Underdog’s Weekly Winners Contest: Breakdown and Strategy

The big dogs over at Underdog Fantasy have released an exciting new way to play fantasy football that combines best ball and DFS, and they are calling it “Weekly Winners.”

Let’s dive into some initial thoughts around strategy. We’ll update this piece as we learn more about the contest and strategies develop further. It’s a brand-new way to play — so it’s time to think outside of the box.

How Underdog’s ‘Weekly Winners’ Contest Works

Even though it’s a new way to play, the rules seem pretty straightforward:

One draft (snake draft style)
No lineup management in-season (same as best ball)
Your highest-scoring lineup in a given week score (same as best ball)
The scoreboard resets to zero every week (same as DFS)
No playoffs (new!)
Winners every single week Weeks 1-17 (same as DFS)

Prizes for Underdog Weekly Winners

We’ll update once we know more about the prize structure, but here’s what we know so far:

$20,000 to first place every week
17 individual weeks

Strategy for Weekly Winners from Underdog

Below are some strategies and thoughts on the new contest format. This is brand new, so strategies will develop and evolve over time, and we’ll update this piece as we learn more about how to play, what works, and what doesn’t.

Bye Week Stacking

Weekly Winners is going to make bye weeks a lot more relevant. One strategy we’ll see is bye week stacking.

What that means: You might try to draft a team entirely composed of players that share a bye week. You’re giving up your chance of winning in that week, but you’re maximizing your chances of winning every other week.

Here’s the 2023 bye week schedule:

Week	Teams	# of Teams
5	Browns, Buccaneers, Chargers, Seahawks	4
6	Packers, Steelers	2
7	Bengals, Cowboys, Jets, Panthers, Texans, Titans	6
8	No byes	0
9	Broncos, 49ers, Jaguars, Lions	4
10	Chiefs, Dolphins, Eagles, Rams	4
11	Colts, Falcons, Patriots, Saints	4
12	No byes	0
13	Bears, Bills, Giants, Ravens, Raiders, Vikings	6
14	Cardinals, Commanders	2

Top Stackable Bye Weeks

Week 5: The QBs, RBs, WRs and TEs you can draft from these four teams are spread out across ADP, making it feasible you could fill out an entire squad of players just from these four teams. The primary issue is that outside of Nick Chubb, Austin Ekeler and Justin Herbert, there are no truly elite fantasy players on these four teams. The flip side is that it’s definitely doable.
Week 7: Six teams on bye will make Week 7 one of the most targeted for bye week stacking, and the Bengals and Cowboys in particular contain a lot of high-end talent. My guess is this will be the most popular week to try to bye stack.
Week 9: This is similar to Week 5 in that there are only four teams, which makes it harder to pull off, but the overall talent on these four teams is better than Week 5’s group. The 49ers have a ton of depth, the Lions are one of the most exciting teams in fantasy football, and the Jaguars and Broncos have solid fantasy depth as well.
Week 10: Of the four-team byes in 2023, this one contains the most firepower. But fully stacking a Week 10 bye team will be extremely hard with the elite players on the Chiefs, Dolphins and Eagles all going in the early rounds. You might not end up with enough firepower here.
Week 11: My initial thought is that this will be an underrated bye stack week. The QBs are all cheap and you could reasonably take three of the four. Most of the good players on these teams are mid-range ADP picks (Rounds 3-7), so if you decide to stack Week 11 byes, you’ll likely have to overdrafted players from these teams in Rounds 1 and 2 to make sure you can fill out the squad.
Week 13: With six teams and plenty of good fantasy options, Week 13 will rival Week 7 as the most popular bye week stacks. The six teams make it possible to find players in every round across ADPs.

Divisional Stacking

There is no Week 17 to game stack for, but there are still game stacks you can complete for Weekly Winners. Going with divisional stacking means you can get game stacks numerous times per season rather than just once.

Top Fantasy Players in Each Division

Here are the top 22 fantasy football players in each division:

Division	Top 22 Players
AFC East	Tyreek Hill, Stefon Diggs, Garrett Wilson, Jaylen Waddle, Rhamondre Stevenson, Josh Allen, Breece Hall, Gabe Davis, James Cook, Tua Tagovailoa, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Allen Lazard, Damien Harris, Aaron Rodgers, De’Von Achane, Dalton Kincaid, Raheem Mostert, Jeff Wilson, Dawson Knox, Mike Gesicki, Tyquan Thornton, Mecole Hardman
AFC North	Ja’Marr Chase, Nick Chubb, Tee Higgins, Mark Andrews, Najee Harris, Lamar Jackson, Amari Cooper, Joe Burrow, Joe Mixon, J.K. Dobbins, Diontae Johnson, George Pickens, Deshaun Watson, Rashod Bateman, David Njoku, Pat Freiermuth, Zay Flowers, Elijah Moore, Odell Beckham, Tyler Boyd, Donovan Peoples-Jones, Jaylen Warren
AFC South	Jonathan Taylor, Derrick Henry, Travis Etienne, Calvin Ridley, Christian Kirk, Dameon Pierce, Michael Pittman, Trevor Lawrence, Treylon Burks, Evan Engram, Dalton Schultz, Chigoziem Okonkwo, Zay Jones, Anthony Richardson, Nico Collins, Alec Pierce, Devin Singletary, Tyjae Spears, Tank Bigsby, Josh Downs, John Metchie, Robert Woods
AFC West	Travis Kelce, Austin Ekeler, Davante Adams, Josh Jacobs, Patrick Mahomes, Keenan Allen, Mike Williams, Jerry Jeudy, Marquise Brown, Justin Herbert, James Conner, Isiah Pacheco, Javonte Williams, Kadarius Toney, Courtland Sutton, Quentin Johnston, Samaje Perine, Jakobi Meyers, Russell Wilson, Jerick McKinnon, Skyy Moore, Rondale Moore
NFC East	A.J. Brown, CeeDee Lamb, Saquon Barkley, Tony Pollard, Jalen Hurts, DeVonta Smith, Terry McLaurin, Dallas Goedert, D’Andre Swift, Darren Waller, Jahan Dotson, Dak Prescott, Brandin Cooks, Brian Robinson, Daniel Jones, Rashaad Penny, Antonio Gibson, Michael Gallup, Jalin Hyatt, Wan’Dale Robinson, Kenneth Gainwell, Curtis Samuel
NFC North	Justin Jefferson, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jahmyr Gibbs, Aaron Jones, DJ Moore, Christian Watson, Justin Fields, T.J. Hockenson, Alexander Mattison, David Montgomery, Jordan Addison, AJ Dillon, Kirk Cousins, Khalil Herbert, Jameson Williams, Darnell Mooney, Jared Goff, Cole Kmet, Romeo Doubs, D’Onta Foreman, Jordan Love, Roschon Johnson
NFC South	Bijan Robinson, Chris Olave, Drake London, Chris Godwin, Miles Sanders, Kyle Pitts, Rachaad White, Mike Evans, Alvin Kamara, Michael Thomas, Jamaal Williams, Tyler Allgeier, Adam Thielen, Derek Carr, DJ Chark, KenDre Miller, Juwan Johnson, Rashid Shaheed, Jonathan Mingo, Taysom Hill, Chuba Hubbard, Bryce Young
NFC West	Christian McCaffrey, Cooper Kupp, DK Metcalf, Deebo Samuel, Kenneth Walker, Cam Akers, George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk, Tyler Lockett, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Zach Charbonnet, Geno Smith, Elijah Mitchell, Tyler Higbee, Matthew Stafford, Van Jefferson, Trey Lance, Zach Evans, Noah Fant, Brock Purdy, Kyren Williams, Puka Nacua

Most Talented Divisions

Here’s the average rank of the top 12 players from each division. This gives us a sense of which divisions have the best players:

Division	Average Rank of Top 12 Players in Division
AFC West	39
AFC North	40
NFC East	46
NFC North	50
AFC East	51
NFC West	56
AFC South	63
NFC South	69

Of course, having so many of the “best players” also makes those divisions harder to stack since the top players will go earlier.

Hero QB or Hero TE

One strategy worth exploring in Weekly Winners is the Hero QB or Hero TE build. This means just draft one quarterback or one tight end — and that’s it!

The most popular players with this strategy will be Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce — ideally together. Lamar Jackson and Mark Andrews are the other obvious choice.
The idea is that in regular best ball, you need a backup QB (or two) even for your elite players to fill in on those bye weeks. They are just there to score some points in those weeks so you don’t eat the zero. You can go the hero QB/TE route in traditional best ball, but it’s not a popular strategy.

My thinking is that if you have a Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen type on your team, you probably aren’t winning that week if your backup QB is the one scoring points for your team. So why even bother drafting another QB? We’ll have to crunch the numbers on this one as we start to collect more data on this format, but it’s a theory, at least.

Draft based on weather

The north and northeast usually get pretty ugly later in the season. Choosing teams that mostly play in domes or nice weather would be a way to maximize your chances of not being impacted by Mother Nature.