I've played Fanduel the past few weeks with middling success although I am now sticking with the 50/50 because I seem to make money on those regularly. I think it is interesting to take a more analytic view of the contest since there is bound to be pricing inefficiencies and see where that takes us in terms of player discussion.
Using the FootballGuys early week 3 projections and the Fanduel scoring structure (4pt Passing, 1/2 PPR) I came up with the top 10 (15 for WRs) bang for your $ list for each position, ignoring K and DEF as I don't think those have much value in this type of analysis. Given that the projections are proprietary I won't include the projected totals for each player or points/$ figures but I figured the top 10 lists would be okay. If it is not then let me know and I can re-run the figures with publicly available projections (such as ESPN
)
Here are the results for Week 3:
QB Russell Wilson $5,400 RB Trent Richardson $7,900 WR DeSean Jackson $6,100 TE Jason Witten $5,400QB Jake Locker $6,000 RB Michael Bush $6,300 WR Malcom Floyd $5,800 TE Dennis Pitta $4,800QB Joe Flacco $6,600 RB Andre Brown $5,400 WR Brandon Marshall $6,700 TE Kyle Rudolph $5,100QB Matt Cassel $6,100 RB DeMarco Murray $7,600 WR Brandon LaFell $5,700 TE Brent Celek $5,700QB Tony Romo $8,300 RB Stevan Ridley $6,100 WR Percy Harvin $6,700 TE Tony Gonzalez $5,400QB Kevin Kolb $5,700 RB Pierre Thomas $5,400 WR Steve Smith $6,600 TE Martellus Bennett $5,200QB Alex Smith $7,000 RB Willis McGahee $5,500 WR Michael Crabtree $5,400 TE Jimmy Graham $7,600QB Cam Newton $9,200 RB C.J. Spiller $7,800 WR Marques Colston $6,000 TE Vernon Davis $6,600QB Jay Cutler $6,700 RB Alfred Morris $6,000 WR Antonio Brown $6,000 TE Antonio Gates $6,700QB Robert Griffin III $8,500 RB Reggie Bush $7,300 WR Dez Bryant $6,400 TE Owen Daniels $5,200 WR Torrey Smith $5,400 WR Vincent Jackson $6,700 WR A.J. Green $7,300 WR Reggie Wayne $6,400 WR Santonio Holmes $5,700 There are some expected names and some surprising names based off of my own initial views of which players represent value. Obviously the results here are only as good as the projections. This is a starting point when looking for value but the point of the contest is to score the most points, not have the most valuable team. For this I used the Solver Add-In in excel to calculate the highest scoring team for each level: Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert. Note that I made the assumption that the Kicker and Defense will cost $10k total and removed it from the budget.
Beginner ($55k + $10k for K/DEF)
Cam Newton
DeMarco Murray
Trent Richardson
Calvin Johnson
Brandon Marshall
A.J. Green
Jimmy Graham
Total $54,500
Intermediate ($50k + $10k for K/DEF)
Cam Newton
DeMarco Murray
Trent Richardson
DeSean Jackson
Brandon Marshall
Percy Harvin
Jason Witten
Total $49,600
Expert ($45k + $10k for K/DEF)
Russell Wilson
DeMarco Murray
Trent Richardson
DeSean Jackson
Malcom Floyd
Brandon Marshall
Jason Witten
Total $44,900
Results: DeMarco Marray, Trent Richardson, and Brandon Marshall show up on all 3 rosters, with Cam Newton, DeSean Jackson, and Jason Witten showing up on 2 rosters which isn't surprising given how high they all were ranked on the previous lists.
I wouldn't have put together any of these rosters myself but I may give one a shot this week to see how they actually fare in competition.