Building A Winner 15.25

Tony focuses his DFS play on FanDuel single-entry and 3-max contests. He thrives in unique formats and positional twists, always looking for hidden edges that others overlook

This article is designed to complement Mike’s weekly Fanduel Player Grid and other OWS Fanduel scroll content by giving you my view on the slate from my perspective as a Fanduel player who focuses on smaller-field, SE/3-max types of tournaments. My usual process is to build a handful of unique lineups for these types of contests each slate and a majority of my weekly DFS bankroll is dedicated to them.

As you will see as you go through the article, based on the week at hand, I find what I think is the critical starting point I want to use for my rosters. This could be a certain game environment, a specific position or positional dynamics, extreme chalk pieces, or low-owned stacks that I am interested in. Each week is unique, so the “Starting Point” for each week will be dynamic and the rest of my thoughts will build from there, helping you see how I am building my lineups and allowing you to form your own thoughts.

Starting Point

• With no teams on bye, and no “extra” primetime games on this week’s schedule, Week 15 offers an enormous 13-game FD main slate. There’s a nice split this week between eight early games and five kicking off in the later window. The sheer volume of games offers a wide variety of game environments to consider:
  • There are six games with home favorites of 7+ points (four by double-digits) 
  • Four road favorites, all of 2.5 points or less
  • Two implied game totals over 50 points
  • Two implied game totals under 40 points
• Like last week, one game, and implied game total, stands somewhat above the rest, with the Lions (24.5) at Rams (30.5) game sporting a massive 55.0 point total. This is two points clear of last week’s projected and realized “game of the week” shootout in Buffalo. The Bengals (24.5) host the Ravens (27.0) in the “other” game projected to top 50 real-life points on this slate.
• Outside of those two fifty-implied-point games, seven more teams are sporting implied team totals of 24.5+, and six teams are projected to score fewer than 17.0 points. If you’re wondering, yes, many of those groups of teams play against each other and make up many of the massive point spreads on this week’s slate.
• In honor of this uniquely large FD main slate, I’m going to cheat this week and provide three key points I’m considering as my “starting point” for my SE/3-Max lineups this week:
  • I like the Lions at Rams game a lot, not a profound thought, but it is part of the rest of my overall strategy for this week. I want to play some different combinations of key players from this game, many of whom come with steep FD price tags this week.
  • The Panthers (21.5) at Saints (19.0) game is my next favorite game environment among the other four later kickoffs. This game features several affordable pieces that can be played around expensive Rams, Lions, and others. It’s a game that I plan to build at least one game stack around, and intend to feature a player or mini correlation from this game in several of my main lineups.
  • With much of my focus on two of the later-window kickoffs. The final key point I’m considering this week is being strategic with the players that I play and the salary that I spend in the early window. I want to get as many combinations of my favorite late-game options as I possibly can.

Running Back Approach