Underdog Battle Royale: Week 3 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 Week 3 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 QB’s 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 two of your picks – When it’s all said and done, there’s only going to be 36 players (6 QBs and 30 RB/WR/TEs) drafted in any given slate. Ownership is integral in every single GPP contest in DFS, and that includes these Battle Royale’s. It probably comes as no surprise that the top 36 players in ADP dominate the ownership. 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.

Week 3 Battle Royale Strategy

Here is the current top 36 in ADP for Week 3’s Battle Royale:

Top Pairings

Kirk Cousins and Justin Jefferson or T.J. Hockenson, Minnesota Vikings

Kirk Cousins has been the QB1 in fantasy over the first two weeks of the season. I might sound crazy by saying this, but I think he has a shot at saying as the QB1 or top three at the QB position. The Vikings defense has struggled mightily through the first two games of the season, and it’s becoming quite clear that the Vikings offense are going to need to score a lot of points to keep games competitive. There’s no reason for Cousins to be the QB5 this week and as the QB5, it pretty much means that you should be able to roster Cousins pretty easily if you can somehow get Justin Jefferson in one of the first two picks, or T.J. Hockenson in the second round. You could even go nuts and try to add Jordan Addison to the stack, but it might make more sense to gravitate to a Joshua Kelley, Keenan Allen or Mike Williams for the correlation. 

Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs, Buffalo Bills

You’re usually going to be unable to roster the Josh Allen/Stefon Diggs combo as a late round pick too often this season.  This week, Allen and Diggs are going to be available more often than not to anyone picking fifth or sixth. While Diggs disappointed last week, it wasn’t because of a lack of effort. He caught all seven of his targets in a 38-10 blowout where Allen was able to distribute the ball at will. Diggs is going to be seeing a lot of Kendall Fuller, who was his high school teammate way back when, and someone who I can’t see shutting down Diggs throughout the game. I think there’s going to be plenty of scenarios where you’re going to be deciding on selecting either Diggs or CeeDee Lamb, but I feel Diggs is the guy with the big upside. You can also feel safe rostering Allen with him while you really can’t roster Dak with CeeDee. 

Jared Goff and Amon-Ra St. Brown or Josh Reynolds, Detroit Lions

The Jared Goff and Amon-Ra St. Brown connection had a chance of putting together a huge day last Sunday against the Seahawks, but St. Brown was dealing with a turf toe injury throughout the day, so he did not see his full workload. At the time this article was written (Wednesday night), St. Brown was truly ruled questionable, but I think there’s somewhere around a 50/50 chance he plays. If he does play, he’ll get a glorious matchup against Dee Alford, who struggled throughout the Falcons Week 2 contest when matched up against Jayden Reed. St. Brown’s ownership has been dwindling rapidly, but regardless of if he’s in or out, we probably want him or Josh Reynolds, who would be seeing plenty of snaps from the slot with Amon-Ra out and has seen his connection with Goff featured heavily throughout the first two games of the season. 

Top Low-Rostered Plays 

Jared Goff, QB, Detroit Lions

After outperforming his draft position last week when he was drafted as the QB9 in Week 2 Battle Royale drafts, Jared Goff gets pushed to the QB10 position against the Falcons. The Falcons defense are better than the Seahawks, but with David Montgomery out of the lineup, I definitely see the Lions leaning more on Goff. I definitely do not like this play as much if St. Brown doesn’t play, but after watching last week’s game, I think it’s clear that the Lions defense isn’t as good as we thought they were after winning the season opener against the Chiefs. The Lions are going to need to score a lot of points to win these games, and that’s a big reason why I personally have Goff ranked higher than Tua Tagovailoa (QB6), Trevor Lawrence (QB7), Dak Prescott (QB8) and Justin Fields (QB9). 

Joshua Kelley, RB, Los Angeles Chargers

Joshua Kelley is being drafted as the RB15 in the Battle Royale this week, and I have no idea why. It really doesn’t look like Austin Ekeler is going to be playing this week, and he’s still being drafted as the RB9. Kelley’s matchup against the Vikings, who are the 20^th-ranked defense against the RB position, is infinitely more favorable than the matchup against the Titans, who are the top ranked defense against the RB position. As the RB15, he’s usually not drafted in any of these Battle Royales, and that’s borderline insane for the clear lead back in a game with a 54 O/U. 

Drake London, WR, Atlanta Falcons

Drake London is being dratted as the WR21 in the Battle Royale this week, and it’s with a matchup against a Lions defense that struggled to generate any type of pressure last week against Geno Smith’s Seahawks, and it’s a defense that will be without C.J. Gardner-Johnson, who is likely out for the season. The FTN WR/CB Matchups Tool also shows us that his primary matchup will likely be against Jerry Jacobs, who got cooked time after time after time last week against Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf. 

Garrett Wilson, WR, New York Jets

Garrett Wilson is being drafted as the WR22 in the Battle Royale this week. While it’s unfortunate that he won’t have Aaron Rodgers as his QB throughout the season, it certainly opens up an opportunity to easily roster him in any Battle Royale quite easily, which usually never happens to someone with an ADP of 12. Wilson saw a ton of Trevon Diggs and Stephon Gilmore last week, which understandably saw his targets dwindle to next to nothing. This week, he’s going to see a lot of the rookie, Christian Gonzalez, who just isn’t going to be playing at the level of Diggs or Gilmore at this stage of his career. Even with just two targets last week, Wilson is seeing a 30.2% target share, which still gets him in the top 10 among WR in the NFL.

Dalton Kincaid, TE, Buffalo Bills

Dalton Kincaid is being drafted as the TE9 this week in the Battle Royale. While it made sense to me that Dawson Knox would continue to get the majority of looks in the Red Zone last week, and while Knox was able to score a touchdown last week, I am going to jump the gun and pronounce Kinkaid as a top five TE in fantasy right this moment. Per the FTN Player Utilization Tool, Kincaid is seeing the third-highest target percentage among Bills receivers (13.3%), behind Stefon Diggs (26.7%) and Gabe Davis (14.7%). That target percentage is only going to be higher as Kincaid gets more reps in the NFL.