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.
Each week in 2022, I’ll look at the winning lineup in DraftKings Millionaire Maker Contest with an eye for how the lucky winner arrived at the lineup that took it down. Rather than going through every position, we’ll focus on key lessons that can be learned — and maybe even some mistakes worth avoiding.
While a high degree of positive variance is necessary to win a contest of this size (the standard $20 contests have over 236,000 entrants, there’s still a large amount of skill involved to get to a position to benefit from that variance.
Here’s Week 8’s winner:
The Lineup
AllstarHarry is this week’s winner, using just a single lineup that topped the massive field. They used multiple team stacks — all without a bring-back — in what was a unique roster construction. That was important since the cumulative ownership was high. We’ll dive into why that worked below.
The Stack
The primary stack utilized by AllstarHarry was a Dolphins double. Tua Tagovailoa at quarterback, with both top pass catchers Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle. Each of them projected extremely well against a porous Lions passing defense. When your opponent fires their DBs coach, you know the passing game was working.
One of the reasons this stack worked so well was due to the extreme concentration of targets on Waddle and Hill. They accounted for 55% of the team’s targets and over 65% of the air yards for the Dolphins. With the best game environment on the slate, using both receivers with Tua made a ton of sense.
While they were all popular — and the three-person stack equally so — the genius of this lineup was in not using a Detroit player on the other side. Detroit spreads the wealth much more, with no pass catcher topping 13.9 DraftKings points despite a team score of 27. Most Tua double stacks likely had at least one Lion coming back.
Additionally, AllstarHarry stacked Alvin Kamara with the Saints defense. Besides the correlation between RB1s and their defense, this also got a less popular defense into the mix, which is always a good move. The 16-point performance from New Orleans was near the peak of their range of outcomes, but defenses are notoriously hard to project.
Finally, they stacked two pass catchers — more on them in the sleepers section.
The Chalk
Tony Pollard was hard to get away from this week. He was likely to assume workhorse duties with Ezekiel Elliott out of the lineup for the Cowboys. This was not missed by the field, with over 50% ownership in the Milly Maker. As we’ve mentioned here before, running back is the best spot to play the chalk since their production is the most easily projectable.
DJ Moore was another player with an expected increase in workload, with Robbie Anderson and Christian McCaffrey both traded away. The fact that this game unexpectedly turned into a shootout helped, and he turned 11 targets into six catches, 152 yards, and a score.
Chalk wideouts (outside of stacks) generally aren’t ideal in bigger tournaments due to their volatility. However, this was a week with many strong running back plays but fewer solid options at receiver. This lineup was on the unique side by virtue of having four receivers.
The Sleepers
Both Garrett Wilson and Tyler Conklin were fairly contrarian picks — especially the latter. However, pairing them together was surely even less owned. This game had a sub-40 point total, and New England was the number five pass defense by DVOA coming into the game.
Conklin made sense to an extent. Tight ends — much like defenses — are notoriously volatile. Outside of Travis Kelce and Mark Andrews were both missing from the slate, so any tight end who caught a TD had a chance to win the slate. Conklin managed to catch two.
Wilson had a chance to be the Jets’ top wideout with Corey Davis missing the game. Beyond that, I’m not entirely sure what AllstarHarry saw in him. It worked, though, with Wilson catching six balls for 115 yards. If there’s a takeaway here, it’s that betting on rookie wideouts with high draft capital prior to their breakouts is a good idea. We can be too early hundreds of times and pay it off by being right on time just once.
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