DraftKings & FanDuel NFL DFS Week 1 Cash Strategy & Picks

Sep 05, 2025

Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

Whether you are interested in turning $1 into $1.80 or $50 into $90, deploying a sound cash game strategy when you are building your lineup for Sunday main slates is crucial. Cash game fantasy grinders can run into pitfalls when they fail to recognize the main goal of cash games is to maximize median and beat, often, a small group of opponents (or maybe just one) in the quest to do so.

Ceiling outcomes should be narrowly considered relative to maximizing your lineup’s projectable floor. You can save those high-upside strategies for the $1 million dollar to first-place contests on DraftKings or FanDuel, where you should focus on trading median for things like leverage, correlation, and low duplication. In cash games, there’s no reason to shy away from the player with 10x point-per-dollar value just because “everyone else is playing” him. If everyone else is playing him, it is probably a good indication that the market is aware of significant value.

4for4 has all the tools available to help you build your cash game lineups. This article is merely one of them. In the quest to grind out a solid edge (58%-62% win rates are very favorable), the most important tools at your disposal are mean projections, median projections, projection variance, point-per-dollar value, and a way to piece it all together (an advanced calculator is one option).

My goal for this weekly article is to consolidate all the crucial insights from our tools that can be used to gain an edge over your cash game opponents and help you put it all together to build lineups that have positive expected value.

Slate Context

Week 1 NFL cash games are a bit unique. As the season proceeds, weekly shifts in game plans, depth charts, and injury reports create significant value from a median projection standpoint. However, since little has changed in the NFL landscape since pricing was first released on DraftKings and FanDuel, by dint of a few shifts in opportunities as preseason games concluded and teams shifted from scrimmages and full-contact practices to game preparation, a lot of the value has already been baked into the pricing.

As such, the top point-per-dollar plays for this week are relatively less obvious than they may be in subsequent weeks. There are no backup running backs taking over for the injured starter that are priced at the minimum or a quarterback whose pricing didn’t adjust after three weeks of 30+ point performances. At least not yet (more on this below). This nuance allows players a bit more flexibility in identifying high median options and crafting high-value lineups if proper roster-building guardrails continue to be enforced.