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.
We had another small-entry player take down the Millionaire Maker in Week 3, with bruceleeroygreen33 taking down the top prize with one of their three lineups — the other two of which also cashed. We’ll look below and see how they did it.
Our winner this week was stephon828, who cashed all 10 of their lineups, including three in the top 50:
The Lineup
The Stack
The most notable thing about the stack employed by stephon828 is that he rostered Justin Fields in all 10 lineups. While they mixed and matched exposures around Fields — including double stacks and the Steelers defense — Fields was featured in every lineup.
Besides the obvious upside from Fields’ legs, he was also a solid leverage spot against the extremely chalky Najee Harris. Harris was a solid floor/value play thanks to the injury to Jaylen Warren, but they didn’t provide a lot of upside. That’s a classic trap for GPPs, and getting leverage against plays like that is more valuable than just fading them.
They stacked Fields with his top wide receiver, George Pickens, in this lineup but also included tight end Pat Friermuth and running back Cordarrelle Patterson in various permutations across the 10 rosters. It shouldn’t be surprising that the single stack performed best; since Fields’ upside is through his legs, it’s hard for him to support multiple receivers.
I’ve noticed a trend of single stacks working better in massive GPPs generally since it’s hard for two pass catchers from the same team to both score well enough to be in the optimal lineup. Keep that in mind, as the best strategy for the milly maker might not be optimal for smaller tournaments.
Other Correlations
There weren’t any other correlated plays in this lineup, but there was one notable anti-correlated play — or so I thought. I checked our correlations tool after seeing this lineup and was surprised to discover that tight ends have a very slight positive correlation with opposing defenses.
That could be because offenses are dumping the ball off to tight ends when they’re struggling to move the ball — or it could just be noise. Either way, both Taysom Hill and the Falcons defense took down first place here.
That’s worth noting, as typically, DFS players are hesitant to roster an opposing player and a team’s defense. However, outside of quarterbacks (whose success or failure is more reflective of the offense as a whole), the correlations aren’t really strong enough to worry about.
Since fantasy defense scoring is more driven by big plays — like the Falcons’ two touchdowns — than by limiting points from their opponent, we might need to rethink a blanket policy of no players against our defense.
The Chalk
The highest-owned player in this lineup was Texans receiver Nico Collins, who was also the slate’s most popular player. He was pretty clearly a top play coming into the week as the WR1 in a powerful Texans offense. With Tank Dell injured, that offense became concentrated enough to confidently target Collins and, to a lesser extent, Stefon Diggs.
After that were running backs Chuba Hubbard and James Conner, who were among a slew of strong running back plays coming into the slate. Hubbard got a huge boost with Andy Dalton at quarterback but still carried a bargain price, while James Conner was an RB1 in the slate’s highest total game.
Stephon828 used Conner in 100% of their lineups, which I thought was especially sharp. Conner was leverage off of the slate’s two most popular quarterbacks, so when building around somebody else at the position, it made sense.
I mentioned that as part of my SimLabs Building Blocks article — though I paired Conner with the wrong former Bears first-round quarterback.
Be sure to check out all the pick’ems Sleeper has to offer with Sleeper promo code LABS1 for a $100 deposit match.
The Sleepers
The aforementioned Taysom Hill was the least popular player in this lineup, which was obviously a mistake by the field in retrospect. Tight End has been a wasteland this season, and Hill is effectively a tight end, goal-line back, and occasional QB rolled into one. He’ll get you some zeroes, but he’ll win a few weeks this season as well.
Mike Evans had seemingly taken a backseat to Chris Godwin in the Bucs passing game, but that wasn’t the case this week. Evans was the team’s leading receiver against the Eagles and will likely have nearly as many weeks as the WR1 as Godwin. When you like the Tampa passing attack as a whole, blindly playing whichever receiver has lower projected ownership is probably +EV.
Packers wide receiver Jayden Reed was also somewhat low-owned in what turned out to be a shootout against the Vikings. I personally didn’t see that coming, but with the Vikings’ powerful offense and the return of Jordan Love at QB for the Packers it makes sense in retrospect.
