DFS Building Blocks – Week 11
SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE:
We’ve got some new value opening up with Jeff Wilson Jr. expected to start at RB for the 49ers. On a team that wants to run the ball, we’ll get him into our lineups. I still love the (on paper) upside of Gaskin against the Jets, but he’s been struggling. Wilson is no guarantee either , but I’ll take him and the discount.
Kyler Murray is out, so I’m dropping Conner. Easy move down to Jacobs or if moving things around and opening up more salary can move up to Mixon.
Kamara is out so Ingram is a nice value again, but I’m not prioritizing him with Hill around to take some goal-line work away.
So I’m prioritizing Dillon and Wilson at RB. Gaskin if you want to add RB to the flex.
With the new value at RB I expect people to move to Kelce at TE. I’ll be using a Mahomes + Hill + Hardman stack instead. And will be using Gesicki in lineups where I moved off of Gaskin.
Cooper is out for Dallas, which makes Gallup a good value, but he’ll be popular now. I’ll be building my Dak lineups around Dak + Lamb + Schultz instead.
Seattle and Chicago are now strong options at DEF, with Murray and Lamar Jackson both out. Preference is Chicago.
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This week is all about how we approach the Cowboys and Chiefs game. We can expect the public to be all over that game with a 56.5 point total and only a 2.5 point spread. It hits all the things we’re normally looking for. In some similar instances this year, you’ve heard me talk about the game being more of a letdown than the public is expecting. In those other “definitely going to be a shootout” games I felt the chance for a letdown game was at least 50/50 and in some cases 75/25. But this game is different. I put this game at closer to 75% chance of being the shootout that everyone expects. So, we need to think about using this game in our primary lineup. But we also need to think about the 25% chance that it’s a letdown and see if we can find any other attractive games to target instead. We can also think about the Chiefs being the team they’ve been all season, rather than last week, and the Cowboys blowing them out…
- Targeting the game. When we’re targeting an extremely popular game we can attack in two ways. Either find a unique combination of players or play a game overstack.
In the first scenario, maybe it’s taking a flier on Pollard instead of Zeke. Or maybe it’s playing Hardman instead of Hill. This is not only a way to get unique, but it may be a necessity because of the high pricing of all the stars in this game. In that respect, finding a way to pay up for both Hill and Kelce in a Dak, instead of Mahomes, lineup could be unique.
In the second scenario, it’s loading as many Chiefs and Cowboys into one lineup as you can. QB + 2 WRs + opposing WR. But, our favorite way to overstack a game is also a way to build a unique lineup – the QB + RB + WR lineup. A Dak + Zeke + Cooper + Hill/Kelce would be unique and let you take advantage of the expected shootout. We’ve seen a number of examples of this QB + RB + WR stack paying off this year.
- Fade the game completely. Some other games that could turn into shootouts, CIN/LV, GB/MIN, ARI/SEA. You could build around one of these games or feature mini-stacks from several of these games. Even in your DAL/KC build, these games will present some attractive pieces to add.
Let’s follow last week’s format and walk through how I’m building for this week. We’ll start with lineup 1, a DAL/KC stack.
I expect Mahomes to be more popular on FD and Dak, closer and maybe even more popular on DK. On FD, Mahomes is $100 less than Dak and is coming off a classic Mahomes-like performance. It was just one game, but I expect the public to overvalue that performance and feel like they’re getting a discount to boot. Now, from a game theory perspective we’ve talked about this a few times as well – if the Chiefs win, it’s likely because Mahomes had a good day. If the Chiefs fall behind, Mahomes will be in for a lot of volume. So Mahomes does fit the model of the QB we want more than Dak does, but we’re trying to be unique, so I’m starting my lineup with Dak.
I want to add Zeke to really get after that unique QB + RB + WR build, but we have some discounted RBs in Dillon and Conner, and a not discounted, but, cheap, Gaskin. We also can pay up for Chubb against Detroit. Zeke is also priced up to the point that it could be difficult for both him and Prescott to make their 3x value, but we are talking about a big enough shootout that it’s feasible. With so many others paying up for WR or TE this week, it may even be the right play to go with Zeke and Chubb and then add the cheaper Cowboy WR option in Gallup.
Let’s talk Zeke and Chubb for a minute though. Chubb is $9,000 on FD meaning he needs to get 27 points to pay off. He’s done that once this year, but, on the positive side, it was in his last game without Hunt around. He could definitely get there against Detroit, but they could blow them out early and we see D’Ernest Johnson getting a lot more work than Chubb ends up getting. Hard to go here with Dillon and Conner at $7,000 and $7,200, each needing a much more palatable 21 points. For what it’s worth, Zeke needs 25.5 points, which he has not gotten all year.
So, I’ve talked myself out of Zeke, but am still on Dak. Given the chance that the Chiefs aren’t really back to their old ways, Dak has similar upside as Mahomes in that he’ll be a big part of the game whether in a blowout, shootout, or come-from-behind game.
For now, let’s also lock in Dillon and Conner who give us a discount. Hopefully the public will be off of Conner some after he disappointed last week.
Gaskin is cheap and playing the Jets. He’s way more boom or bust than Dillon and Conner but is still flex-worthy in a tournament. I’ll add him to the flex for now and pair with the Dolphins D. I started out targeting the Ravens D, but why not target the team that just beat the Ravens and is playing the Jets this week, with the added RB + DEF correlation with Gaskin.
That leaves us looking at pass catchers. I want to target Kelce, but so will everyone else. And Kelce hasn’t lived up to his pricing since Weeks 1 and 2. But we’re building our lineup telling the story of a shootout, so we can see Kelce getting two TDs this week and hitting 3x. Dalton Schultz is sitting at $6,000 on FD, so another way to look at it is, are we more confident in Kelce getting 22 or Schultz getting 18? I’ll take the Kelce angle, with so many other mouths to feed in Dallas. You can insert any other TE and do the same comparison with Kelce.
Next question, if we’re targeting a shootout is their room for both Kelce and Hill to get 3x and, if there is, should we be playing Mahomes instead of Dak. First, I think they can both get there based on the story we’re telling with our lineup. We’re looking for four to five TDs from each team, with the passing game being responsible for most of them. The Cowboys play aggressive on D and it’s not hard to imagine Hill burning them on some broken plays. I’d rather have Hill than Kelce if just going to one player, but we’re trying to be unique. For the Mahomes, piece, we’re envisioning both QBs having the upside for four TDs. So it’s entirely feasible that Kelce and Hill both get 3x and Dak scores just as well, or higher, than Mahomes, maybe by running one in. I’m basically telling the story that Mahomes and Prescott are going to score equally, so I’m willing to drop the normal correlation of QB + WR + WR and go Dak + Hill + Kelce instead. But I still want to add a Cowboys WR. Or two. But I can’t.
The only Cowboys WR I can fit here is Gallup. Cooper and Lamb are both too expensive and they both take away from each other too much. We’re guessing which is the one that will get the two TDs. So similar to the Mahomes vs Dak analysis, we’re basically saying we think Hill is going to outscore Lamb and Cooper so we’re willing to go away from a heavy DAL stack with Dak + Lamb and/or Cooper. We’ll get some exposure to the Cowboys upside with Gallup though. And we’ll hope Dak spreads it around the rest of the game, with something like one TD to Gallup, one to Lamb, one to Cooper, one to Schultz, one to Zeke… you get the idea. There are so many places Dak can go that Gallup is actually one of the smarter pieces to use, not just because we’re forced to use him, but because he can get to his value with just one TD.
This leaves us filling out our last WR with the best cheap option we can find. Will probably just use the Player Grid and ownership to find the best, low-owned option closer to Sunday morning.
That takes care of lineup 1.
In lineup 2, we want to completely fade the KC/DAL game.
CIN/LV is the one that jumps out the most, but it’s also the one jumping out the most in early ownership projections. So we can skip it completely or we can get unique. Let’s see.
We can start by locking in QB + RB + WR with Burrow + Mixon + Chase. Then the most logical piece of the Raiders to come back with is Waller at TE.
I don’t love using Gaskin + Dolphins in both lineups, but it fits pretty well here and has the upside we’re looking for. That’s not really the piece we’re trying to diversify, so I’m okay accepting the all-or-none risk with that pairing.
To get some extra differentiation, since most of the crowd is on Dillon then Conner, we’ll add Conner instead of Dillon. Would be really nice to get Davante Adams in there since we’re fading Dillon, but let’s come back to that. For now, since playing Conner we want to get either Metcalf or Lockett in as well, we’ll take the cheaper Lockett.
That leaves us again finding a cheap WR to fill out our lineup.
Now, back to Adams. If we drop Lockett out of our lineup and put Adams in we have to save some money elsewhere. We can start by dropping from Chase to Higgins. Could go down to Boyd if you prefer. We need more savings still, so we can drop Gaskin out of our flex and go down to Ravens D. That leaves us looking for a flex and Hunter Renfrow is staring us in the face. But now we have Waller and Renfrow and we’re not expecting the fireworks that we’re expecting in DAL/KC so I’d rather drop from Burrow to Carr at QB then to get the QB + WR + WR correlation. We still have a unique mini-stack with Mixon + Higgins. This gives us a full game stack of CIN/LV with some unique mini-stacks for leverage. Not a bad lineup and I may even lean to this one over my other CIN/LV build.
Last approach is to go more balanced on the other games. Stick to a QB + WR + opposing WR stack, an RB + opposing WR mini-stack, and fill out your lineup with individual pieces of these other games.
I’m also going to play around with a Rodgers + Dillon + Adams lineup seeing what it looks like with Jefferson/Thielen as well.
Once again, you can see how my lineup building thought process naturally leads me to having a few diversified lineups. Thinking through each of these decision points and the follow-on decisions is really what allows you to start building “good” lineups – still need variance to go your way, but start building lineups like this and you’ll find yourself profiting more often than not. And you’ll be telling lineup stories that can take advantage of variance giving yourself a shot at a big win.
Getting this out early this week, so check back Sunday morning for any updates and keep an eye on the news and ownership levels on the Player Grids as we get closer to Sunday.