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 in the long term.
There were two games with 50-point totals in Week 15 that stood out as the best DFS environments on the slate. Neither of them got there — but two other games did. That made for an interesting week where going slightly off the beaten path was the recipe to DFS success.
That’s what “haffeyjr5” did in the milly maker, with one of their 150 lineups taking down the tournament. Let’s see how they did it below.
The Lineup
The Stack
According to our Contest Dashboard, this lineup didn’t use an official quarterback and pass catcher stack. That’s because it stacked Baker Mayfield with his primary running back in Rachaad White.
It was a career day for Mayfield, who threw for 381 yards and four passing touchdowns. However, Mayfield spread the ball around well, with no player catching multiple touchdowns and the only player to top 100 yards not catching any. That led to no massive scores from his receivers or tight ends.
Of course, White has a solid role in the passing game, averaging a bit over three targets per game. Obviously, he can have a big game without it all coming through the air, thanks to his workhorse role on the ground, which is exactly what happened, as White scored 13 points in the receiving game and 8.9 on the ground.
Quarterback and running back stacks make sense when you want to bet on the offense as a whole succeeding — especially on teams without a single dominant pass catcher. They have a solid correlation, and are probably a bit underutilized by the field in big tournaments, which is something to keep in mind moving forward.
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The Chalk
Christian McCaffrey was a great play in Week 15. He’s a great play every week, with a floor higher than most players’ ceiling. Usually, the drawback of CMC is that high-priced receivers tend to have a much higher ceiling. Coming into Week 15, McCaffrey had just two 30-point games on the season, while players like CeeDee Lamb (four), AJ Brown (three), and especially Tyreek Hill (six) get there far more frequently.
However, in Week 15, Hill was out, Brown was off the main slate, and Lamb had a tough matchup with bad weather and a solid Bills defense. That made McCaffrey a stronger play relative to the field than usual since the opportunity cost of his salary was much lower.
The other high-ownership player in this lineup was Jayden Reed of the Packers. Reed came into the week with the highest Pts/Sal projection in our models and was fairly obviously a strong play. The clever part of Reed’s inclusion in this lineup is he also served as a bring-back for the Bucs stack.
That was an excellent idea to lower the effective ownership of Reed. For Reed to truly hit a ceiling outcome, this game needed to be high scoring. A high-scoring game also meant tons of points for Mayfield, White — or, in this case, both.
The Sleepers
I was shocked to see how low the ownership was on Noah Brown when I pulled up this week’s winning lineup. Houston was without Tank Dell and Nico Collins, leaving Brown as the WR1 in the offense — with a WR3 salary. Obviously, the drop from CJ Stroud to Case Keenum at quarterback was a big part of that. Still, Houston was facing the heaviest pass-funnel defense in the league in the Titans and still had to throw it to somebody.
I didn’t play much James Cook this week. I now regret it. Cook had a monster day for the Bills, running 25 times for 179 yards and a touchdown. Even with the benefit of hindsight, it’s somewhat hard to see arriving on this play. Buffalo is a pass-first offense in an expected shootout. It does make sense as a leverage play, though. With most of the field targeting the passing attacks in Dallas-Buffalo, it was easy to overlook the running game. That was probably a mistake, especially given the weather conditions in the game.
The last sub-10% piece on this roster was Cleveland. I’m always in favor of mixing and matching DST exposure, which is precisely what haffeyjr5 did. They had at least some exposure to nine different defenses, with Cleveland leading the way. The Browns getting there was easy to see coming — they’re arguably the league’s best overall unit, and were taking on a poor offensive line of the Bears. I didn’t write them up in the linked article, but they were the fourth-biggest mismatch on the slate.
