Above The Field. 5.21.
Morning Glory
Congrats to Milly winner JZinser for landing one of his 6 lineups atop all others. Truly a feeling unlike any other. Per usual, we’ll focus our attentions on someone who max-entered the contest and examine how they had success. Wakeywakey cashed in a snazzy 69 out if his 150 entries, six in the top 1,000 including 4th, 69th (that number again!) and 268th. I double checked to see if he happened to land one in 420th, but sadly, no.
His 4th place lineup was both aesthetically pleasing and tilting AF. Sweating a potential million-dollar lineup with Jack Doyle as your tight end only to see teammate Mo Allie Cox catch not one but TWO touchdowns is just brutal.
Correlated Jalen Hurts lineups this week needed to have the combination of including Tyreek Hill and more importantly, excluding Travis Kelce. The talk all week was about how the Eagles take away the deep ball so this game set up perfectly for the zone-beater, Kelce. But this is the NFL, these are human beings and the Millionaire Maker is a massive tournament.
From Sonic’s Player Pool (found Saturdays in The Scroll)
Tyreek turned out to be a great tournament play because the X’s and O’s talk caused his ownership to dip below the expected 14% all the way down to 8.2%. I had him in 26 lineups but sadly, I didn’t work enough Cordarrelle Patterson into the mix. I only had one lineup with both players and Travis Kelce left a crater in that one.
DeVonta Smith was the preferred skinny stack partner for Hurts, who gets too much of his production on the ground to support ceilings for multiple pass catchers very often. By the way, stacking with one pass catcher and an opponent wasn’t a Hurts-only situation for wakeywakey. He did this in over 80% of his lineups with the remaining rosters even less correlated. Many of his Zach Wilson lineups were of the “skinny stack, no bring-back” variety, a warranted lack of respect for the Titans offensive weapons not named Derrick Henry.
My favorite part of wakeywakey’s game plan this week was his narrow and risky QB pool.
Getting so far above the field on three quarterbacks, two of which were micro-owned, positioned wakeywakey to shoot up the leaderboards like mercury in a Texas thermometer in the event of a ceiling performance from any of the three. I love the calculated cajones shown with the Zach Wilson play. Stacking with exactly Corey Davis in all 50 rosters and Henry as the bring-back in 20 of those ensured enough opportunity to hit the nuts with the surrounding players should the Wilson/Davis combo hit. This one didn’t work out because Zach fell short of a tourney-winning type of score, but I love the process.
I didn’t love the Jimmy Garoppolo selection as the third QB to bet on. Despite all of the awesome weapons and likelihood of a spiked score coming from one of Deebo Samuel, George Kittle or Brandon Aiyuk, Jimmy G’s ceiling seems capped by the presence of Trey Lance. Despite the fantasy-friendly Seahawks defense, I would have rather seen those 49ers used as one-offs or secondary stacks only. Probably seems like hindsight but whatever, up yours. I know what I’m talking about.
Sorry. That switch to decaf isn’t working out.
Wakey’s RB pool was 16-deep, which in previous years would seem like a pretty big sized group.
Current trends in the NFL are resulting in the expansion of DFS RB pools. It appears running back committees are here for the long haul. The addition of an extra week in the regular season schedule has served to further force teams to build depth and prepare their own if/then statements in the likely event of injury. I’m sure as the season rolls further into the darker months, we’ll be tilting over the underuse of a former bell cow only to be informed post-game of a conscious decision by the teams coaching staff. The league evolves and we must evolve along with it. Anticipating lighter workloads for a usually-voluminous RB, may result in a key fade, opening up roster spots for someone who’s workload could be flanked by an upward arrow. Javonte Williams, I’m counting on YOU.
The wakeywakey WR portfolio looks as you might expect at the top, given the correlations to his tight QB pool.
One must scroll down to Odell Beckham to find the first non-QB stacked player. In fact, OBJ wasn’t correlated at all. There was only one instance of a Vikings player in all 30 of wakeywakey’s Beckham lineups. I spend an inordinate amount of time fitting secondary stacks into my rosters and this guy damn near dominates DraftKings while seemingly avoiding any correlation outside of his small QB stacks. Go figure.
Like I always say, there are many ways to be successful. Learn all of them, whether it be in this space or elsewhere, and then do what feels comfortable to you.
There will be more losing weeks than winning ones in MME. Don’t die on someone else’s hill. Play your way and do so without fear. Maximize those rare weeks when humans do something close to what you visualized.
I hope that happens for you in Week 5…and your tight end doesn’t get Cox-blocked.
LFG!
