Free Underdog Fantasy Pick'em Plays

Find your edge in Underdog Fantasy with our free Pick'em plays. Our expert team takes the guesswork out of your hands, offering top-rated choices.

Find Today’s Free Underdog Fantasy Pick’em Plays via the Fantasy Life Underdog Tracker 

The Fantasy Life Underdog Tracker is the place to go to find free analysis and picks for Underdog Fantasy’s Pick’em contests for the NFL season. Every week, our analysts will list their best Underdog pick’em plays on the tracker and provide reasoning and analysis for their picks.

In the offseason, you can also find Underdog NFL futures picks in the Underdog tracker as player totals and rivals offerings become available. 

Underdog pick’em contests work by having users combine two or more props together into one ticket. Props on Underdog come in two categories: higher/lower (player totals) or rivals (head-to-head player matchups). 

The payouts increase as the number of props you include on your ticket grows. Every week these contests will have a full gamut of NFL player props available for you to use and create pick’em tickets. 

During the season, the team at Fantasy Life will look for their best higher/lower, and rivals plays and give you pick’em tickets to use or follow in the Underdog Pick’em Tracker. 

As the season wears on, you’ll also have a chance to track the Underdog plays while our team continues to churn out new ideas every week. 

How to the use the Fantasy Life NFL Underdog Tracker

The Fantasy Life Underdog pick’em tracker is meant to be an all-encompassing tool that gives you exposure to the best ideas of our analysts. 

The Underdog Tracker can be used in a variety of different ways, but a general guide is below:

Search for the kind of plays you want 

Since the pick’em contests on Underdog work by parlaying multiple higher/lower or rivals offerings together, our picks will always include multiple prop that are parlayed together. 

The most recently placed pick’em plays will be found at the top of the Underdog tracker. You can search through (top to bottom) to find the kinds of plays you are looking for in an upcoming week. 

The tracker will also allow you to search through all the plays (most recent to least) and use the ones that you think represent the best value or opportunity. 

Each play will always show which of our analysts created it, so if you are tailing one specific person, then you will be able to clearly see his or her plays as they are produced for a future week. 

Decide which Pick’em plays you want to follow

Regardless of how you decide to use and search through the NFL Underdog Pick ’em tracker, our analysts will have you covered with some great analysis and reasoning. Once you are done taking in their thoughts, you can then decide to tail one specific analyst for the week or simply mix and match based on which plays you think are the most enticing. 

The great thing about the NFL Underdog pick’em tracker is that, regardless of what route you take, you’ll have the ability, each and every week, to read through the plays and decide. 

Place your Underdog Pick’em plays using the Underdog Fantasy Links

Once you’ve read the analysis and decided what bets you want to place, then it’s time to head over to Underdog Fantasy and make your play. 

The Underdog site has two main categories, drafts and pick’em, so you must first select pick’em at the very top before entering your plays. 

For more information on Underdog Fantasy and Underdog Pick’em contests, you can read our Underdog Fantasy primer article here. 

You can find which states and territories Underdog Fantasy Pick’em contests are currently legal to operate in here. 

Keep tracking as the season goes on

The Underdog Pick ’em tracker will update with new plays and analyses each week while tracking performance. Whether you are a long-term player or just looking to place a few casual tickets for a few weeks of the season, keeping up to date with the tracker is certainly recommended. 

You find links to our entire suite of betting tools here, including our NFL prop projections which you can set to Underdog 0.5 PPR scoring.

What can you find on the Fantasy Life NFL Underdog Fantasy Pick’em Tracker?

The NFL Underdog Pick’em Tracker is an extension of everything you find at Fantasy Life, including the people driving it. The analysts are all veterans and proven talent committed to researching while using the best tools and projections possible. 

That includes backchecking via the Fantasy Life suite of tools and projections, which are available FREE for you to use and view on-site. 

You can find our in-season, week-to-week NFL prop projection tool here. The projections can be tailored to use Underdog’s 0.5 PPR scoring. 

The Underdog picks are always free, but the best part is that each one will have a write-up with the reasoning behind it – which means you’ll get a chance to understand the analyst’s process before deciding whether or not to add the pick to your own portfolio. 

We’ll also have a spot to track the analysts as the season progresses. 

The aim is to take a lot of time and effort out of your hands and make tailoring the plays easier and more profitable.

What is Underdog Pick’em

As mentioned above, Underdog’s Pick’em feature allows users to build prop-based multiplier tickets with specific payouts attached – which get bigger as you add more plays to your ticket.

The payout options on Pick’em are set for players beforehand and are quite simple to understand. Payouts in Underdog’s pick’em contests involve a ladder format, so the more plays you add to your ticket, the bigger the payout becomes. 

  • Two-play cards (pick two) = 3-1 payout
  • Three-play cards (pick three) = 6-1 payout
  • Four-play cards (pick four) = 10-1 payout
  • Five-play cards (pick five) = 20-1 payout

From time to time, Underdog will also offer bonuses for their pick’em contests, such as increased multipliers or boosts, which increase the payout of your ticket. They may also offer bonuses in the form of reduced higher/lower totals. In these offerings, one side of a higher/lower becomes far more likely to hit, making it a massively +EV play for Underdog users.

The two types of plays available in Underdog pick’em are described below:

Higher/Lower: The Higher/Lower Pick’em offerings are simply asking us to decide whether a player will land higher or lower in a game (or season) than his specific player total. 

If Patrick Mahomes has a 299.5 passing total in the higher/lower offerings, then to add him to your card, you would simply select higher or lower on his total, depending on whether or not you think he can pass for 300 or more passing yards on the day. 

Rivals: The Rivals Pick’em offerings ask us to decide if a player will outperform (or underperform) another player on the slate that day. Oftentimes these picks will include a handicap attached to one of the players. 

So, if Mahomes and Josh Allen were matched up in a rivals passing yardage matchup, you would simply select which player you think will throw for more yards in their respective game that week (while keeping in mind any handicap that Underdog has added to the matchup). 

For more information on Underdog Fantasy and Underdog Pick’em contests, you can read our Underdog Fantasy primer article here.

How does Pick’em on Underdog work?

Pick’em is a single-player daily fantasy game that works by combining multiple player props (Higher/Lower or Rivals) into a single ticket. In Pick’em on Underdog, players must select at least two props to make a ticket and those selections must include players from two different teams. Tickets with players who are all on the same team are prohibited. 

Once you make your selections, Underdog offers you a payout that you will win if all your selections are correct. The payout offer will be dependent on the size of your ticket and will go up with the more selections you include. 

While you can win more money on a single ticket if you include the maximum (5 picks), your win rate will generally be higher if you stay to the lower multiples (2 or 3 picks).

Where does Underdog Fantasy allow pick’em?

Since single-player DFS and pick’em contests are a little more nuanced in terms of legality, many states treat them more like gambling and hence have different rules and regulations attached to them.

As of now, Underdog Pick'em contests are legal across all of the United States and Canada except for the following states and provinces:

Map

Is Underdog Pick’em or PrizePicks better?

Underdog Fantasy and PrizePicks are two of the leading providers of single-player daily fantasy pick’em contests. While the contests they offer are very similar in structure the two sites do have a lot of subtle differences.

Underdog 

Underdog allows players to create tickets with as few as two selections (2-way) and as many as five selections (5-way). They offer standard and insured play options that have differing payout structures. Standard play tickets mean that every selection must be graded a winner to receive a payout. Their standard payout structure is available at every level of play, no matter how many selections, and their insured payout is available on tickets with three to five plays. 

Underdog standard payout structure:

  • 2-way (3x payout)
  • 3-way (6x payout)
  • 4-way (10x payout)
  • 5-way (20x payout) 

Using some correlated props (e.g. QB yards and WR yards on the same team) will result in modified or reduced payouts. Ensure you check the actual payouts offered on Underdog before confirming your entry. 

Underdog-insured payout structure:

  • 3-way (3x for three corrected, 1x for two correct)
  • 4-way (6x for four correct, 1.5x for 3 correct)
  • 5-way (10x for five correct, 2.5x for 3 correct) 

Underdog Highlights:

  • Better standard payouts for uncorrelated 3-way (x6) and 5-way (x20) pick’em tickets
  • Better Insured payouts (compared to PrizePicks flex play) at most levels
  • Rivals offerings that allow users to pick one player in a straight-up matchup against another in certain statistical categories
  • Frequent promotions that include in-game and pre-game “free squares” or modified (lower) prop totals. 

PrizePicks

PrizePicks allows players to create tickets with as few as two selections (2-way) and as many as six selections (6-way). They offer “power play” and “flex” play options that have differing payout structures. Their power play payout structure is available in tickets that use 2-4 picks. Power play tickets on PrizePicks require that all selections are graded as winners to receive a payout. Their flex pay option is available on tickets of any size (2-6 picks). See below for how each payout option works. 

PrizePicks power play payout structure:

  • 2-way (3x payout)
  • 3-way (5x payout)
  • 4-way (10x payout)

PrizePicks flex play payout structure:

  • 3-way (2.25x for three corrected, 1.25x for two correct)
  • 4-way (5x for three correct, 1.5x for 3 correct)
  • 5-way (10x for five correct, 2x for 4 correct, 0.4x for 3 correct – Flex play only) 
  • 6-way (25x for all six correct,  2x for 5 correct, 0.4x for 4 correct – Flex play only)

PrizePick Highlights:

  • Allow players to make 6-way tickets for up to 25x payouts
  • Frequent promotions that include in-game and pre-game “free squares”; “Taco Tuesdays” that include multiple reduced player totals; and “Flex Friday’s” where users can create one flex play freeroll entry

Underdog vs. Prizepicks summary:

Underdog has stronger payouts overall. They allow players to build 5-way tickets with up to 20x payouts while PrizePicks forces players into flex play only once tickets become larger than 5-legs. Underdog’s flex play playouts are slightly stronger as well. 

One area where PrizePicks excels is that they don’t often reduce payouts for correlated entries (e.g. pairing QB yards with WR yards). They also offer some excellent promotions like Taco Tuesdays (reduced props on certain players) and Flex Fridays. 

Overall, both sites have their strengths and weaknesses and if you are getting into Pick’em it behooves you to check out both. However, long-term the better payouts on Underdog do make it the slightly better site for higher volume, and higher stakes players.

Underdog pick’em rules and regulations

What happens if my player doesn’t play in Underdog pick’em?

If your player doesn’t participate in the game or contest in which you made your selection then his or her prop would become void. See below for how Underdog handles void props and entries.

Can you edit entries in Underdog pick’em?

Per Underdog’s rules and regulations, no entry can be edited or canceled once entered. All entries are final once entered. 

As such, it’s very important that you double-check your selections before pressing enter and submitting your entry fee. 

What happens with a tie or voided pick in Underdog pick’em?

How a void selection would affect the rest of your ticket depends on the types of selections and number of overall entries on the rest of your pick’em ticket. 

From Underdog Pick’em rules and regulations:

“If a pick is voided and the entry is still valid, the entry will be graded as a Loss if another pick is lost. If a pick is voided and the entry is still valid where all other picks won, the entry will be graded as a Win but will pay out for the number of active players.”

A void entry would, therefore, affect the following pick’em tickets (made using standard payouts) in the described manner.

  • 2-way pick’em ticket with one void entry
    • The entire ticket would become void and the entry fee refunded as you would need at least two live props for your pick’em ticket to be a valid entry. 
  • 3-way pick’em ticket
    • Your ticket would revert to a 2-way pick’em ticket and your payout would move down from 6x to 3x
  • 4-way pick’em ticket
    • Your ticket would revert to a 3-way pick’em ticket and your payout would move down from 10x to 6x
  • 5-way pick’em ticket
    • Your ticket would revert to a 4-way pick’em ticket and your payout would move down from 20x to 10x

Some exceptions to these rules do apply. If a prop you selected becomes void and the remaining selections on your pick’em ticket are all members of the same team then your entire ticket would become void and your entry refunded. 

This is because Underdog Pick ’em does not allow you to enter tickets with only members of the same team. 

Rivals ties are also graded as void props. For example, if you have Player A +1 pts vs. Player B and Player A ends with 18 pts and Player B ends with 19 points, the pick will be graded as a Tie considered a void selection.

What is the maximum number of entries in Underdog Pick ’em?

You can create as many different pick’em entries as you want. Each single ticket may only have up to five separate props at once. Tickets with more than 5 selections (props) are not allowed.

How are overtime stats handled in Underdog pick’em? 

Overtime stats are always included in the final total for any player prop on Underdog unless specifically indicated. 

What is Rivals in Underdog Pick ’em and how does it work?

The Rivals contests are different from regular player prop in that, instead of asking you to decide if a player will go over or under an arbitrary total, it asks us to decide if they will outperform (or underperform) another player on the slate that day. 

Oftentimes these picks will include a handicap attached to one of the players.

For example, a typical Rivals prop on Underdog may look like this:

  • Total Passing Yards – Kyler Murray (+9.5 passing yards) vs. Josh Allen

In this case, Murray would be getting a +9.5-yard handicap for the matchup. For Allen to win he’d need to end the day with at least 10.0 more passing yards than Murray. 

If Murray ended at 250 yards and Allen at 255 yards, Murray would win. In the same example, if Allen ended at 260 yards, Allen would win. 

Underdog fantasy pick’em strategy

Picking player props on Underdog is not much different than if you were picking props on a regular sportsbook. The main difference is that in pick’em, each ticket we create is effectively a parlay given that we must include two to five props in each entry. 

Since we are focusing on props AND always using those props to create a parlay (2 or more bets in one) then we need to consider both general prop strategy and parlay strategy when approaching Pick’em. 

Understanding how totals work on Underdog

Underdog is constantly releasing prop totals for new slates across a wide variety of sports, daily. As users create tickets and more information becomes available these lines have a tendency to move up or down in one direction. 

Being able to read the market and understand whether a newly released total is too high or low on its initial offering (before it moves) can be a huge advantage. Using site projections like the FREE NFL projections on Fantasy Life can be a huge help in identifying which props and totals to target. 

Correlation

Since we are using multiple props in each pick’em ticket, looking for props that may have some kind of correlation is always beneficial. In the NFL the most obvious example of correlation is QB passing yards combined with WR receiving yards. When a QB has a good or bad day passing the ball his performance will often correlate with his receiver’s output as well. So if a QB has a big day passing, and goes over his total passing yards, oftentimes those yards will help one or multiple receivers on his team go over their receiving yards total as well. 

Hence, going HIGHER (or LOWER) on both a QB and a WR’s yardage totals from the same team – on the same pick’em ticket – can be a great way to correlate your picks in pick’em. Since when one of the players hits their HIGHER (or LOWER) the other will often follow suit, this strategy means you can hit multiple selections in one game and therefore greatly increase your overall chances of winning. 

There are other ways to achieve correlation as well. For example, taking a LOWER on an RB's rushing yards and a HIGHER on a WR's receiving yards from the same team, allows you to benefit when a team passes the ball a ton (and gains a lot of passing yards). In this situation, the WR will be getting lots of targets (and potential yards) but their RBs will be getting less carries than normal, and struggle in most cases to go over their total. 

Underdog does prohibit certain types of correlation and will also reduce payouts for certain correlated plays as well (specifically when you combine QB yards and WR yards). Ensuring you watch the payout structure as you create your pick’em ticket is key whenever you’re looking to correlate your plays. 

Avoiding Insured payouts

In short, it is rarely a good idea to opt for insured payouts. While you may technically “win” more of your pick’em entries, the payouts on standard tickets are far superior and provide more +EV (positive expected value) in the long run. 

How many picks to include

You can be profitable at any different level of entry, assuming you have a high enough win rate. However, it generally behooves you to use the bigger payout options, specifically the 3-way and 5-way entries. 

3-way tickets allow you to correlate two of your plays (on the same team) which can often heighten your actual odds of hitting significantly. The 6x payout is also much more attractive than the payout on 2-way tickets. 

A standard 2-way ticket on Underdog would pay out $300.00 on a $100.00 entry. That essentially equals a parlay where both legs are given actual odds of around -135. 

In a 3-way ticket on Underdog, the standard payout would be $600.00 on a $100.00 entry. In this example, all three legs are given actual odds around -122, which provides much better value than the 2-way payout. 

The theory applies to 4-way and 5-way tickets as well. 4-way tickets on Underdog payout at 10x, so a $100 winning entry would payout $1000.00. That means each leg or prop is being given actual odds of -128. 

5-way tickets offer much more attractive payouts. A 5-way ticket that hits pays out at 20x, so a $100.00 entry pays out $2000.00. In this example, each leg is being given actual odds of around -122, very similar to the payouts in the 3-way example. 

In short, you should generally opt for the 3-way or 5-way entries. The payout structures provide better-implied odds, making them far more likely to be +EV propositions in the long run, and they also give you a chance to correlate more of your plays. 

If you want to learn more or see for yourself how the actual parlay odds work, make sure you check out the Fantasy Life Parlay Calculator. 

Deposits and withdraws

You can deposit on Underdog using PayPal, a debit card, or a credit card. The minimum deposit is $10.

Withdrawal options on Underdog include PayPal and Interchecks (Interchecks include direct deposit, physical check, e-check, and more). The minimum withdrawal amount is $10 (or your total account balance, whichever is lower). 

Payouts take 1 to 5 business days.