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 long term.
After a wild Week 1 that saw plenty of surprises atop the leaderboard, things got a bit closer to normal in Week 2. We also saw much higher scores this week, despite a smaller field contest as DraftKings returned to the standard $20 Millionaire Maker.
Our winner this week was SamPit16, who entered eight lineups, cashing five of them, including the first-place winner. They were an impressive 12 points clear of second place with their best lineup.
The Lineup
The Stack
Perhaps the most surprising part of this lineup was the core stack, which featured Daniel Jones and his top pass catcher, Malik Nabers. Surprising to others, that is — I was on Danny Dimes as one of my favorite plays of the week. SimLabs also included Jones as the top quarterback value heading into the slate, so there were signs.
Still, while Nabers was a reasonably popular receiver, under 7% of lineups featured his quarterback. That feels like a fairly obvious mistake in retrospect, especially considering how much fantasy production Jones typically provides with his legs.
It should be fairly obvious by now, but when banking on quarterbacks to score points on the ground, single stacks or “naked” builds typically outperform double stacks. With Jones rushing for one of the Giants three scores, there’s generally not enough production to support multiple week-winning receiver scores.
SamPit16 didn’t involve a Commanders bring-back in this stack. While they posted some solid scores, obviously none were needed for first place. My gut tells me that’s more likely to be the case with running quarterbacks as well — since pocket passers need the other team to make the game high scoring in order to drop back enough — but I’m not entirely sure that it’s true.
The other big takeaway here: the Commanders continue to be the best matchup for opposing QBs.
Other Correlations
I almost considered the Cardinals triple stack here in the stacking section above, but since it included a defense instead of a quarterback it fits better here.
The “traditional” D/ST stack features that teams running back, with the logic being that a leading team will run the ball more, plus have more opportunities for big plays against an opponent throwing more.
However, the correlations by position with a team’s DST aren’t really that different for running backs or pass catchers. Which makes sense when you think about how that team got to their big lead. In this case, it was through Marvin Harrison Jr. and a bit of Trey McBride.
The other big takeaway here is not to let Week 1 results cloud your prior judgement of a player. After a quiet debut, there was plenty of panic about Harrison (and Amon-Ra St. Brown, Drake London, among other early fantasy picks). That panic proved mostly unfounded.
The Chalk
This lineup included three players at north of 20% ownership: Jordan Mason, Chris Godwin, and JK Dobbins.
That they all had big games wasn’t especially surprising, I mentioned all three in my main slate breakdown, and projections throughout the industry were all fairly optimistic. As such, we don’t need to get into the logic behind each individual play.
What was sharp, though, was how this lineup was constructed. Leaning into the Mason chalk in particular was probably -EV in a vacuum. SimLabs actually had him as the worst RB play in terms of optimal likelihood ownership projection.
However, he was the second-best back in terms of raw optimal percentage, with his negative value score being driven by high ownership. When rostering players like that, it makes way more sense on lineups that get contrarian elsewhere (Daniel Jones stack.) SamPit16 used Mason on half of their eight lineups — putting him roughly in line with the field — but smartly faded him in lineups that used other chalky players.
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The Sleepers
We’ve touched on the other low-owned plays in this lineup, mainly the Giants and Cardinals stacks. However, the real MVP was Alvin Kamara.
It was a vintage performance from Kamara, who led all player sin fantasy scoring at sub-5% ownership. Not too many people — myself included — were expecting the 29 year-old back to turn back the clock like that.
I wish I had more insight into how to spot outlier performances like that ahead of time, but I’ve got nothing here. With that said, there’s a couple points to keep in mind moving forward.
First, the Cowboys defense is built for speed, which works great when playing from in front, but now as well when they have to hunker down and stop the run. Running backs against the Cowboys need to be considered moving forward.
Secondly, maybe the Saints (or at least their offense) are the real deal? They’ve scored 91 points through two games, the most since 2009, when a team has 93 points through two weeks. That team? The 2009 Saints, who went on to win the Super Bowl.
