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How to Use Fantasy Football to Become a More Successful NFL Bettor

Andrew Brennan

Last Updated: August 8, 2024 9:02 AM EDT • 5 min 29 sec read.

C.J. Stroud warms up before a game against the Baltimore Ravens as we offer betting tips on how to use fantasy football to become a better NFL wagerer.
C.J. Stroud warms up before a game against the Baltimore Ravens. Photo by Tommy Gilligan via USA TODAY Sports.

Fantasy football is undoubtedly the most popular sports "game" in North America, and the endless amount of available information can be used to make more informed decisions when wagering at the best NFL betting sites. 

Long before I even thought about betting on sports, I played in various fantasy leagues. Now, I'm using the skills I developed during a decade of fantasy football to become a smarter NFL bettor, and I'm sharing that knowledge with you.

Fantasy football has become synonymous with the NFL, with many people playing in leagues against their friends without ever actually watching a minute of football. Here's a secret: you don't need to watch it to be a successful bettor.

We can use so many free fantasy football tools, both before the season for futures markets and during the campaign, to attack weekly player props. Let's use the popularity of fantasy football to take on the best sports betting sites.

Free projection tools

You can play in a fantasy league with all your buddies and know more than all of them by watching the games. However, the best sports betting apps will always know more.

Oh, you watch RedZone every Sunday? Congratulations, the best sportsbooks have teams of people (and an algorithm) whose only goal is to use all of that information you've gathered - and the biases that come with it - against you.

That's why it's not enough to watch football and bet on it if you want to become a successful long-term bettor. You may profit for a few weeks or even a full season, but it's important to dig even deeper by using analytics and projection models.

My favorite projection models

Fortunately, due to the popularity of fantasy football, endless free tools are at your disposal.

Last season, I made picks based on the average projection of at least six different projection models. They were all free because they were built as fantasy tools and not betting ones (it's far more difficult to find quality, free "betting" information vs. "fantasy" information. Spoiler: it can be the same thing.)

NumberFire is the one I reference the most. You'll need to sign up for a free account, but then you'll have quality data at your fingertips. Some people don't have the time or energy to visit a separate website when they're already committing time to fantasy sports.

Well, what if I told you that you don't need to?

I use Yahoo and ESPN for my various fantasy leagues, and they provide weekly projections to inform your lineup decisions.

However, you can take those numbers and apply them to betting markets, whether for season-long projections or weekly ones.

Futures markets

One of the easiest ways to use fantasy football for betting is by essentially playing fantasy football with futures markets.

There are many possible ways to use this strategy, but let's focus on MVP.

We all know by now that the NFL MVP Award is essentially the best quarterback award. So, let's go to FantasyPros' free draft rankings, sort by quarterback, and compare the consensus rankings of the industry's top experts against the MVP odds.

Here's how things look on July 26 from experts who've updated their quarterback rankings within the last two weeks. Next to their name is the best MVP price across our top NFL prop betting sites:

  1. Josh Allen (+900 via DraftKings)
  2. Jalen Hurts (+1600 via FanDuel)
  3. Patrick Mahomes (+500 via bet365)
  4. Lamar Jackson (+1600 via Caesars)
  5. Anthony Richardson (+4000 via FanDuel)
  6. C.J. Stroud (+1000 via BetMGM)
  7. Dak Prescott (+2000 via FanDuel)
  8. Joe Burrow (+1000 via Caesars)
  9. Kyler Murray (+5000 via DraftKings)
  10. Jordan Love (+1400 via bet365)

Separating fantasy value from real-life value

There are some things to note when you do this. You'll want to account for some quarterbacks being ranked higher because of their rushing upside. That certainly can help an MVP case - as we saw with Lamar Jackson last year - but it is less valuable than it is in fantasy.

I'll immediately remove Jalen Hurts, Anthony Richardson, and Kyler Murray from this list. I don't think any of them are particularly bad, but the majority of their fantasy value will come from their legs. 

I fear those three signal-callers won't be prolific enough through the air to contend seriously for NFL MVP honors.

Hurts is the only one on my radar, but he could experience a sharp decline in rushing touchdowns with Jason Kelce no longer spearheading the Brotherly Shove. Additionally, Hurts didn't even finish in the top 10 last season.

My favorite NFL MVP bet based on fantasy football rankings

Mahomes is the easy bet to make as the favorite in the market and the highest-ranked pass-first quarterback. Josh Allen at +900 is attractive, but there's another player I'm even more intrigued by.

C.J. Stroud at +1000 via BetMGM as the second-highest-ranked pass-first quarterback of this group is the bet I'd make. 

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First, he finished eighth in MVP voting last season as a rookie, and now he gets Stefon Diggs at wide receiver alongside Nico Collins and Tank Dell.

Stroud barely ran the ball last year, yet most experts still believe he's a fringe top-five quarterback this season. I actually think he's a better MVP bet than a fantasy quarterback.

You can crunch numbers yourself and spend hours deciding who you want to bet on to win NFL MVP. But these rankings come from people who dedicate their professional lives to it.

It doesn't have to be the end-all-be-all to your futures betting, but it's a precious free tool.

My best NFL MVP bet: CJ Stroud +1000 via BetMGM | Implied probability: 9.09%

Make smarter weekly picks

I started to bet NFL player props roughly halfway through last season regularly, and I found plenty of free "fantasy" projection websites.

I would take the average projection from seven or eight of them and run it against the odds at the eight sportsbooks I use, but you don't need to do all that. 

The easiest method is to look at the projections the website hosting your fantasy league provides.

If you use Yahoo, and it projects a receiver to record 75 yards, and his receiving yards total is trading at 60.5 with reasonable odds, you can bet the Over. (I've found that NFL player props are more likely to jump multiple yards before either side is juiced too heavily.)

You can use these numbers to create parameters for yourself (if the projected total is within X of the betting line, don't bet it), and then you have a rough process you can repeat each week throughout the season.

You can streamline the process even further. Most fantasy football leagues are played in the head-to-head format. So, if you want to avoid searching through projections for countless players, focus only on those whom either you or your opponent roster.

That will help you identify good bets more quickly and limit your weekly exposure to maybe only two or three props rather than the 20-25 I often had last season. Trust me, the latter is exhausting and usually stressful.

My preferred NFL player props markets

Some of my favorite player props markets to bet on last season were receptions, rushing attempts, and passing attempts.

First of all, touchdowns are incredibly difficult to predict, and that's why you'll see most projections hover around the same range for large groups of players.

There is a limited amount of data for that market, so I'd suggest limiting touchdown bets to half a unit or less.

I do like attacking the passing, rushing, and receiving yards markets, too, but I found most projection models were better at accounting for volume than yardage.

Additionally, I didn't think the volume-based markets were more efficient than the yardage-based ones. I still found plenty of advantages, and many losses came on the hook rather than by big chunks of yards. 

Here are our best Super Bowl betting sites:

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Written By:
Andrew Brennan
Andrew Brennan is a publishing editor for Sportsbook Review. He also heads the website’s MLB coverage, from the various futures markets to daily picks. Andrew believes a math-based approach is the best way to enjoy long-term success in sports betting, and he’s spent the better part of the last year fine-tuning his own process for MLB, NBA, and NFL picks. Andrew uses eight different sportsbooks to find the best odds available and various projection models to gather as much information as he can. His most used sportsbooks are bet365, FanDuel, and theScore Bet. When it comes to daily projection models, he regularly references NumberFire across all sports, as it’s one of the best free tools available. In terms of which daily markets Andrew attacks, he almost exclusively bets on pitcher strikeouts for baseball. When the winter rolls around, you’ll see him providing more variety when it comes to the NBA (points, assists, rebounds) and NFL (almost any offensive-based player prop). He used these tools to go +150 units in 2023. Andrew is also a passionate fantasy sports player. He’s played fantasy football, fantasy Premier League, and fantasy baseball for the last decade. He graduated from Durham College with his diploma in journalism after earning his degree in law from Carleton University. He’s worked in sports media since early 2017, first contributing at FanSided before moving to theScore. He joined SBR in 2022.