First Down

Guide · Lineup

Set your
best lineup.

Lineup finds the starting lineup with the highest projected score for any week of your Sleeper league, using your league’s own scoring and roster slots.

Open Lineup

How to use it

  1. Type your Sleeper username and press Find leagues. Only your public username is needed: no password, no login.
  2. Pick a league. First Down remembers it in your browser, so next time it reopens straight away.
  3. Choose the week. It defaults to the next week to be played: the first week in which fewer than half of the games are over. Sleeper’s own “current week” only moves forward midweek.
  4. Pick how players are valued (below). The lineup appears slot by slot, followed by your bench.

Three ways to value a player

Vs. opponent

Sleeper’s weekly projections, scored with your league’s scoring settings. Points per reception, bonuses and IDP stats all count the way your commissioner set them up. In this mode First Down also builds your opponent’s best lineup for the same week, so you can see the projected head-to-head.

Recent form

The average of each player’s actual fantasy points over the last 5 weeks, again with your league’s scoring. A game he missed counts as 0, since an injury is part of his form; only his team’s bye, or a game not finished yet, is skipped. For a future week it uses the latest weeks played. A player who missed all of them uses his projection instead. Early in the season, when there are no games yet, it falls back to last season.

Blended

70% projection plus 30% recent form. Projections know about matchups and depth charts; recent form catches a player whose role has just changed. The blend is a good default if you don’t want to choose. A player Sleeper doesn’t expect to play (an empty projection, for example a backup quarterback) scores 0 here, whatever his recent form.

Byes and injuries

A player whose team doesn’t play that week scores 0, whatever his projection or recent form says. The same goes for players listed as Out, IR, Suspended, PUP, NA or on the COVID list: a stale projection can still show points for them, so they are forced to zero. Questionable and Doubtful players keep their projection. Check the news before kickoff.

Why the lineup is optimal, not just sorted

Filling slots greedily, best player first, can go wrong with flex slots. Suppose your best wide receiver goes into FLEX: a running back who only fits RB or FLEX might then be left out, even though another arrangement scores more. First Down treats the lineup as an assignment problem and solves it exactly, with a min-cost-flow algorithm. Every slot is filled with a player eligible for it, and no other arrangement of your roster scores more.

Supported slots: QB, RB, WR, TE, K, DEF, FLEX (RB/WR/TE), SUPER_FLEX (QB/RB/WR/TE), WRRB_FLEX, REC_FLEX and WR_TE_FLEX (WR/TE), RB_TE_FLEX, IDP_FLEX (DL/LB/DB), DL, LB, DB, CB and S. Players on your taxi squad or IR are never placed in a starting slot.

Good to know

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