I am incredibly bored at work, so I am going to breakdown my lineup for the DraftKings FFWC (Fantasy Football World Championship), which took place this past Sunday in San Diego, California.
The first thing I needed to do was figure out who my competitors were. I assumed that the field of 200 was going to be filled with very sharp people. However, the first person I met told me the story of how he qualified his first time playing and was unaware of what he had won. At this point I began to be a bit more comfortable while realizing that this field would not be as sharp as I imagined. (Let me state that it was still a very sharp field. I may have misappropriated myself in where I thought I belonged in relation to amateur vs pro. I think I fall somewhere in the middle.)
Let’s get to my lineup.
First, let me say that I did an AWFUL job projecting ownership this week. It helped me in some spots, but as is the case every week, I would have done some things differently if I could have more accurately projected ownership.
The first thing I did was decide pretty early in the week to fade what seemed at first one of the better games on the week – the Patriots versus the Titans. The Patriots’ high implied total led me to think more people would be on Brandon Boldin at (18%) and Rob Gronkowski (7,700) was too expensive at a position that offers huge value if you can get it right. This decision ended up paying off, but it did scare me a bit to fade the game entirely.
My thought process in making this lineup was to not be afraid to take chalk, but to be sure to differentiate myself in a few spots. I thought I already had done this a bit by fading the Patriots/Titans. I definitely thought more usage would be in this game than there was, with Brady, Gronk, Boldin, Walker, and Mariota.
I loved Denard Robinson (in PPR) and Julio Jones (I thought he had second-highest floor of WRs) this week and decided I would eat whatever ownership % that came along with them.
Charcandrick West was a must play once the news of Spencer Ware being used only in emergency broke. I was at my computer finishing my second coffee of the morning when that news broke and I immediately placed West into my lineup. I was ready and hoping for that news to break. I am incredibly fortunate because it also allowed me to dodge the AP injury that I would have been on otherwise. (I did not expect AP to be 50%-plus owned.)
I also loved Deandre Hopkins this week. In a perceived poor matchup, coming off of a bad game, with a bad quarterback throwing him the ball, I thought this was a great chance to get an elite talent at reduced ownership. Everyone knows NUK is a freak talent. He and Yates had some success in the past, and I loved his upside at what I thought was going to be around 10% ownership. I was close as he ended up being 12%.
I was WAY wrong on defense – I thought the Seahawks were going to be somewhere around 25% and I thought I was being modest. I also loved the idea of going a Seahawks/Tyler Lockett stack. I have used that stack several weeks this year, but Lockett’s two-TD game the week before scared me away as I thought he would be somewhere between 10-15% ownership. He ended up even higher at 25.5% — I would never have guessed that 51 other lineups were going to roster Lockett. I think I made the right move here, but I was not even close to correctly projecting Seattle D/ST or Lockett’s ownership.
Instead, I went down to Houston D/ST. I was upset (I wanted to throw my phone through a TV, to be more specific) to see them at 27.5%. Again, I got D/ST very wrong this week. They were not a bad play, but I would never have played them at over 10%. I think I underestimated the field in thinking Seattle would be so high. I thought almost every amateur would roster them against Manziel. I was wrong.
Going two TEs is always a nice way to differentiate yourself from the field. I thought Greg Olsen would be higher than 5% but I didn`t care. I was pumped to see I had him at 5%. I loved him in this spot against a defense that is bottom of the league against TE. I really wanted Barnidge, but I couldn`t get myself to roster a naked Philip Rivers, who I had already decided upon at QB, so Gates was my second choice.
My lineup construction left me with what I saw as a choice between Malcolm Floyd and Anquan Boldin. I thought I had built a solid enough floor in this lineup to really take a shot here. I really liked the idea of Floyd (6′ 5″) against the Dolphins small corner backs, but I ended up on Boldin in a game where I thought they would be trailing early. I did love Floyd, but the I felt a bit more confident in Boldin`s targets. This ended up paying off as I was the only one who rostered Boldin. I thought I was going to puke during the first slate of games knowing that a large piece of my success was now riding on a 35 year old WR with Blaine Gabbert throwing to him. His late touchdown was over a $20,000 swing for me. I will probably forever love him. I will also probably never roster him again.
The last decision I made was going Rivers – I loved him this week against this Miami defense. Miami stinks. They let up so many points to other teams. They do it through the air a lot of the time. Philip Rivers typically throws the ball in the air (and lets it hang there for anyone to grab). As such, I liked this spot. I had been picking on the Miami defense the past two weeks and was not going to stop now. I HATED that there was this narrative of the last game in San Diego because I thought it would increase his ownership. And in hindsight, I probably would have gotten off of him if I had known Cam Newton was going to be 8.5% and Tyrod at 4.5%. I really did not think that Rivers would end up being 20%. I did however love the narrative of an East Coast team flying out west. The narrative made sense but I had never seen any data to support it. I went into Fantasy Labs trends tool to take a look. This is for Pacific Standard Time QB playing at home vs. an Eastern Standard Time team.
As you can see it is a small sample size but it does support the narrative. When I got rid of the noise, I found that it had a count of 19 with a Plus/Minus of +6.75. I did that quickly and I think there could also be one or two more that are creating a bit of noise. Either way, it made me feel even more comfortable in my decision to go Rivers. I would never have based my decision solely on this, but it was a very nice tool to have in testing something I had only heard, but never had proven. The Trends tool is uniquely useful in that way. I believe most people come to “truths” on things based on comfort rather than fact. To be able to take something I have believed to be true in the absence of proof and put it to the test in just a few minutes is an invaluable tool.
Overall I am not upset with my finish of 26th in the DraftKings FFWC. I had a blast and put myself in contention for a good finish. I met some really nice people and got to talk fantasy sports, which is always fun. I plan to be back to a live final again sometime soon.
