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, how Maxx Williams was apparently the tight end to roll out in Week 2, and Mike ThaGawd White at QB in week 8.
In this series, I’ll be looking at trends that DFS players track, diving into the skill/luck dichotomy, and more.
WINNING STRATEGY
Cam Newton — $5100, 26.16 pts, 9.3% ownership
Jonathan Taylor — $8300, 56.4, 3.9%
Miles Sanders — $5000, 8.4, 0.7%
Justin Jefferson — $8100, 40.2, 3.0%
Terry McLaurin — $7000, 24.3, 1.2%
Elijah Moore — $4900, 32.6, 4.6%
Tommy Tremble — $2500, 5.5, 0.1%
D’Andre Swift — $7000, 25.6, 2.8%
Lions DEF — $2100, 11, 2.4%
Total Points — 230.16
- Stack: Single, with a run back. Fourth single stack in a row
- Salary: used all $50G, seventh time that’s happened this season. Stack/runback used $14,600 (29.2%, $4867-per-player)
- RB in the flex, for the third week in a row, even though it’s only the fifth time it’s been a non-WR in the flex
- Stack used Vegas’ tenth highest total points line out of 12 (WAS at CAR, over/under 43). If we took the average place of the winning stacks’ total points lines for the year, the average is 4.8 out of 11.8
- Cam Newton’s $5200 price tag is the lowest for QBs so far this season. Seven out of 11 have been at least $6700
- Derrick Henry is no longer the only RB in a winning lineup to cost more than $6700, as Swift and Taylor join him this week
- The difference between the winning lineup and Linestar’s perfect lineup is .06 points less than JT’s monster week. It’s the largest point gap so far, and the largest gap percentage-wise also (19.7%)
THE SKILL
This week, I can The Wolf’s voice in my head. It’s loud.
Really loud…
Anyway, it’s yelling “BET ON TALENT!!!!!”
That’s what this week’s lineup also screams at me. This lineup is chock full of talented players. The problem is…
THE LUCK
…there’s a ton of talented players, and a lot of them had better outlooks heading into this week.
I had made peace with the fact that the Bills offense was going to shit the bed every couple of weeks, but now it’s the defense too? I don’t know how to handle what the Bills defense gave up to JT when they had as good of a shot as any D to contain him.
Elijah Moore breaking out and fulfilling his preseason hype isn’t surprising, but in context, with Joe Flacco filling in at QB, how much could realistically be expected?
The Packers defense without Jaire Alexander hasn’t been as terrible as Justin Jefferson’s 40-burger might lead you to believe.
Ultimately, these performances allowed the 21st highest-scoring TE for the week in Tremble, which places a distant last compared to the rest of the year’s winning lineup TEs. And it allowed Miles Sanders, with the type of production we’ve come to expect from him this season, to take his place in a winning lineup.
Much like week 9, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see another lineup quite this weird the rest of the season. But for now, I feel kinda like Ari…