Last NFL season, our new SimLabs tool went live to the public. It’s a powerful new feature that allows casual players to build competitive lineups effortlessly — or serious players to leverage their convictions more effectively. This week, we’ve also added the feature of being able to export lineups from SimLabs directly to our models for easy tweaking of lineups.
I broke down some general uses of the tool from an evergreen perspective earlier in the year. Moving forward, we’ll be checking out some suggested starting points for building lineups.
The process is simple: from the SimLabs home screen, first select the field size and desired range of outcomes for your lineups. The field size depends on the contest type, while the “results range” allows you to customize how unique you want your lineups to be.
Then, find the box titled “include players” and type your preferred options — then sit back and let the sims do their thing. You can generate as many or as few lineups as you want, then upload directly to DraftKings to be entered into contests.
For more on what SimLabs is and how it works, check out our user guide.
Brock Purdy + Christian McCaffrey
The 49ers have the second-highest implied total on the slate, with the only team ahead of them (Detroit) featuring a split backfield.
Christian McCaffrey saw just under 90% of snaps in his return from the IR last week and draws a much better matchup this week — in addition to another week to get back to game speed. By rostering Brock Purdy and McCaffrey together, you can almost guarantee exposure to every touchdown from the 49ers.
Of course, they will cannibalize each other’s production slightly, barring multiple receiving touchdowns for CMC. For that reason, I prefer to use this build in smaller-field tournaments. Fortunately, SimLabs settings allow you to optimize for the type of tournament you’re playing, so be sure to use that feature if building around the 49ers.
Check out how our SimLabs Lineup Generator works:
Jared Goff
The Lions managed to pull out a walk-off victory on Sunday Night Football in Week 10 despite a whopping five interceptions from Jared Goff. That was extremely uncharacteristic, considering he hadn’t even thrown five incompletions in the three games prior.
Detroit has both the highest team total and spread this week and should be able to do whatever they want to a bad Jaguars defense. With any other team, I’d assume that means slowing the game down through the rushing attack.
However, Detroit, under Dan Campbell, is a different animal. They ran up the score against the Cowboys, including multiple passes to offensive linemen, in the rematch from last year’s controversial Week 18 game.
It wouldn’t shock me at all to see Detroit let Goff cook here in order to get the bad taste from last week out of his mouth. Detroit mixes in enough pass-catchers that there’s not a clear stack, so I’m happy to let the sims build those out for me.
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Josh Allen + Travis Kelce
Neither the Bills nor the Chiefs have been the explosive offenses we’ve come to expect from them. However, much of that has been due to the game scripts they’ve found themselves in. Kansas City hasn’t needed to air it out much due to their solid defense, while Buffalo has leaned on their ground game.
That could all change this week when these teams meet. We’ve had some shootouts between them in past years, with the potential for another here. My preferred way to attack is through Travis Kelce and Josh Allen. Kelce has seen 40 targets over the past three weeks, while Allen has the dual-threat ability to break the slate.
SimLabs could very well include other pieces from this game if starting here, but these two are my priority. Plus, on a tight salary slate, paying up at two “onesie” positions should be a fairly unique roster construction.