We found the best in-season free Fantasy Football lineup tools and waiver wire tools that will help you continue your winning ways! Your Fantasy Football draft is behind you and now you have to ride the horse you picked. It’s like marrying a pretty good looking person, hoping they stay that way forever!
You likely used some of the Top 43 Free Fantasy Football Draft Tools I listed earlier this season, so you probably picked a winner! But now, it’s up to you to make the right choices with your lineups and waiver pickups.
All of the lineup and waiver tools that I mention below are ones I’ve checked out personally, whether it be for my own Fantasy lineups or just in my day-to-day research.
I just added FOUR new tools for this week!
Some tools are specifically made for Fantasy Football and some are just NFL related that happen to help Fantasy owners a lot.
Before I get too far, I wanted to mention FantasyPros’ My Playbook, which is easily the most helpful in-season Fantasy Football tool anyone could use. It essentially combines nearly all of the free Fantasy Football lineup tools and waiver wire tools below, but it isn’t free.
If your league fees combine for less than $50, then don’t worry about buying this one. Just use the free ones below.
But if you pay more, then consider investing in this tool to help you get a MUCH bigger return on your investment – especially if you’re in more than one Fantasy league.
Just like their Draft Wizard, FantasyPros’ My Playbook is actually a suite of lineup and waiver wire tools. For instance, you can use the “Start/Sit Assistant” to help you figure out who the experts would prefer to start from your lineups. And the same goes for your waiver wire choices, letting you know which free agents experts would pick up – and nearly as important, which ones they would drop if they had your roster.
You can also use their “Trade Finder” to look for good trade partners in your league, helping you understand which players you can afford to move, and which players you should be able to get back in return. Along those same lines, the “Trade Analyzer” will help you make trade decisions if someone comes to you with a deal.
Finally, there’s the “Research Assistant,” which is one of the best Fantasy tools out there, free or pay. You’ll install this bookmarklet into your browser, then when you’re reading about the NFL or Fantasy Football on ANY website, you can click this button and it will instantly show you which players discussed on that page are available as free agents in your league, or if you own them or someone else does. Brilliant!
So if you have a couple leagues and you have a chance at some good winnings, then getting “My Playbook” from FantasyPros is a really good investment.
Some of the tools below come from the same sites, and some are part of a basic plan that is part of a premium set of tools. But they’re all free, and they’re all awesome!
In nearly every one of my “top Fantasy tools” articles, I mention this site as one of the best, and it’s doubtful that will ever change. Goose doesn’t pay me to talk about how awesome this site is, but I want my readers to know just how valuable it is. He scours the Internet several times a day to find the best articles, podcasts, rankings, DFS help, strategy pieces and videos posted every day. I’m pretty sure he’s an insomniac.
As we mentioned, this site consolidates all of the Fantasy Football writers’ and experts’ rankings to give you one average ranking, which can help those looking for a bigger set of inputs. You can either go off the entire list of experts ranking or you can pick a handful of your favorite experts to see what their average rankings for this week works out to be.
Dave Richard created this tool three or so years ago, and I’m always complimenting him on it. It’s brilliant, easy-to-use, and has since been copied on other sites. Basically, it helps you understand the true perceived value of one player compared to another, whether it’s at the same position or a different one.
It’s easy to say Devonta Freeman is a top-10 running back and that Rashad Jennings is a top-30 running back. But by using this chart, you can see that Freeman is actually about three-times as valuable as Jennings in standard leagues.
Or if someone offers you Demaryius Thomas in a Fantasy trade for a running back, what level RB should you trade back in return? According to this chart, Jeremy Hill or DeMarco Murray fits the bill. And what about 2-for-1 trades? What would DeAndre Hopkins (32 value) cost you if you wanted to upgrade a wide receiver by trading one away along with your third running back? How about Keenan Allen (23) and Ryan Mathews (9)?
They were right.
I downloaded the FREE app on my iPhone and started getting Fantasy player alerts for injury statuses, big quotes by coaches about players, signings, and even stat updates on players that are outscoring their current Fantasy averages. You don’t have to set up anything. It’s great for more than just alerts, too. They have “Instant Advice,” where users can pose a lineup or roster question to other users (you can answer them, too!).
Use code “FK4DKH” and you’ll get $2 credit (the app is free, but you can use the credits to buy Fantasy stuff (they’re adding more to the store, like advanced analytics, weekly scouting reports and play by plays.
The SleeperBot app now joins the NFL RedZone Channel, my live scoring apps and beer for my NFL Sunday best friends!
I like this one a little better than the CBS version, mostly because they rate defenses against positions by more than JUST rushing yards against, or JUST passing touchdowns against. They combine all of those numbers in an algorithm to really determine which defenses are the five toughest against a particular position, and which are the five weakest against a position. (They’ll update at some point every Tuesday.)
NFL.com’s Michael Fabiano started this column back in the early 2000s with CBS, and I witnessed firsthand how much effort he put into these articles. After he moved on to NFL.com, Jamey Eisenberg took the torch and ran with it. So to me, these are the two best sets of “Start-Sit” columns in Fantasy, so check them both out weekly.
These guys take a deeper look into the weekly rankings to discuss which players may or may not be better streaming options at different positions for the upcoming week’s matchups. Rather than talk about the Andrew Lucks and the Keenan Allens of the world, who you are starting no matter what, they look further down to see if guys like Matt Ryan and Dwayne Allen are worth a start this week.
Check out this daily Fantasy Football talk show every afternoon at 4pm or 5pm ET on NFL.com or the NFL Network. Michael Fabiano and Co. take a look at the weekly matchups, daily news and injuries, to see how it affects your starting lineups and rosters.
What I love about these guys is they have a phone number for you to call in, and you can tweet at them to get some quick reactions. Jamey Eisenberg and Dave Richard take it to the house every weekday at noon – and at 11am ET on Sunday game days. You can check out their rankings below the video player, too.
I love this page for the sheer beauty of its layout. Each time someone asks a question, whether it’s to Rate My Team, Who Should I Start or if you should Make This Trade, along with many others, they create a module for the NFL.com community to vote on. Even if your lineups are all set, this is a fun place to go and waste some time voting on questions from others.
While small sample sizes can be troublesome to look at in Fantasy Football, seeing what a player does against specific teams through the years is still an interesting exercise, especially if a WR continuously owns a veteran cornerback twice a season. Select the upcoming game and it shows you the numbers. For instance, in Week 1, Eli Manning has averaged a 2-to-1 TD/INT ratio in 24 games against the Cowboys in his career. Philip Rivers, meanwhile, has 29 TDs and 22 INTs in 21 games against the Chiefs.
We’ve mentioned Consistency Ratings in other spots, but this is cool because it’s actually a tool you can sort., and you can filter it down to a specific amount of weeks. For instance, you can see which running backs have been the most consistent over the past six weeks when you’re deep into the season.
We all figured out in the mid-2000s that targets is a great stat to determine possible future Fantasy success, as you see a player suddenly start to earn more targets from week to week, giving him more chances to score Fantasy points. You can track the year-to-date targets for running backs, wide receivers and tight ends each week, as well as which players have a targets number that is rising or falling over the past three weeks.
There are plenty of “Strength of Schedule” Fantasy Football tools out there, but I like this one the best because they allow you to break it down by several different blocks of time. For instance, you can see who has the best/worst Fantasy strength of schedule from Weeks 6-10, or during the Fantasy playoffs of Weeks 14-16.
This isn’t as great of a tool at the start of the season as it is after a couple weeks in, as we begin to see just what kinds of troubles some defenses give certain Fantasy positions. It’s also great to spot which defenses have soft spots that can be exploited, despite the fact they’re noted for being a stout defense. For instance, the Rams and Seahawks had pretty good defenses in 2015, yet both gave up over 8.20 Fantasy points per game to tight ends on average.
If you’re deciding between starting two similarly talented players, use this tool to compare two players directly, like say Matt Forte or Jeremy Hill, and this tool shows you the percentage of experts that would choose to start each player. It compares rankings, best/worst rankings, and their average projections.
They data mine all of the leagues on their site to see which players are the “Most Viewed,” “Most Added,” “Most Dropped” and “Most Traded.” It’s great to take a quick look to see which players have the most heat on them – and if you weren’t sure why, you can click on the name to read the news as to why everyone’s making moves on them.
While considering some pickups for the rest of the season, take a look at this matchups calendar, which shows the “easy” and “tough” matchups for each player at each position, while also ranking them by current Fantasy value.
This tool isn’t new to anyone, but it’s definitely necessary to mention. I like to keep a tab open with this and check back throughout the day, as any major roster or injury news gets posted here, with a bit of analysis.
I always mention this one, too, because they lay out all of the rosters in easy-to-read format on one page. You don’t have to bounce all around to see who’s starting or backup up. This is also an awesome Fantasy Football tool for IDP owners to use.
One of the best advanced stat sites out there, numberFire projects the Fantasy points scored for each player in the NFL, then ranks them by position. This is one of their free tools, although, they do have some other great premium tools, as well. You can sort by DFS site points, too, which is nice!
If you have any teams on MyFantasyLeague.com, you can post the 5-digit MFL League ID here, and it will sort through all of the rosters, then using FFToday’s stats, rankings and projections, it will spit out which are the best “Available Free Agents” for you to pick up at each position. They are broken down by tiers, too, which is nice!
No site anywhere has as many great stats and figures as PFR, which has been home to the best stats for over a decade now. They even added a whole Fantasy section, too, so now they’re showing you snap percentages for each player and their projected ranking for their upcoming matchup. I’m so happy they’re getting more involved in the Fantasy game.
While this is mainly for the start of the season, it’s super helpful in-season also, because you can figure out which backup running backs have more chances at success than others in case of injury. This is part of the reason why I’m such a big fan of DeAndre Washington and Tevin Coleman this season.
You’ll notice that most Fantasy sites just offer weekly Fantasy Football rankings for weekly lineup help, but I like these “Rest-of-Season Rankings” to help you understand the true values of your players for the remainder of the season. Just like their regular rankings, they pull in the ROS Rankings from several experts and websites. If you use MY PLAYBOOK, you’ll see where your players rank inside each of these Rest-of-Season position rankings.
You’re probably setting yourself up for a successful season with a few of these Fantasy Football lineup tools, but are you also using the best Fantasy Football draft iPad apps? Stay ahead of the pack!
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