Sunday, Feb 11th — Late
Bye Week:
Bears
Bengals
Bills
Broncos
Browns
Buccaneers
Cardinals
Chargers
Colts
Commanders
Cowboys
Dolphins
Eagles
Falcons
Giants
Jaguars
Jets
Lions
Packers
Panthers
Patriots
Raiders
Rams
Ravens
Saints
Seahawks
Steelers
Texans
Titans
Vikings

Superdraft NFL Primer

Xanadamere

There’s yet another new DFS site in town! Superdraft was around last NFL season and they were super small, but this year they’re starting to really take off. To me, that smells like soft competition and money, money, money. If you were around the OWS community during the most recent NBA season, you probably saw us putting out some Superdraft content, and it was a great opportunity for easy money. This NFL season looks like it’s going to be even bigger as they have a $250k GPP posted for Week 1. 


$100 Free!

JOIN SUPERDRAFT

Promo Code :: OWS

First Time Depositers // Min. $100 Deposit


  1. Superdraft is a new site and they’ve raised a lot of capital (Caesar’s Entertainment invested in them this year), and they’re using that capital to aggressively acquire users which means overlay. During the NBA season they had overlap in their tournaments every day; they were intentionally posting tournaments that were “too big,” knowing they wouldn’t fill, but figuring the overlay available would attract new users. Finding overlay is one of the most impactful ways to give yourself an edge. We’ll have to see what NFL looks like for Superdraft. I would guess the big Week 1 tourney doesn’t fill, but even if it does, that just makes me think Superdraft will post an even bigger one for Week 2!
  1. Their scoring format is different and the site is new, so most players (and perhaps more importantly, most optimizers) haven’t yet adjusted to it. I’ll get into this later when I get to the strategy section of this primer, but the roster construction is completely different than anything you’ve ever seen in DFS (there are no salaries!) so the approach you’ll want to take is different, and most DFS players will take a while to adjust to that.
  1. The sharks are less prevalent. I’ve seen some big-name DFS players on Superdraft, to be sure, but it’s not a major focus for them. Guys like Awesemo and Papagates have enormous amounts of money in play each slate on the big sites, so when there’s late news to adjust to, they’re going to prioritize adjusting on Draftkings and Fanduel while Superdraft will be afterthought if they have enough time. If a player is ruled out five to ten minutes before lock, you’ll see that player low owned on DK/FD, but he’ll often be 20%+ on Superdraft because there just isn’t enough time for these big multi-site players to adjust everywhere (this applies in DK Showdown as well). 
SCORING FORMAT

Let’s dig more into #2 above because that’s the big thing we have to adjust to if we want to be successful on Superdraft. The scoring is fairly straightforward and similar to NBA, it’s a mishmash of Draftkings and Fanduel. Superdraft uses half-point PPR (like Fanduel), but it has 100-yard rushing/receiving bonuses, and a 300-yard passing bonus (like Draftkings). The roster format is straightforward as well, as it’s the same as FD/DK except with no defense so 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 1 FLEX. But where we get tricky is that on Superdraft there are no salaries. You can put whatever players you want on your roster. Instead of salaries, Superdraft uses a scoring multiplier, and this multiplier is applied to a player’s raw score to get their actual points; this is, by far, the most meaningful difference in Superdraft contests. The multiplier is also the biggest source of edge because while optimizers can be adjusted to provide projections for Superdraft’s scoring format, there are strategic implications that an optimizer cannot account for. 

For Week 1, Christian McCaffrey has a 1x multiplier so there’s no bonus for CMC, the best running back in the league. Joe Mixon, on the other hand, has a 1.4x multiplier, so his raw score is multiplied by 1.4 to get his Superdraft score. This is where the strategy element that makes Superdraft so different from other sites comes into play. If a player is building for Superdraft with median projections, it’s true that low-multiplier players with high raw projections will “look good” to a projection system. But we don’t care about median outcomes in tournaments, we’re playing for ceiling. If CMC has a huge game and scores 40 raw points, you get 40 points. If Mixon has a huge game and scores 40 raw points (as he did last year vs. the Jags), you get 56 points – a massive difference! 

MULTIPLIER IN NBA VS. NFL

Does the CMC example mean we shouldn’t play low-multiplier players? Not necessarily! What we need to do is build strong rosters that give us a robust floor AND ceiling. It’s okay to play a low-multiplier guy like CMC (after all, Mixon only had one game like that last year!), but you also want to weave in enough variance on your roster to be able to take advantage of big ceiling outcomes on higher-multiplier players without needing to “hit” on a whole bunch of longshot plays in order to have a shot at taking down a tourney. Based on what I saw in NBA on Superdraft, I believe we will see low-multiplier studs frequently be over owned on Superdraft relative to their chances of putting up a “must-have” score. I think this will be even more pronounced in NFL contests. In the NBA, we have backup players with high multipliers who will never be able to match the raw score of a high-minute, high-usage stud like Giannis or Doncic. In the NFL, so much of fantasy scoring is tied to big plays, and anyone can hit one of those. For NBA contests, a really strong raw score is 40-50 points for most players outside of the top studs, but you very rarely see backup guys or lower-usage players have games in that range. In the NFL, a very strong raw score is 20-30 points for most players, and we see players all across the spectrum post scores like that every week because a single long touchdown can be ~15 points all by itself. Superdraft tourney strategy is very much built around “embrace variance.” 

ROSTER CONSTRUCTION

The Superdraft format demands strong consideration of tournament size. If you’re chasing the big flagship tourney in Week 1 with 14,375 entries, you need to be embracing more variance on your rosters and targeting more guys with high multipliers. If you decide instead to play the $100 buy-in, 275 entry tournament, you should consider reducing your variance – guys with extremely robust floors like CMC, Davante Adams, and Travis Kelce are more valuable in that type of format (because of the weakness of the TE position, I would argue that the few elite TEs are always viable, even in bigger tourneys). 

In tournaments, my Superdraft strategy is to be underweight the low-multiplier, high-raw-projection studs; and overweight on the higher variance, higher multiplier plays. If building multiple lineups using an optimizer, I would also set rules to limit my exposure to lower-multiplier players. What constitutes a low or high multiplier has a fair bit of subjectivity in it, but I would say anything at 1.2x or under is generally in the “low” category. You should also consider positions: at wide receiver, with an enormous pool to choose from, and at a very high variance position (and a need of three per roster), I probably want to max 1 of the low-multiplier studs. WR is the position where I most want to embrace variance. 

CLOSING THOUGHTS

One of the things I’m going to pay very, very close attention to in the early part of the season is ownership. During the NBA season, we saw the chalk plays on each slate end up being FAR more owned on Superdraft vs. the chalk plays on other sites (after all, with no salary restriction, you can just plug in whoever you want). I imagine we’ll see the same effect in NFL, but we need to pay attention in the early part of the season to see if this holds true. I’ll be writing a weekly Superdraft piece for OWS, which will be found in The Scroll, and I’ll be watching and talking about ownership as we see how it shakes out. 

Superdraft is a new niche site with meaningful differences to how the game is structured, and you can’t just use your same projection system as you do to build rosters on other sites. That creates an absolutely massive edge for anyone who wants to play there. I’ve always been a fan of playing on smaller sites, because the competition is softer, and Superdraft is my new favorite. I don’t want to say it’s “free money,” because we still have to contend with the volatility of the sport that is football, but it’s the most +EV place to play in the DFS space and if you haven’t signed up, go give it a try!


Weekly Superdraft Content In

THE SCROLL