As DFS players, we spend most of our time looking forward to the next slate, the next season, etc. Equally important, though, is looking back. Figuring out the thought process that leads to winning lineups is crucial. That’s what makes us better players long term.
Each week in 2022, I’ll look at the winning lineup in DraftKings Millionaire Maker Contest with an eye for how the lucky winner arrived at the lineup that took it down. Rather than going through every position, we’ll focus on key lessons that can be learned — and maybe even some mistakes worth avoiding.
While a high degree of positive variance is necessary to win a contest of this size (the standard $20 contests have over 236,000 entrants, there’s still a large amount of skill involved to get to a position to benefit from that variance.
Here’s Week 5’s winner:
The Lineup
The winner this week was ChevChelios, who also had a lineup finish third. They entered 20 total lineups, with five of them finishing in the top 1% and 15 of them cashing. This is an excellent example of how to play with a (somewhat) smaller bankroll — keeping your player pool tight but having enough permutations around the same handful of players to profit (in a big way) when things go right.
We can use the FantasyLabs Contest Dashboard Tool to examine his overall exposures, not just the winning lineup. That can be more helpful in understanding the thought process behind the lineup since it paints a picture of the overall strategy.
The Stack(s)
ChevChelios took an interesting stacking strategy this week. First, they went back to the single-stack strategy I’ve advocated for in this space, pairing Josh Allen with Gabe Davis. They used Allen in seven of 20 lineups, with four Davis lineups and six with Khalil Shakir, to go with just two Stefon Diggs lineups.
There’s a lot of sound logic behind that strategy. Allen was likely to be the slate’s highest-owned quarterback, so pairing him with lesser-used receivers allowed this/these lineups to still be slightly contrarian. Davis was the lowest-owned member of this lineup.
Davis also has massive upside. He has a deeper aDOT than Diggs and a penchant for finding the end zone. With the Bills receiving corps banged up, it was fairly likely that targets would condense around Diggs or Davis. However, the potential to get leverage on the field lied wholly with Davis. Diggs has more than double the ownership that Davis did.
This lineup passed on the bring-back, which also made sense this week. The Bills are one of the few NFL teams that continue to aggressively throw the ball even with a lead, so it’s possible to get big days from Allen and his receiver(s) without a productive player on the other side. With Pittsburgh’s offense struggling this season, no need to force the issue. Wisely, ChevChelios didn’t play a single Steeler in any lineup.
They did use a secondary stack, rostering three Buccaneers. Leonard Fournette was projecting as a top running back play, and Chris Godwin was far too cheap for his usual role. Cade Otton was minimum-priced but looked to be the starting tight end in Tampa this week.
As a group, the Bucs in this stack scored 58.5 points on $15,300 salary, good for 3.8x. It was a fairly safe bet that the Bucs would put up points this week. Rostering all the underpriced players who projected well allowed you to get exposure to those points without breaking the bank — or having to guess who would do the bulk of the scoring.
It just so happened that Fournette provided most of the scoring, but the thesis would remain the same even had it been Godwin or Otton with the big day. Additionally, the tournament ownership of all three players together is likely far lower than their individual ownership would suggest.
One-Off Plays
This lineup filled five of the eight offensive spots with the stacks, leaving only three other players to discuss. Alvin Kamara was an excellent play this week. His salary had fallen to the lowest point since 2016. Andy Dalton was in at quarterback, and Dalton is far more apt to check down to Kamara than gun-slinging Jameis Winston.
Finally, the offensive line matchup for Kamara was tremendous. Kamara topped the 100-yard rushing bonus thanks to a plethora of running lanes. His day could have been much bigger, but Taysom Hill stepped in for three rushing touchdowns. Still, Kamara went more than 4x his salary, keeping lineups on a 200+ point pace.
Tyler Lockett was another player who was priced too cheaply for his role. He and DK Metcalf had seen essentially even volume heading into Week 5, but Metcalf was $1,200 more expensive. Predicting the better option between the Seahawks receivers has been historically difficult, but fading recency bias and rostering the cheaper one is generally a good plan.
Also, note the correlation between Kamara and Lockett. We’ve discussed the value in playing running backs and receivers from opposing teams before, and this is an excellent example. Seattle had to throw more because New Orleans was scoring — which meant Kamara was having a solid day.
The Chalk
As much as it pains me to say it, the chalk defense got there this week. Dallas was a pretty obvious play, with their excellent pass rush against a banged-up Rams offensive line. I mentioned them as a strong option early last week in the line play article, and it held true.
The five sacks were fairly predictable, though one of them turning into the rare fumble-six falls more in the “positive variance” category. Still, even without the defensive touchdown, this would’ve been a big day from a super cheap defense.
The takeaway here is perhaps not to entirely fade the chalk defense but consider mixing up exposures. ChevChelios used eight total defenses across their 20 lineups. Had any of the other units been the high scorer for the week, they still would’ve been in a strong position.
The Sleepers
Breece Hall at nearly 10% ownership isn’t quite a sleeper, but he wasn’t a chalk play either. He projected fairly well and has increased his rushing attempts in each game this season. Hall also appears to be the passing down back for the Jets, furthering his case for DFS purposes.
Turning two targets into 100 receiving yards and a touchdown is a 99th-percentile outcome, but that’s what ChevChelios got from Hall in Week 5. On the flip side, falling just short of the 100-yard rushing bonus feels like a slightly bad run, so it evens out to an extent.
Moving forward, keep an eye on rookies. This is the time of the season when we generally see their roles begin to expand. That’s the perfect opportunity to buy low — both in terms of salary and ownership — on young players.
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