NFL Week 9 – Daily Lineup Optimizers Performance Comparison

Welcome back fantasy sports lovers! Last week 6 of the optimizers managed to place in a contest we track (one better than the previous week) — but only in the double up. Did any of the projections manage to place in the always elusive Millionaire Maker? Scroll down to find out and see all this week’s other statistics and results.

A quick note: These comparisons are a lot of fun to put together but no one is paying me to do it. Once you’re done analyzing the results perhaps you want to see what 27+ thousand people are so excited about and finally purchase that an Amazon Echo? Maybe not, but whatever your desires may be: if you see an orange bar (like the one below) don’t be scared, it’s just a link to everyones favorite jungle-name themed Internet retailer.

A note about Optimizers

Optimizers are super cool but should be used with caution and self-discipline!

Look, it would be great if you could just load up an optimizer/projector from the list here, press a button and get a winning lineup – but it doesn’t (usually) work that way. The best tools not only feature sophisticated algorithms but also options that you can tweak to get a lineup that is successful and unique. I wish I had the capacity to compare each optimizer multiple times using different options but it’s simply not possible to test every combination. This is why all the lineups you see generated below have been made by using either default options or a set of options I feel matches up fairly with the other optimizers. It may not generate a winning lineup but it keeps the comparison a little bit more fair.

A note about this week’s projections: I generated the lineups for this weeks comparison at noon EST.

Generated lineups by source/site

NFL Lineup Optimizer by Daily Fantasy Cafe

This site has a ton of options like game type, position match-ups, player exposure, various calculation models and more. Here are the settings I used: GPP/off/off/off/off/on/on/off and all 3 projection models were enabled. This is the highest projected scoring lineup.

Lineup Optimizer by daily fantasy nerd

This site let’s you tweak your optimization with sliders for salary range, projected fantasy points, projected value, total salary and randomization. It also has options for stacking QB with WR, allowed positions for FLEX and if you allow offense vs defense.

Premium features include the ability to upload your own projections and/or to apply customized “weight” to certain statistics before generating projections such as “Last 5 Avg”, “Season Avg”, “Season Floor”, “Season Ceiling” and “dfn Projected points.” My lineup uses the default settings with no custom projections.

Daily Fantasy Lineup Generator by Fanspeak

This site let’s you tweak your optimization by selecting if you are optimizing for a cash contest or tournament (more risk presumably) and if you want to prioritize a position (to include more expensive players in that role?). My lineup uses the first lineup generated using the tournament setting with a balanced prioritization.

Lineup Cruncher by FantasyCruncher

Fantasy Cruncher is a premium tool for researching and generating lineups for all DFS. It features all the options you could ask for in a lineup optimizer including flex position limitation, # of offense vs defense players, exposure, qb/wr/te stacking, players per team and unique features like consistency range, value range and projected points range. Lot’s of cool stuff and to top it all off you can use their Lineup Rewind tool to go back  to previous weeks and generate lineups based on all of these settings. This lineup was generated using default settings.

Lineup Optimizer by FantasyPros

This site allows you to generate a lineup based on expert consensus rankings or a custom lineup with your favorite players locked into their positions. After generating a lineup you can exclude, swap and lock in players as many times as you want while generating new lineups. My lineup uses the default consensus setting.

Fantasy Football Lineup Generator from USA TODAY powered by numberFire

I used to get these results from the numberFire blog but now I use their free tool which can be found on the USATODAY website. It has a few features like game selection and player exclusion.

LineStar DK App by Fantasy Sports Co

This app is available for DraftKings and FantasyDuel on both iOS and Android. It allows you to set players you “love/hate” before generating lineups as well as pick which games to include. One of the coolest features of this app is that the data it uses to generate lineups is constantly being updated until kickoff. You can even look at a list of “updates” to see which players are being upgraded and downgraded.

Lineup Optimizer by Lineup Lab using 4FOR4 projection source

Lineup Lab is a premium tool that lets you generate lineups from 2 trusted data sources (or you can use your own data). The feature-set isn’t huge but it has filters for game, salary, points and pts/$ and the ability to diversify results, stack players and limit offense vs defense. This site provides a great way to get projections based on 2 of the most popular sources in one place.

Lineup Optimizer by Lineup Lab using Pro Football Focus projection source

Lineup Lab is a premium tool that lets you generate lineups from 2 trusted data sources (or you can use your own data). The feature-set isn’t huge but it has filters for game, salary, points and pts/$ and the ability to diversify results, stack players and limit offense vs defense. This site provides a great way to get projections based on 2 of the most popular sources in one place.

Optimal NFL Lineup by Roster Nerds

Roster Nerds has one option: block a player. Oh wait, you also get 6 lineups to choose from and can sort-of pick which games to include using the menu at the top. It’s a mystery how it all works – but maybe that’s the point? It’s magic.

NFL Projected Optimal Lineup by RotoGrinders

This tool has no options for the optimizer itself. There is another tool on the site to build lineups but it generates seemingly random lineups.

Daily Lineup Optimizer by RotoViz

This site let’s you tweak your optimization with a salary cap slider, maximum RB/WE/TE selector, over/under filter, team total filter, and player/team pre-selection and blacklisting. My lineup uses the default settings.

NFL Weekly Lineup Optimizer by Rotowire

This site doesn’t have any options aside from player exclusion for premium members.

Optimus X Pro by Swish Analytics

This site let’s you choose a risk level from 1 to 5. It also lets you pick which games and players to exclude but you can only generate one lineup per day for free. My lineup uses a level 3 risk setting.

Statistical Results

Here’s a breakdown of what each chart compares:

Prediction Accuracy actual pts vs projected

Value Efficiency most pts per $

Value Efficiency VS Topposition pp$ vs top 8 players (avg)

Performance VS Topposition pts vs top 8 players (avg)

Overall Performancetotal pts earned

Real-world Results

Would any of these lineups have made money in 5 popular DraftKings NFL contests this week? Let’s find out!

DraftKings Contest Performance (Week 9)

	$6M $20	$25DU $25	$450K $9	$650K $300	$1.25M $3	# $
Points Needed:	181.76	177.64	183.24	192.74	179.46
Daily Fantasy Cafe	–	–	–	–	–	0
daily fantasy nerd	–	–	–	–	–	0
FanSpeak	–	–	–	–	–	0
FantasyCruncher	–	–	–	–	–	0
FantasyPros	Y	Y	Y	–	Y	4
numberFire	Y	Y	Y	–	Y	4
LineStar DK	–	–	–	–	–	0
Lineup Lab (4F4)	–	–	–	–	–	0
Lineup Lab (PFF)	Y	Y	Y	–	Y	4
Roster Nerds	–	–	–	–	–	0
RotoGrinders	–	–	–	–	–	0
RotoViz	–	–	–	–	–	0
Rotowire	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	5
Swish Analytics	Y	Y	Y	–	Y	4

Conclusion

Last week I anticipated that we would have more optimizers placing in the money but instead we had less of them placing but the ones that did doing incredibly well – with one placing in all 5 tracked contests! The rest did fairly well too. Perhaps this is a testament to the statistics used becoming more predictable or maybe it was just a week of less surprises. The score needed to place in all the contests was actually fairly high and yet 5 optimizer projections managed to keep up.

What will next week hold? Will a default optimizer projection win first place in one of these contests? Probably not, but you never know. Come back next week to find out!

Optimizer Leaderboardtotal contests placed in

Hopefully some of this information has been entertaining or useful! As always if you see any discrepancies or have any comments / suggestions feel free to leave them below or contact me on Twitter / Reddit. I will continue tracking the optimizers every week to hopefully determine which algorithm is superior to the rest. Iif you decide that you want to take the plunge and try your hand at one of these contests for NFL Week 10 please click my DraftKings link below. Thanks.

One last thing! The NBA optimzer weekly comparison is coming… I promise.