Whether you’re prepping for the semi-final round of your playoffs or packed it up weeks ago, the fantasy football season is unfortunately coming to an end. Luckily, we will have a full slate of games in Week 18 which will be immediately followed by the NFL playoffs. Here are our favorite ways to stay engaged and create stakes for these games without the stakes of season-long fantasy football.

Assuming you are over 21 years old, betting is a great way to “play for something” in the final few weeks of the regular season. With money on the line, you can still stake claims on which players are going to produce.

The easiest way to identify the best bets of the week is by using the player prop evaluator in the WalterPicks app. The WalterPicks identifies the best bets by scanning 15+ sportsbooks, factoring in our state of the art projections, and calculating the EV Edge for each prop. The higher the EV Edge, the better value you get.

The WalterPicks app has a game betting tool as well that does the exact same thing but for game O/Us, moneylines, and spreads.

The closest thing to fantasy football is participating in DFS (Daily Fantasy Sports) contests. In these contests, each person gets to choose multiple players for their lineup. Usually, it’s one QB, two RBs, three WRs, one TE, one FLEX, and one D/ST.

The kicker, though, is that each person has to stay under a certain salary. The salary is usually $60,000 on FanDuel. So, you can’t simply pick the best players and submit your entry. There is a bit of strategy involved in these DFS contests. (Our writer Samps always hands out his favorite DFS picks in our Friday email.)

WalterPicks has a fantastic tool in the app to help people in DFS contests. It’s called the lineup optimizer. All you have to do is input how many players of each position you need, and Walter gives you the best lineup.

Here is an early lineup it generated for Week 16:

The fantasy football season might be over for most, but managers should still be watching games to identify trends for next season. There is still a lot to learn from the last few weeks of the year.

How will Rashee Rice and the Chiefs’ offense look without Patrick Mahomes? How will rookies like TreVeyon Henderson, RJ Harvey, and Omarion Hampton look to end the season? Could Tyler Shough be a sneaky QB1 option next season?

Answers to questions like this will have a huge impact on how drafts shake out for next season. Actively watching games on Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday will help you identify trends that other people in your league might not see coming because they aren’t watching the games.

With the NFL season almost coming to a close, now would also be a good time to start getting into other sports. The NBA is the other league we currently have the most resources/coverage for.

Just like for the NFL the WalterPicks App offers an NBA player prop evaluator and game betting tool. Our very own Seth Burton does a fantastic job on the new Basketball.WalterPicks TikTok account, highlighting the best matchups each night and some metrics to look out for.