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.
Week 7 features three games with 50-point totals. That lines up nicely with my completely arbitrary three starting points in this piece. To switch it up a bit, let’s focus on the best ways to attack each of those games. The high total doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the best spots, but here’s how I’d approach things.
Brian Robinson + Andy Dalton
The highest total on the board belongs to the Panthers-Commanders game. For good reason — both defenses are awful, and the Commanders are an exciting young offense led by rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels.
However, Daniels is likely to be the most popular quarterback on the slate, with Panthers running back Chuba Hubbard near the top at his position. Building around those two assumes a competitive enough game that Washington continues to throw the ball while the Panthers keep things on the ground.
What if the Commanders simply blow the doors off the Panthers, though? In that case, they could hand the ball to Brian Robinson against the league’s worst rushing defense while Carolina plays catch-up through the air.
This gives your lineup tons of leverage against Jayden Daniels-led builds, and also saves plenty of salary for other positions. Keep an eye on the news, though. Robinson is questionable and could be on a snap count even if active.
Check out how our SimLabs Lineup Generator works:
Geno Smith + Jaxon Smith-Njigba + Drake London
The second of the 50-point games is Seahawks-Falcons, with the Falcons as three-point home favorites. There are plenty of ways to build around this one, but SimLabs is pointing to one being sharper than the others.
That’s pairing Smith was his ascending WR2, Smith-Njigba. JSN has moved well past Tyler Lockett in terms of snap and target share and is fairly close to catching DK Metcalf for the team lead. Geno is the top quarterback in Optimal vs. Projected Ownership, with Smith-Njigba at #2 among wide receivers.
As for Drake London, he’s the clear-cut WR1 for Atlanta. His 24.8% target share leads all players on both teams in this game, and his $6,900 salary still hasn’t quite caught up to his usage. If this game lives up to expectations, it’s highly likely he’s a part of it.
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Jared Goff + Justin Jefferson
The final 50-point game is perhaps the easiest to stack, even though I’m not going with a traditional QB+WR pairing.
The reason for that is simple. Justin Jefferson leads the entire NFL in target share, with a healthy 28.1%. While that’s worked out to “just” 8.6 targets per game, we can anticipate a higher throw rate from the Vikings, given the likely game flow against the Lions. Sam Darnold hasn’t thrown the ball more than 31 times in a game this season, but that’s likely to change as Detroit pushes the pace all game.
On the other side of the field, Detroit’s offense is extremely spread out. While Amon-Ra St. Brown has a solid 25.8% target share, Jameson Williams has more Air Yards, while Sam LaPorta and Jahmyr Gibbs are also involved in the passing game.
I don’t want to anchor my lineups to any one of those players. By rostering Goff, I’m leaving the opportunity to have any combination of them — or none of them. It’s also not a stretch to envision Goff distributing production evenly enough among his weapons that he has a big game, but none of them do individually.
Which is a sharp contrast to Justin Jefferson. Jefferson can easily hit without Darnold doing enough to be worth playing, making this the sharper way to attack the NFC North 1st place showdown.
