Each week, I’ll be expanding on the DraftKings Millionaire Maker analysis provided by Adam Levitan here and The Wolf here. I encourage you to look at those articles first, if you haven’t already.
Breakdowns of trends in lineup structure for particular weeks can be found on the subreddit r/dfsports, and every week linestarapp.com gives you the highest possible scoring Millionaire lineup. Visit the latter to remind you how absurd this game can be, like how you should’ve stacked the Lions in week 1, and how Maxx Williams was apparently the tight end to roll out in week 2.
In this series, I’ll be looking at trends that DFS players track, diving into the skill/luck dichotomy, and more.
WINNING STRATEGY
Won $1 MILLION ✅
Scored a seat to the #DKChampSeries Tournament of Champions ✅'wmm70116' and 'LordMattyIce' took down this Sunday's millionaire contests.
$4.5M Standings: https://t.co/p65xr9VBok
$3M Standings: https://t.co/HVfjX6foMM pic.twitter.com/94gefxrbxy— DraftKings (@DraftKings) September 27, 2021
‘wmm70116’ won the large-pool, $20 buy-in Millionaire, that I’ll focus on here:
Josh Allen — $7000
Alexander Mattison — $6000
D’Andre Swift — $5800
DK Metcalf — $7300
Cole Beasley — $4800
Emmanuel Sanders — $4200
Logan Thomas — $4700
Justin Jefferson — $7200
Cardinals D/ST — $3000
- Stack: Double (QB-WR-WR), with a run-it-back (TE). Our first run-it-back in the top lineup this season
- Salary used: $50G out of $50G, just like week 1 (week 2 used $49800)
- Vegas’ 8th-highest over/under in total points out of 13 games. Similar to week 1, another middle-of-the-pack O/U contains the winning stack
- After a sub-6k QB in week 1 (Joe Burrow, $5800), the last two weeks have seen a return to recent trends, with Brady in week 2 ($6900) and Allen this week
- Of the six RBs in these first three weeks of Millionaire winners, only one has been above $6200 (Derrick Henry, week 2, $8300)
- While the first two weeks saw the low end of the recommended 75-125% total ownership (78.1 and 87.9), this week’s was low enough to fall outside that range (72.0%)
THE SKILL
Mattison was an obvious leading candidate to see winning lineups since Dalvin Cook wasn’t able to suit up. Swift was a nice price against a Ravens defense that wasn’t at full strength.
In last week’s article I asked, “Could we see a Metcalf or Bobby Trees sighting?” and sure enough DK, along with Justin Jefferson, had their first good home run performances of the season.
And even though the Vikings-Seahawks game wasn’t as high-scoring as expected, I can appreciate fitting in three players from that game who hit the kind of numbers they were certainly capable of.
The Cardinals’ defense was in a good spot to smash against Jacksonville and surprisingly underpriced in my opinion.
And while stacking with Josh Allen against a suspect Washington D was definitely in play, the rest of the stack was certainly not on my mind as a play this week. That means another week of not talking about my own lineup here. Is that called job security?
Meh. Anyway…
THE “LUCK”
Double-stacking and running it back without two primary producers means more salary cap freed up. But, Stefon Diggs and Terry McLaurin command such a big piece of their teams’ aerial pies that making a stack/run-it-back that doesn’t involve them is a tall ask.
Add in the fact that this wasn’t projected to be a high-scoring affair. It was only Vegas’ 8th-highest scoring over/under out of 13 games (O/U 45.5 total points), and ended up accumulating the most total points on the main slate (64).
Washington’s defense was already looking suspect after the Giants offense was quite successful against them in week 2, but they can’t seem to stop anything right now, and that’s the complete opposite of their preseason hype.
Maybe, this Bills stack was just an elite play. The rest of the lineup certainly doesn’t need a sales pitch to justify why it’s there. But we’ll see how many more 47-Draftkings point efforts Buffalo’s second and third receiving options can put up rest-of-season.
LESSON FROM WEEK 3
A Diggs-less Bills stack brings up an important question: Was this outcome within a realistic range of possibilities?
That answer can come with an element of opinion, but I say the answer is yes, even if unlikely. The Bills offense has the capability of being a points factory and Stefon Diggs doesn’t have to siphon a large chunk of that pie every time.
That question also applies to DK Metcalf and Justin Jefferson and magnifies a strategy we should all be doing in general. Essentially, it stresses the importance of not falling victim to recency bias.
We should be trying to catch players on the upswing before their salary cost rises. We knew Metcalf and Jefferson’s big game was coming and just hadn’t yet.
So for week 4, ask yourself, who do you know has the talent to produce a big game, and just hasn’t hit that peak yet? They have to sometimes, right?
Allen Robinson drops another $400 this week, now sitting at $5800. Can the Bears’ offense really lie dormant all season long? Keep those kinds of players in mind.
250,000+ ENTRIES, AND STILL POINTS LEFT ON THE TABLE
This week’s perfect lineup would’ve seen 261.92 points, which means there were 38 points of room left for any of us to grab that million.
An average of 41.31 DK points has separated the Millionaire winner and the top possible lineup so far this season.
