First, we’re going to look at the over/under lines specifically for some Daily Fantasy Football insight.

We’re going to use the Week 4 over/unders posted on VegasInsider.com, and we’ll explain how they can help you decide which players to choose.

Over/under numbers indicate what Vegas believes what the two teams will combine to score together. So if the over/under is 45 points, and one team is a three-point favorite, then the final score, they are predicting, will be 24-21.

Notice that the three games with the highest over/under lines for this week are:

• Green Bay at San Francisco (48.5 over/under) – Packers (-8.5)
• Jacksonville at Indianapolis (48 over/under) – Colts (-9)
• Dallas at New Orleans (46.5 over/under) – Saints (-5)

What these numbers tell us is that Vegas thinks the Packers and Colts are going to be high-scoring teams, so you should highly consider using some of their players. Duh. It’s not like you wouldn’t have thought that before, but – would you have thought about using Saints players, in spite of Drew Brees’ bum shoulder.

Now, we’re going to go the other way, and look at the lowest over/unders.

• Detroit at Seattle (43, Seahawks -10)
• Louis at Arizona (42.5, Cardinals -7)
• Minnesota at Denver (43, Broncos -6.5)

According to Vegas, the Lions are pegged to score about 16.5 points this weekend. That could end up being a couple touchdowns and a field goal, or a touchdown and three field goals. But either way, this should be the lowest-scoring game of the week. I share some more advice on Week 4 defenses here on SportsGrid.

It’s not rocket science, of course, but I like the fact we can get an idea of what a team will score. The Rams, Vikings and Buccaneers are all expected to score right around 18 points, so you have to take that into account when you fill out your FanDuel lineups. Maybe we steer clear of Doug Martin and even Adrian Peterson this week in cash games (50/50s, Double-Ups and Head-to-Head games).

Hopefully, this first lesson in how to use Vegas to help your FanDuel lineups strategy was an easy one to understand! Check back often, as we try to make you a better FanDuel DFS player!