Underdog Battle Royale: Week 5 Plays

The fantasy football world has already gotten a taste of Underdog Fantasy’s amazing interface in best ball drafts, with this year’s Best Ball Mania awarding $15,000,000 in prizes. But believe it or not, for a few years now, they’ve also offered a “Battle Royale” mode, which is a draft format, solely based on the Sunday afternoon games. In the Daily Battle Royale mode, you’re entered in a draft with five other players, drafting a lineup that will compete against every other lineup signed up in the Battle Royale. This week’s main Battle Royale contests are going to have a $300,000 prize pool with $30,000 offered for first place, which is not too shabby for a $5 entry. Here are some details on the Week5 contest:

Now that we’re ready to build some lineups, there are three important rules to apply in every single lineup that you’re drafting. 

1. Make sure to have some sort of stack in your lineup – It doesn’t necessarily need to be a full game stack, but with only six QBs selected in each draft, there should be a way for you to get the QB you need in your stack. If you start your draft with WR, WR through the first two rounds, 99% of the time, you’ll have the ability to pair one of them up with a QB in the third round. More often than not though, you’ll even be able to wait until later in the draft to put together a QB/WR combo. 
2. Pay attention to your competition – If you don’t have the ability to give 100% attention to your draft, including the five other teams drafting in your lobby, don’t enter the contest. You can make or break your drafts just by keeping an eye on the positions the others are drafting. Every single draft will have a scenario that requires you to put the pieces of the puzzle together. For example: if you’re in the fifth round, drafting in fifth position, and still need to draft a QB but see that the person drafting sixth has already drafted a QB, you definitely want to avoid picking your QB until the sixth round because there’s no way the person drafting sixth can pick a QB.
3. Be creative with at least one of your picks – When it’s all said and done, there are only going to be 36 players (6 QBs and 30 RB/WR/TEs) drafted in any given slate. Rostership is integral in every single GPP contest in DFS, and that includes these Battle Royales. It probably comes as no surprise that the top 36 players in ADP dominate the rostership. It doesn’t take much to differentiate your lineup, and you’re still going to be able to draft some pretty damn good players who have an ADP outside the top 36. With that said, I’ve looked over the results of the last three Battle Royales and there have been some winning lineups that haven’t been too unique, but last week’s $30,000 winner had a lineup with Justin Fields (the QB8) stacked with both DJ Moore (the WR28) and (Cole Kmet the TE10). 

Week 5 Battle Royale Strategy

Here is the current top 36 in ADP for Week 5’s Battle Royale:

Top Pairings

D’Andre Swift or A.J. Brown or DeVonta Smith, Philadelphia Eagles, and Puka Nacua, Los Angeles Rams

I want Puka Nacua regardless of whether Cooper Kupp is active. Nacua isn’t exactly playing the Kupp role right now considering he’s only seeing 28% of the snaps from the slot position. If Kupp is in the lineup, I see Puka continuing to see enough targets to be fantasy relevant. With the Eagles being one of the best defenses in the league against the run, I think the Rams are going to try to air the ball out as much as they can, and I think with Puka being drafted mostly in the second and third round, it makes the Eagles/Rams synergies pretty easy to obtain. You might not be able to get A.J. Brown, but both D’Andre Swift and DeVonta Smith are being drafted late, and both are equally capable of having a tournament winning performance against an unproven Rams secondary. 

Amon-Ra St. Brown or David Montgomery or Sam LaPorta, Detroit Lions, and Adam Thielen, Carolina Panthers

There’s a lot of great options for the Detroit Lions this week, but the problem with them is that they are becoming more and more popular. You might not be able to pick your chosen Lion this week, but you should be able to at least select one of Amon-Ra St. Brown, David Montgomery or Sam LaPorta and pair them with Jared Goff if you want to. In my opinion, the difference maker in this pair is Adam Thielen. The FTN WR/CB matchups tool shows that Thielen has been getting 73% of the snaps from the slot position. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t consider the slot position to be something you want to target against the Lions with Brian Branch emerging as one of the league’s best against the slot; however, Branch went down with an ankle injury last week, and hasn’t practice at all this week. Even if he plays, I don’t see him doing so at 100%. Thielen has been the most dependable and trusted Panthers receiver, and it’s not even close. Over his last two starts with Bryce Young at QB, he has caught 14 balls on 17 targets with a touchdown. If the Panthers are going to have any chance of making this game competitive, it would have to be through the air considering the Lions have been really good at stopping opposing running backs this season. They’ve only allowed 294 all-purpose yards to opposing RBs, and that’s the absolute best in the NFL so far this season. 

Breece Hall or Allen Lazard, New York Jets, and Marvin Mims, Denver Broncos

I don’t think anyone would be surprised if the winning lineup has some type of weird combination coming from this Jets/Broncos game. The only problem is there isn’t exactly an obvious combination to roll with. Russell Wilson, besides his obvious struggles, has been distributing the football throughout the field and doesn’t exactly have a single target he gravitates to. One thing we do know is that Marvin Mims is making the most out of his touches and appears to be a real difference maker for the Broncos offense. I can see him getting more and more targets as the season progresses, but when it comes to this week, I think he’s going to make an impact. The Broncos offense is intriguing because they consistently have to put up points on the board to win games because of their atrocious defense. When Mims is on the field, he’s usually not going to be on the left side, which means he’ll be avoiding Sauce Gardner. As for the Jets, it’s hard not to like Breece Hall against the league’s worst defense against the run. If we are looking to target a Jets receiver, I actually prefer Allen Lazard over Garrett Wilson. I’ve talked about Damarri Mathis being the main weak spot for the Broncos, and I think we’re going to see him on Lazard while Pat Surtain shadows Wilson.

Top Low-Rostered Plays 

Jared Goff, QB, Detroit Lions

Jared Goff is being drafted as the QB9 in the Battle Royale this week. With Amon-Ra St. Brown and Sam LaPorta usually being drafted early in most of these Battle Royales, it doesn’t make much sense to me why Jared Goff continues to get no love. While pairing Goff and St. Brown can be tough with Amon-Ra being drafted in the late first and early second in some drafts, there’s no reason why you can’t give the Goff/LaPorta combination a closer look. Last year against the Panthers, he put up 355 yards passing and three touchdowns, with all three of those touchdowns going to his backup tight end, Shane Zylstra. 

Joe Mixon, RB, Cincinnati Bengals

Joe Mixon is being drafted as the RB12 in the Battle Royale this week. Look, we know that this version of Joe Burrow is a far cry from the version we saw take the Bengals to the Super Bowl a couple years ago. It’s hard to believe we’re going to see something from Burrow that’s drastically different from what we’ve seen so far this season. Getting Mixon activated is virtually a must if the Bengals are going to be able to salvage their season. Mixon’s somehow being undrafted in a good chunk of these Battle Royales and it makes no sense at all. He gets his best matchup of the season against a Cardinals team that has allowed the third-most fantasy points to the RB position this season. 

Tank Dell, WR, Houston Texans

Tank Dell is being drafted as the WR18 in the Battle Royale this week. It’s absolutely crazy how things work, but whenever Nico Collins is the more popular Texans WR target this season, Dell is the one who has the tournament-winning performance. Of course, Dell was the more popular target last week, and Nico Collins ended up breaking the slate. Collins is quite popular this week considering he’s the WR9 in the Battle Royale, but it’s baffling how that’s the case when Dell is being undrafted in most of these drafts. 

Allen Lazard, WR, New York Jets

Allen Lazard is being drafted as the WR37 in the Battle Royale this week. It may be tough to get enough nerve to roster someone from a Zach Wilson-quarterbacked team, but this matchup against a Broncos team that has made Sam Howell, Tua Tagovailoa and Justin Fields look like future Hall of Famers should be enough to do it. The Broncos have had their corners shadow receivers every game this season, and I expect that to continue this week with Pat Surtain tailing Garrett Wilson every step of the way. Lazard and Zach Wilson have built up a bit of a connection and are coming off a week where Lazard significantly contributed to what was arguably Wilson’s best game of his career. 

Hunter Henry, TE, New England Patriots

Hunter Henry is being drafted as the TE9 in the Battle Royale this week. This isn’t exactly a sexy week to target a low-rostered TE with all of the big boys being available in the main slate. I am finding myself picking from the top four TEs (Travis Kelce, T.J. Hockenson, Mark Andrews and Sam LaPorta) more often than not, but if the draft doesn’t go my way, I don’t mind taking a chance on Henry, who leads all Patriots receivers in snaps, routes run and receptions. The Saints are yet another team that has been quite stingy against the run, and they haven’t even allowed a rushing touchdown this season. This is a good opportunity for Henry to get back on track and potentially give us a number that can mirror or even top the bigger names at the TE position.