This weekend’s $25 Massive Double Up on Draft Kings proved to be extremely challenging as an unusually high score of over 172 was needed to cash. Usually around 150 will do it in a cash game on Draft Kings but not this week. Most of this was due to the extremely high ownership percentage rates of both Todd Gurley (86.1%, 35.3 points) and the Rams Defense (60.4%, 25 Points) who both hit it out of the park. Over half the field (57.48%) used a stack of both Gurley and the Rams, and almost two thirds (63.33%) of those lineups cashed. It was almost as if they had a 60 point head start.
But the major factor in cashing this week was definitely Lamar Miller. His usage stood at 22.37% and over 87% of lineups with Miller doubled up. In fact, if you started your lineup with Gurley, the Rams D, and added Miller, you cashed at a rate of 98.5%. A total of 5,953 lineups in this contest had those three, and 5,864 of those cashed in. All three of these players ranked extremely high in both the FantasyLabs Pro Trends and Bales Model analysis this week. In fact, according to much of the Fantasy Labs data, Lamar Miller was the number one value play of the weekend.
Two more players with high success rates this week were Andrew Luck (15.86%) and T.Y. Hilton (13.17%). Together as a stack, they were used in 5.16% of lineups and over 90% of those cashed. Just for fun, I looked up a Luck/Hilton/Miller stack. This three-headed juggernaut was used in 731 lineups and 730 of those cashed. If you’re wondering, the one poor soul who didn’t cash with the Luck/Hilton/Miller stack also happened to use Chris Ivory and the Steelers Defense, two major lineup killers this week.
Here is the table of all players owned at 10% or greater in this contest:
The second tier of ownership level, those owned between 4-10%, had a few standouts as well. Both Danny Woodhead and Michael Crabtree significantly helped their owners cash this week, but Travis Benjamin and the Steelers D were death. Quite surprisingly, Gary Barnidge was used in about 5% of lineups but only helped around 25% of those to cash, even though he was the 4th highest scoring TE on the week. Rob Gronkowski (3.34% owned) and Jordan Reed (2.81% owned) helped owners the most at TE this week as a Gronkowski lineup cashed 58.77% of the time while a Reed lineup cashed in 72.2% of lineups.
Here is the 4-10% ownership table:
About the author: Greg Scharlach graduated from the University of Southern California in 1993 with a degree in Sports Information. After spending time with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Clippers, and Rancho Cucamonga Quakes in the Public Relations departments, he changed careers and became a Financial Advisor in 1995, but never lost the passion for sports. He has been playing in numerous season-long Fantasy Leagues since 1994 (both MLB and NFL), and has been studying the Daily landscape for several years. You can follow him on Twitter @USC_Dragon.
