How to Win Underdog's Playoff Gauntlet Contest
It's February 7, 2021, and I'm watching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers pull off the improbable victory over the Kansas City Chiefs. I'm standing up, anxiously awaiting for the clock to tick to zero, and I watch Tom Brady hoist the Lombardi trophy in the air for the seventh time. Once the clock finally runs out, a rush of euphoria pours over me and I’m elated with joy. I just won Underdog’s Gauntlet with the perfect combination of players. I scream out loud celebrating with my father, jumping up and down when shortly thereafter my wife yells into the living room “Quiet, the kids are trying to sleep”. I utter the most trivial reply back “Yes, Dear”. As I silently sulk back in the recliner I quietly fist pump as I drink a ceremonial old-fashioned and toast with my dad. The improbable happened that night. Gronk scored two touchdowns and Lombardi Lenny (Leonard Fournette) came through as an amazing value as a last-round pick. Let’s rewind, and go over the Gauntlet, my strategy, and how I took down this contest.
Enter Underdog Fantasy's The Gauntlet
Underdog Playoff Gauntlet
Contest Rules
The Gauntlet is a playoff best ball contest hosted on Underdog with a $25 entry. The contest consists of six-person groups, drafting 10 rounds. The contest has four rounds including the Wild Card Round, Divisional Round, Conference Championships, and lastly the Super Bowl. The scoring is 0.5 PPR and your team consists of 1 QB, 1 RB, 2 WR/TE, 1 FLEX, and five Bench spots. After your initial draft, you have to finish in the top 2 in the first round, then first place in each of the next two rounds to advance to the final round where the bulk of the payouts lie. Luckily for me, that happened.
Contest Payouts
1st: $100,000
2nd: $35,000
3rd: $25,000
4th: $20,000
5th: $15,000
6th: $12,500
7th: $10,000
8th: $7,500
9th: $6,000
10th: $5,000
11 - 20th: $2,495
21 - 50th: $1,300
51 - 100th: $1,000
101 - 157th: $800
158 - 628th: $350
629 - 1256th: $200
1257 - 3768th: $65
3769 - 7536th: $40
Enter Underdog Fantasy's The Gauntlet
Strategy
I picked from the six-spot last year and my strategy was to develop a scenario where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would play either the Kansas City Chiefs or the Cleveland Browns in the Super Bowl. Analyzing the draft board, you can see teams seemed to have no appetite for Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce after the one-spot took Patrick Mahomes. At the time Kansas City was heavily condensed, focusing on the aforementioned players. The main issue with taking Hill and Kelce was they had first-round byes and would be a non-factor in the Wild Card round. I would be taking a zero from them. That meant I needed production and I needed it fast. I ended up going with Tom Brady and Mike Evans to acquire a stack and force the other players to be dissuaded from taking Tampa Bay players. (Spoiler: It didn’t work.)
After committing to the Tampa Bay offense, another skill player, Antonio Brown, came off the board before my pick and left me with very few options for major pieces of the Tampa Bay offense. I was forced to select Rob Gronkowski, who was having a rocky regular season but the potential upside of stacking the offense was more important. For my sixth pick, I selected Nick Chubb, a bell-cow running back who was going unnoticed due to the public not giving the Browns a shot against the Pittsburgh Steelers. After I selected Nick Chubb I’m telling myself a wild, imaginary tale that the Cleveland Browns are going to meet the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Superbowl. Continuing with this beautiful fable, I orchestrated a series of picks that solely focused on the Browns' offense (Baker Mayfield, Jarvis Landry, and Austin Hooper). Looking over the player pool and missing out on Tampa Bay’s Ronald Jones forced me into combing the list of players and selecting Leonard Fournette. Fournette was heavily discounted due to most fantasy managers’ perception, largely because of his usage in the regular season. He ended up winning over Brady and the coaches and made a big impact during the Bucs' playoff run.
After a “Wild” Wildcard Weekend, the Browns beat out the Steelers in a slugfest where they put up 48 points and the Bucs beat the Washington Football Team 31-23. My top performers on the week were Nick Chubb and Jarvis Landry for the Browns and Tom Brady, Leonard Fournette, and Mike Evans which gave me a grand total of 99.34 points, finishing second in the group and narrowly advancing into the next round. My team put up enough of a fight to advance and unlock the high-scoring Chiefs offense which was sure to be low-owned as they had a BYE.
After advancing into the Quarterfinals, the bet of taking Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce together paid dividends as they were two of the highest scorers in the Divisional Round. Tom Brady and Lombardi Lenny did enough damage to keep up with a high-scoring Green Bay and Los Angeles Rams matchup. My surprise X-factor was Jarvis Landry as he put up a solid 11 points against the Chiefs to help aid in my differentiation. After the Quarterfinals, I took a tally of all my players that were still alive:
The biggest advantage for me was getting a combined six players into the Conference Championship Round with the possibility of all six making it to the Super Bowl if Kansas City and Tampa Bay won their respective games. Travis Kelce exploded and Tyreek Hill played well with 21 and change.
It was a massive edge for me to have both Hill and Kelce, as no one in my field had both.
After advancing to the Super Bowl, the field was dramatically increased to a field of the final 42 teams. The combination of Tom Brady, Leonard Fournette, Travis Kelce, and Tyreek Hill was important in my success but Rob Gronkowski wound up being the key differentiator with 21.7 points to completely separate from the field.
Key Takeaways
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When you enter The Gauntlet, stay focused on two to three teams that will not interact with each other until the Divisional/Conference Finals (Example: Don’t take the four- and five-seed playing each other in the Wild Card Round).
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Have a fluid plan coming into the draft where you can be flexible but still consolidate your focus on specific teams (Example: Cam Akers was a low-owned running back that helped a lot of people make it to the last round of the playoffs where Darrell Henderson was the preferred back last year).
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Tell yourself a wonderful tale when you draft your first-round pick that his team is going to the Super Bowl and start to target another team to attack in the opposing conference.
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Your sole goal is to advance as many live players to the final to field a full team of five with as many extra shots as you can in the Super Bowl (i.e. having Rob Gronkowski in my finals Gauntlet run gave me a huge differentiator that made my lineup unique).
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Account for the players on bye in the first round.
Ideal Team Builds
Grabbing two stacks of four players and another stack of two is a great way to consolidate into 2-3 teams. You could also do a full onslaught of two teams with five players from each. If you are unlucky, you can try and grab two different players from opposite teams with your two stacks of four.
QB Strategy
I’m on the fence about selecting one QB for the whole tournament however if you are able to correctly identify one QB that can outscore the field and make it to the Super Bowl (a la Matt Stafford last year). This can differentiate your team but also may sink you early if they stumble in an early game.
