Above The Field. 11.21.

Lightning in a Bottle 

Apologies in advance if this appears a bit thin on the side of positivity and levity. Illness and a cumbersome to-do list have lowered my effectiveness to a suboptimal level. But we must persevere. We must continue to use the data from the past week’s slate to improve our knowledge of how tournament-winning lineups are built. 

My doctor has informed me that I’m suffering from an affliction called Schistosoma Diphylidium Treponema, which roughly translated, means “Showdown Tilt.”

Schistosoma Diphylidium Treponema (SDT) often occurs when all you need for a three-way chop of $1,140,000.00 is a Myles Gaskin touchdown and you get this:

Yes, runouts like these are the leading cause of SDT, which is kind of like an STD, only it was less fun acquiring it. 

But you didn’t come here for my bad beat stories, so onward we go. 

This week we’ll examine two players that managed significant success in the Millionaire Maker tournament on DraftKings. Each got there in their own ways. Each with their own strengths and potential weaknesses.  

Congrats to the Milly Winner, eppy99, who ran 150 lineups into 1st, 410th, and then nothing else in the top 27,000. Wow. That is difficult to accomplish. 

sliderss also ran 150 lineups but managed 21 lineups in the top 2,000, including 7th, 22nd, 50th, 93rd, and 108th. 

eppy99 used a large pool of 115 players across their lineups, while sliderss employed a super-tight pool of only 47 players. 

eppy99 was clearly cognizant of cumulative ownership. They had no lineups that were duplicated by the field and no lineups that were projected to be over 118% owned. spiderss went overweight on the chalk with no concern over cumulative ownership. He locked D’Ernest Johnson, had 86% Mark Ingram and 52% Mike Evans. A whopping 28 of their lineups were duplicated by the field, including three that were duped five times!

With the majority of their successful lineups being the all-important skinny stacks of Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs, here’s how their stack sizes broke down: 

eppy99

Stack Size – number of lineups

6 – 1 (a Matt Ryan/Kyle Pitts stack with FOUR Cowboys coming back)

5 – 2 (double stacks with two opponents)

4 – 28 (Mixed between standard double-stack/opponent and single-stack/two opponents)

3 – 88 (87 single stacks with one opponent, one Josh Allen Double with no opponent)

2 – 30

0 – 1 (a Mike White naked lineup. Ok then)

sliderss

4 – 3

3 – 47 (only 15 of all 150 lineups utilized a bring-back)

2 – 82 

0 – 18 (a blend of Mason Rudolph, Matt Ryan, and Carson Wentz. Not particularly conventional)

Here’s eppy99’s winning lineup

Of their 150 lineups, this is the only one that ran Hunter Henry at tight end. 

I’m not even sure if this was intentional, but I like the Browns/Patriots secondary stack. Diluting Johnson’s massive ownership with two low-owned Pats that had a strong chance at capturing their team’s touchdowns was pretty sharp…I think…I guess…I mean, their implied total was 23.5, so we were kind of betting on an outlier here, but then again, the Milly isn’t usually won with a standard stack surrounded by a bunch of “why didn’t I think of that?” plays. Henry is a TD-dependent tight end, which is fine when he literally scores one every week. 

So, my question to you is: are you more of an eppy99 player? Or does your style fall more in line with sliderss?

Also, where would you put the over/under on the amount of Microsoft Word’s attempts to correct “sliderss” to sliders or spiders?

Time for ol’ Sonic to get some rest. The weekend will be here before you know it, and these Milly’s don’t win themselves, you know!

LFG!