Lineups
This week's three picks for a large DraftKings tournament. Tap a player to see why he's in.
Players
Everyone worth considering this week. The bar shows each player's realistic range, the yellow mark is his middle outcome, and the shaded end zone is a 30-point game.
Games
Every game on the slate with its betting line and forecast. Higher totals usually mean more fantasy points.
How it works
How the picks are made
Two models, each doing the job it proved best at. The main model projects how many points every player should score, from his recent role, Vegas lines and injury news. V2, which learned from four seasons of real games, decides how wide each player's week can swing and which players rise and fall together. The slate is then played out 10,000 times, and three lineups are chosen together so they win in different versions of Sunday, each under the $50,000 cap.
How we test our picks
Before trusting a new model, we tested both on the entire 2025 season, a season neither one had ever seen. Each predicted every game using only what was known before kickoff, about 5,600 player-games, and then we checked what actually happened. The rules for what counts as a win were written down before we looked.
| What we tested | Winner |
|---|---|
| How many points a player scores | Main model |
| Ranking players against each other | Too close to call (V2 better at receivers) |
| How wide a player's range really is | V2, at every position |
| Odds of a 20 or 30 point game | Too close to call (V2 better at quarterbacks) |
| Which players boom together | V2 |
Two examples. The main model said a quarterback would beat his "great day" number 1 time in 10, and it happened 23 times in 100. V2's held at about 9. A quarterback and his top receiver both had a great day 11% of the time. The main model expected 4%, and V2 came much closer.
That's why the picks combine them. Ranges and stacks are what win tournaments. The combination itself is new, so every Tuesday the week's picks get graded against what really happened.
Before you lock
Check DraftKings for late scratches. Inactives come out about 90 minutes before kickoff, and this page refreshes around then.