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The fantasy football world has grown into a multi-million dollar industry, with services and apps looking to take advantage of entry-level players with exorbitant prices and overwhelming data.
Let’s take a look at the suite of tools offered by Fantasy Football Nerd and determine if this budget alternative is at par with other fantasy football help platforms.
An Overview of Fantasy Football Nerd
Fantasy Football Nerd is unlike other industry veterans on the market that charge an arm and a leg per month. Instead Fantasy Football Nerd is a great budget alternative for those who can’t or don’t want to shell out for the more expensive services. It is ultimately perfect for new players looking to try fantasy football.
While FFN might seem lighter on features relative to the market, their suite of tools are simply some of the easiest and best to use.
What stands out in particular is their Line-up Assistant tool that is bound to improve your results in fantasy leagues or on DFS sites.
PROS
CONS
What You Should Consider Before Subscribing to FFN
Subscribing to a service is a significant investment into the world of fantasy football.
While Fantasy Football Nerd does offer some awesome features for free, their best features such as the lineup optimizer require a subscription.
So if you’re really looking to take your game to the next level, you would want that premium membership.
Your Usage
If you manage more than two teams, you won’t find Fantasy Nerd’s lineup optimizer useful. FFN can only generate two optimal lineups at a time.
However, users seeking free fantasy football tools will undoubtedly have a good time with FFN’s suite as many are completely free to use.
For seasonal players, I recommend you purchase the service at the beginning of the season so you can take advantage of FFN’s draft preparation tools. Otherwise, you’re better off using their free in-season tools and trade analyzer.
What Features Can I Look Forward To With Fantasy Football Nerd?
Before we dig into the features, we have to note that Fantasy Football Nerd offers some of the best value on the market.
Though their tool suite is less robust than their competitors, their low-cost optimizer and in-season DFS tools, combined with the fact that you pay less for an entire season, make the FFN package totally worth it.
That being said, FFN is essentially FantasyPros lite, so if you’re willing to spend a few extra dollars, check out our FantasyPros review here.
Now, let’s take a look at the features that Fantasy Football Nerd offers:
#1 NFL Pick’em!
FFN regularly holds public contests of NFL Pick’em – where you pick winners of each NFL game throughout the 17-week NFL season.
Moreover, you can create your own private Pick’em contests to play against friends and family. The best part is that these private contests are free to play and free to create, though you will need to sign in or create a free account first.
You can even customize your Pick’em contests however you like. All you need to do is email Fantasy Football Nerd and they will send you a branded Pick’em contest specifically for you and your audience.
#2 DFS Lineup Optimizer
FFN’s Lineup-Assistant tool is designed to find players who give you the most bang for your DFS buck. The players they will populate for your lineups are primarily those who give the greatest fantasy points per dollar.
Of course, the optimizer can be tailored to DFS hosts like FanDuel and DraftKings, so the projected points you’ll see will always be accurate for your host and settings. The optimizer will also factor in the salary cap and the percentage of cap room a player will take before starting them for you.
Want to find out who runs supreme between FanDuel and DraftKings? Find out in this side by side review.
You will also have the option of adjusting your lineup preferences between Conservative, Consensus and Aggressive. You’re more likely to win big on Aggressive mode, but could also lose big if you are not careful.
#3 Fantasy Football Commissioner Tools
Being the commissioner of a fantasy league is a crucial job, but one that is often thankless, as you spend hours and hours setting the settings, rules and scoring for the league.
Luckily, FFN offers a suite of commissioner tools that will make you feel like Roger Goodell.
Take, for example, the draft day picker. Anyone that has been caught in the crosshairs of a mass email chain knows just how terrible it is to try and organize ANYTHING with a group of people, let alone when to convene for a fantasy draft.[1]
All you need to do is add your draft details, select a bunch of potential dates, and then send the custom-made link to your league, where everyone will mark down which dates work for them.
Random Draft Order Tool
Then, there’s the random draft order tool, which generates an unbiased, third party draft order for your league. With this, no one can accuse you of rigging anything.
When it comes to the draft order, commissioners can choose to either send an email to the league with the date, time and order of the draft, or can do an unveiling with FFN’s Live draft randomizer. Your whole league can tune in and watch the draft get randomized.
Lastly, FFN offers commissioners a Trade Analyzer, which he or she can use as an unbiased tool to measure trade values and whether a trade was fair or not. This means that you won’t receive any backlash from vetoing a trade that looks sketchy.
#4 Mock Draft
While barebones relative to other mock draft creators like FantasyPros, FFN’s mock draft is what it is: the perfect opportunity to practice.
You’ll be able to practice against the FFN-generated computer, where all you’ll have to do is pick your draft spot, customize your draft settings and practice, practice, practice!
The process is relatively simple, and should only take a few minutes to complete.
However, keep in mind that this feature is strictly for premium members.
#5 Tiers
A fantasy football tier is just a fancy way of grouping similarly-talented players. For example, you might have Saquon Barkley, Julion Jones and Christian McCaffrey in one tier. Then, Dak Prescott, Joe Flacco and Andy Dalton in another tier.
Putting players into tiers is an effective draft technique as it allows you to see which skill positions have an abundance of players and which are scarce.
For example, finding a quality quarterback is easier than finding a quality wide receiver, so you might opt to draft a tier one receiver before a tier one quarterback, as you can find him in later rounds.
FFN has tier cheat sheets from experts around the world of fantasy football, and acts as an aggregate of all these tiers.
#6 Auction Values
FFN helps you find value in your fantasy football auction leagues by taking into account the FFN consensus auction values.
What this will do is prevent you from overbidding on some of the bigger names, and will instead help you find value in those lower risk higher reward type players.
Since FFN amalgamates auction values from around the world of fantasy football, it represents one of the most accurate ways to get fantasy football auction values.
#7 Projections
Fantasy Football Nerd’s projections are a result of what they call “Collective Intelligence”. FFN takes the wisdom of the crowd and aggregates it to create rankings based upon each site’s accuracy.
The result is one of the most accurate consensus rankings on the web.
This is achieved by using a result-oriented algorithm that normalizes rankings and projections, weighing them based upon past accuracy.
For example, FFN’s Sit/Start rankings provide a cumulative rank from expert projections around the Net. Looking at FFN’s fantasy projections will give you a specific idea of what the experts think.
FFN compares rankings from all of the top sites, like NFL.com, ESPN.com and Fox Sports, as well as smaller sites dedicated to just fantasy football.[2]
What Are Users Saying About FFN?
Reviews about FFN are generally positive, take a look at some of the screenshots below:
Alternatives to Fantasy Football Nerd
1. FantasyPros
Like FFN, FantasyPros organizes all of the fantasy football advice from experts around the world of football, and converts it all into quick and digestible pieces of information, software, and analytics that anyone from a casual to hardcore player will enjoy.
On top of that, they will constantly be feeding you real-time recommendations from experts, and you can even pick which experts you’d like to hear from the most.
The main difference between the two services is that FantasyPros is much more robust, but is also much more expensive. What you get for a full season on FFN is the cost of using FantasyPros for a month. Click here to learn more.
2. Draft Dashboard
If you’ve read our past reviews, you know Draft Dashboard has one of the best lineup optimizers in the business. Draft Dashboard’s lineup optimizer has a user-friendly interface and a bevy of features that results in a more immersive and more efficient lineup-creation experience.
The most underrated feature of Draft Dashboard’s lineup optimizer is the ridiculous amount of time you will save on research! You will also notice, along with the millions of other DD users, that your wins column skyrocket when using the DFS lineup.
DD is simply easy to use and gives you everything you need to make an informed decision. Click here to learn more.
3. Daily Fantasy Nerd
Daily Fantasy Nerd is great because it offers a no-fuss, simple and intuitive service that even those new to the world of fantasy football will understand.
Among their many features is the ability to customize your projections, and to then integrate those custom projections with their player projection metrics. If it sounds complicated, it’s not – everything on DFN’s website is simple and easy to use.
Best yet, their lineup optimizer is one of the cheapest around, and when it comes to net profit, DFN is one of the more successful optimizers around.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Final Words
What Fantasy Football Nerd offers is an extraordinary cost-effective approach to fantasy football subscriptions services. Most services will run you upwards of $20USD a month, while FFN costs $20 for the season.
While it is lighter on gadgets and high-tech functions, its lineup of core tools is absolutely on par with some of the other, more expensive subscriptions on the market.
Overall, FFN is a great tool for casual and hardcore players alike. Just make sure you take advantage of FFN’s draft preparation tools and sign up for the service before the season starts.
STAR Rating: 4 out of 5.
Check out our exclusive write-ups on the best daily fantasy sites.
Resources:
1. FFN Commissioner Tool. Retrieved from https://www.fantasyfootballnerd.com/news/article/408/free-fantasy-football-commissioner-tools.html
2. FFN Projections. Retrieved from https://www.fantasyfootballnerd.com/fantasy-football-projections
3. FFN Rankings. Retrieved from https://www.fantasyfootballnerd.com/fantasy-football-rankings
