Building A Winner 18.25

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

• Week 18 presents a unique challenge when building SE/3-Max FD lineups. The final slate of the regular season is a massive 13-gamer and features a unique timing split of six early kickoffs and seven later-afternoon starts.
• You will be able to find endless analysis about NFL team and player motivations this week, enough information to make your head spin even more than prepping for a “normal” DFS slate would. Just a few key questions you might consider:
  • Will a playoff-bound fantasy star sit the week out, or worse, be active with a reduced workload?
  • Will teams out of contention look to feature younger backup players to assist in their evaluation heading into the off-season?
  • Will teams be focused on featuring players within striking distance of significant contract incentives, records, and/or streaks?
• Even if you were willing and able to get your arms around many or all of those possible scenarios throughout this week, the results of the two key NFC games scheduled for Saturday, especially the later game to decide the NFC West title, seem likely to solidify some teams’ Sunday motivations even further.
• With so many unknowns and different scenarios to consider, the starting point for building my SE/3-Max lineups this week is two teams filled with affordable FD values that I believe double as somewhat predictable offensive hierarchies this week:
  • Saints (at Falcons, early kickoff)
    • Rookie QB Tyler Shough ($7,600) has seen his price creep up, but his stacking partners are all affordable in the wake of star WR Chris Olave being ruled out ahead of this week’s game with a blood clot.
    • RB Audric Estime remains affordable off of his 15-touch breakout last week. All Saints WRs (and their most viable TE) cost less than $5.5k.
  • Eagles (home vs Commanders, late window)
    • Third-year QB Tanner McKee ($6,000) has shown some flashes and comes with a minimum price tag. It would be nice if he had his starting pass catchers at his disposal, but he has several affordable teammates that make for comfortable stacking partners this week against an exploitable Washington defense.
    • Backup RB Tank Bigsby is the only Philly skill position player (likely to play) who costs more than $5k on this slate.
• This isn’t to say I’ll be limited to a two-man QB pool this week or that these QBs or cheap pass catchers are must-plays, but both teams sport reasonable low-20s implied team totals, and you literally can’t build a cost-prohibitive team stack if you wanted to. I plan to work through some different iterations of these team stacks using an opposing bring-back or adding one of these teams’ affordable RB options to the stack as well.

Running Back Approach