Week 1 Sunday is finally here. Our fantasy drafts are done, our shiny new teams are ready, and now it is time to set our lineups.

I have three fantasy teams — two keeper teams and one dynasty team — and have played in these leagues for about 20 years. I do not pay for third-party helper tools or premium projections. I use ASL’s DFS Optimizer to help make my lineup decisions.

ASL also offers a free version, DFS Lineup Explorer, that can be used the same way to help set season-long fantasy lineups.

Full disclosure, I am also waiting for the rebuild of The Machine — but that is a different article.

How Efficient Have My Lineups Been?

I thought I had a pretty good track record setting lineups, so I went back and checked the numbers.

Lineup efficiency measures how many points your starting lineup actually scored compared with the maximum points your roster could have scored with a best possible lineup.

Over the last three years, my average lineup efficiency was:

• Dynasty: Rhino — 85.9%, 2nd of 12
• Keeper #1: Triple Trouble — 86.8%, 4th of 12
• Keeper #2: Einsteinium — 83.7%, 7th of 12

But there really isn't a universal standard for what represents good or bad lineup efficiency. Different league structures naturally produce different efficiency levels.

The biggest factor is how many realistic choices you have when setting your lineup. In my first keeper league, I start eight players from an 18-player roster, leaving ten players on the bench who could potentially outperform one of my starters. In my other keeper league, I start nine from 18, so there are fewer alternatives.

My dynasty league has an even larger 24-player roster with ten starters, but many of those extra players are developmental players who are unlikely to produce starter-level scores. So the larger roster does not necessarily create more meaningful lineup choices.

Roster quality matters too. A deep roster with several legitimate starters can actually produce lower efficiency, because there are more reasonable ways to make the wrong choice in hindsight. A thin or injury-depleted roster can produce high efficiency simply because the starting decisions are obvious.

Then there is plain bad luck. An obvious every-week starter can get injured on his first drive while a bench player unexpectedly has a career game. No projection could reasonably predict that. Over three seasons, though, much of that kind of randomness should begin to wash out.

In some seasons, lineup efficiency has definitely been the difference between making and missing the playoffs for me. That is why I think ASL's free DFS Lineup Explorer can be a useful tool if you want a quick, free way to make better-informed lineup decisions.

Lineup Explorer was designed for DFS rather than season-long fantasy football, so there are a few tricks to using it this way.

How to Use Lineup Explorer to Set Your Fantasy Lineup

Using DFS Lineup Explorer for season-long fantasy football is simple. Use its projections to compare the players on your roster.

1. Choose the DFS scoring system closest to your league.
   FanDuel scoring is half-PPR, while DraftKings is full PPR.
2. Choose the slate that covers the games still to be played that week.
   If you are setting your lineup on Thursday, use a slate covering Thursday through Monday. If you are setting it Sunday morning, use a Sunday through Monday slate.
3. Compare the projected fantasy points for the players you are considering.
   Look up the players competing for the same spot in your lineup and start with the player who has the higher projection. You can use Ctrl-F in your browser to find players quickly.

That's really all there is to it.

I don't blindly follow the projections when two players are very close. Injuries, expected workload, matchup and my own judgment can still break a tie. But the projections give me an objective starting point and help keep me from making lineup decisions based on name recognition, last week's score or gut feeling alone.

You can do this with either the DFS Optimizer or the free DFS Lineup Explorer. For simply setting a regular fantasy football lineup, Lineup Explorer gives you what you need.

Before you lock in your lineup each week, take a few minutes to compare your choices. Lineup Explorer is free, and over the course of a season, a few better start/sit decisions can be the difference between making and missing the playoffs.