Above The Field. 13.21.
Always Be Learning
How do we think about DFS tournaments in a way that will give us a chance at 1st place? We’ve heard this phrase and similar sentiments coming from JM and our band of specialists at full volume all season. We’re sharpening minds here and developing an army of players that don’t just click on the best plays. Much like the novelist from which this site was founded, we are beginning to think through every scenario to completion. We’re examining the cause and effect of every action in our lineup building process. I’ve been involved with OWS for over two years now, and I’m watching it unfold before my very eyes.
Spending time, money, and brainpower on such an endeavor can lead to some frustration on certain weeks when the top of the Millionaire Maker is littered with lineups that we probably wouldn’t have landed on since our play has improved. It’s also tough when you do all the right things but didn’t end up with enough shares of the DST that posted 22 points or the uber-chalk tight end that “got there.” Variance is a thing. It’s easy to lose a bit of faith and slip back into a mode of mindless button-clicking, but we must stay the course and continue building lineups from the “if we played this slate out 100 times” mindset.
At first glance, the top four lineups in the Milly looked a bit on the fishy side. Some odd correlations (or lack of correlations at all) and some eye-rolling moments of “run better, bro.”
But there is a reason the lineups made it to the top, and perhaps with a bit of unraveling, we can see the sharp side of these rosters and perhaps even extrapolate something from them to improve future rosters of our own.
Or maybe not.
First on the docket is this gem from our 1st place finisher, tommymac84. When I first saw his screen name, I was expecting some sort of Patriots/Tom Brady/Kendrick Bourne hybrid, so I was somewhat disappointed.
OK, those of you that read The Oracle every week know that we address (sometimes only for the sake of humor) the Robby Anderson situation every week. We’ve mostly stuck with him far longer than we should have because we know this is a somewhat narrowly distributed offense, and the man has shown big-play ability in the past. So, seeing him in the winning Millionaire Maker lineup is pretty fucking funny if you glance to the right a little and see that he posted a grand total of 2.5 fantasy points. Unreal. I’m sure tommymac84 thought this lineup was dead as the late games kicked off. I was in the same spot last week, sitting at 7th in this tournament with a whopping ZERO from Marcus Johnson and his torn hammy. I fell only to 20th, which seemed miraculous to me.
The Matt Stafford double stack with Darrell Henderson and a WR has popped previously this year. A perfectly reasonable play if you consider that Henderson does catch some passes, and even if he doesn’t, you’re covering the Rams touchdowns by adding him to Stafford rosters, a significant benefit when the Rams put up an above-implied total score.
NotACat and I discussed the Leonard Fournette play a bit in Discord. I was tilting the fact that I got to 25% and 28% on Yahoo and FD, respectively, but barely got above the field on DK. The reason I played so much Lenny on the other sites was to leverage my lack of Brady/Chis Godwin stacks. Godwin was the chalk, and I was running tons of Vikings/49ers stuff so I wasn’t getting too much Brady or Godwin. I figured I may as well employ the teachings of OWS and not simply “fade Godwin” but also try and punish my opponents that played him in case he failed. There’s nothing wrong with making a play on one site and not the other. Diversifying your moves and hedging outcomes across them is fine, in my opinion…but I sure wish I took a minute to think it through and sacrificed a bit of my Saquon Barkley exposure to try and get more “Slate Breaking Lenny” on DK. We knew he’d be low-owned and my mention on Sonic’s Player Pool was simply, “Lead back in highest implied total of the week.”
2nd place finisher, Blake2150, has a screen name that sounds like the latest in advanced leaf-blowing technology, but he managed to make $125,000 on DK this week with this lineup that definitely falls into the “I wouldn’t have gotten there” category. In fact, I was ready to tear this one apart until I listened to JM’s Tuesday Reflection Pod and heard how he picked leaves off the branches of this game until landing on Randall Cobb for his roster.
Who’s the fish now, Sonic?
Always be learning.
Always be learning.
Always be learning.
An Aaron Rodgers/Cobb stack with no bring-back from the Rams. In fact, there is no other correlation at all unless you want to include Fournette and Ron Gronkowski as correlation, which I don’t. They are great leverage, as together, they successfully accounted for damn near all of the Bucs fantasy production. The involvement of Fournette was also a great way to counteract the ridiculousness of Gronk’s ownership. I can close my eyes and hear JM’s voice saying, “everyone is going to play Gronk…but no one is going to play Gronk and Fournette together…and no one is going to play Gronk and Fournette together on non-Brady rosters”.
You can hear that, right? Now the trick is to hear moves like that while making your Week 13 lineups. We are evolving with intention and full consciousness.
Sometimes DraftKings simply misprices players, and you have to decide whether to take advantage by rostering that player or by exploiting the inflated ownership. This week, hindsight tells us that locking Gronk and fading the Houston Texans defense was the way to go. Seems pretty obvious after the fact, doesn’t it?
Adding additional humor to this roster is the presence of Quez Watkins. He falls into that same category as Robby Anderson. I marveled at his explosiveness as he blew past the defense a couple of times, and I’ve had shares of him every week since…only to see him on a successful roster whilst scoring only 4.6 points. DFS is weird.
This 3rd place lineup from johnnyb1346 is fascinating to me. I really want to hear how he got to this lineup, his only submission into the Milly.
This features a Los Angeles stack with Marquez Valdes-Scantling coming back. The interesting thing about this LA stack is that they used the receivers from the LA Rams and the quarterback from…the LA Chargers. *eye roll
Someone, please tell me that this was a glorious mistake by johnny. Please tell me he clicked on Justin Herbert and ran him naked by accident because he was drunk with his in-laws on Thanksgiving, saw “LA” and thought he was game-stacking. I want to believe this. I need to believe this.
Is it weird that I can’t hear someone say “running him naked” without thinking of Frank the Tank in Old School?
Throw in some interesting correlation for good measure. Lenny and Gronk on one side and the high upside powerhouse, Jack Doyle on the other. A double tight end salary-saver that makes DFS purists close their laptops and mutter, “I don’t know why I do this.”
Our 4th place lineup belongs to GOAT9218, so we know this one will include the greatest QB of all time.
And we were right. This beautiful lineup does feature Mac Jones! And he’s completely naked!
WE’RE GOING STREAKING!
Seriously though, this looks like GOAT9218 was started out building a TB/INDY game stack but ran out of salary and replaced Tom Brady with his real-life replacement. A pure stroke of DFS genius.
Let’s put it all together this week, OWS Fam.
Hopefully, our improvement and preparation will coincide with variance, and we’ll run like Frank the Tank.
LFG!
