We discussed Griddy: Football Puzzles at length here, so today, we will focus more on the strategies one may employ to help build the strongest grid possible. For a quick refresher, Griddy is a nine-round, completely free-to-play fantasy football team-building puzzle. This puzzle is scored based on talent and chemistry, with chemistry being the focus.
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Griddy: The Strategy Behind Fantasy Football Puzzles
Focus on Chemistry
Building chemistry requires us to focus on stacking players from the same team, division, and/or draft class. One mistake many new users often make, including myself, is getting too locked in on talent. There is a talent score, so talent shouldn’t completely be ignored given comparable options, but priority should always be given to chemistry fits or potential chemistry fits. Hero cards are worth 15 talent points and are worth trying to fit on your team if you get them early enough, but don’t jeopardize your puzzle to fit them in, especially in later rounds.
Wait for Specific QBs
Waiting on the QB position should be a familiar strategy to most fantasy football managers, but at Griddy: Football Puzzles, this means focusing on chemistry fits for the quarterbacks you anticipate showing up at certain points in the draft, namely the final rounds. The more you play Griddy: Football Puzzles, the more you will be able to recognize the patterns of where specific players may show up. This strategy specifically will result in users seeing a lot of bronze quarterbacks being presented as options in the final rounds. Knowing this allows you to focus on running backs and wide receivers with chemistry fits for these players, with the understanding that you will hopefully eventually be slotting them into your team. This is not a foolproof plan by any means. RNG is always throwing curveballs, but it is a tried and true strategy to help build a leaderboard-worthy squad, given, of course, some lucky RNG breaks.
Recent Draft Classes
Focusing on recent draft classes can help with chemistry building. It should go without saying that there are not many (if any) skill players from Aaron Rodgers’ draft class, Travis Kelce’s draft class, or Matthew Stafford’s draft class. These are all exceptional future Hall of Fame players, but for Griddy, they are potential chemistry destroyers. Yes, if you are building an AFC West, Kelce may help on one side of the grid, but unless you are sticking Cordarelle Patterson out there on the other side of your grid, he is likely going to hurt your chemistry score. The 2023 class seems to be the best bet as far as options are concerned, but there are also a lot of 2024 players to be had. In my experience so far, it has been smart to avoid draft classes prior to 2020. I initially kept trying to stick the high-talent quarterbacks I got early into my lineup, but there seem to be far fewer options to choose from from a draft class like 2018 that has some obvious studs at quarterback.
Tight End Selection
The most common way I struggle building a grid at Griddy is by failing to leverage the tight end position as the connective piece that it is. The way the tight end position is laid out on the grid, it is arguably the most important piece of the whole puzzle. It ties together the two sides of the puzzle from multiple avenues and can be the piece that makes or breaks your ascension up the leaderboard. The best teams I have seen (mainly on Reddit) are built around the tight end position as far as focusing on one draft class or division on one side of the grid and another on the other side. The tight end position is used to tie them together.
Stay Flexible
It is advisable to go into your Griddy puzzles with a strategy in mind, but we need to be able to adapt based on the draws RNG gives us. It is also important to rearrange your grid as necessary to try and flesh out the best chemistry matches. Doing this after each round will get you in the habit of prioritizing chemistry and may also give you some insight into future puzzles and player selection.
Avoid Tunnel Vision
As mentioned above, it is important to avoid prioritizing talent over chemistry. There are rare instances when a Hero card or even a Platinum card from a draft class prior to 2020 may be a worthwhile selection, but this is usually when you have team or division chemistry matches already in place. Chasing Hero or Platinum card talent scores is often tempting but should only be done strategically. Maximizing chemistry bonuses is the priority.
Recognize Trends
While we offered up a trend we have noticed above with Bryce Young and Will Levis, the addition of Desmond Ridder and Dorian Thompson-Robinson and the removal of Aidan O’Connell and Jameis Winston is sure to alter the frequency of specific player selections. Being adaptive enough to recognize trends and incorporate them into your strategy will help with your grid building.
Challenge Your Friends to a Griddy: Football Puzzles Showdown Today!!
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Raju Byfield is a featured writer for FantasyPros. For more from Raju, check out his profile and follow him @FantasyContext.