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Above the Field 🌤️ Week 14

Each week this NFL season, top MME player // Milly Maker winner SonicLibrarian will help you orient your GPP mind in Above The Field. And If you haven’t checked out his Marketplace Course “DFS Tournament Mastermind Training” the first 4 Lessons are Free.

Week 14 :: Of Hyphens and Pruitt

It’s heartwarming to see the outpouring of support when an NFL coach gets fired during the season. These coaching staffs are a fraternity, with many people having worked together before moving on to other opportunities and competing hard against each other. When a good guy gets let go, it affects many of his colleagues in this close-knit community. 

Having said that, wasn’t it hilarious to confirm that literally every player, coach and media member thinks former Jets DC Greg Williams is a complete asshole? 

The sentiments similar to “they should have locked that guy up years ago when he pissed on my Oldsmobile” were quite revealing. 

I never thought I’d see #DezCaughtIt trending again and for a different reason, but here we are. 

I feel sick for Dez Bryant. You can tell he’s an emotional kind of cat and being pulled moments before a game ripe with revenge narrative had to be tilting as hell. He even took to the Gram within moments, already deep into some wine, with talk of retirement. 

Tough to watch that unfold and we hope he’s ok…but it did free up Miles Boykin for some targets which helped me chop the Tuesday Showdown, so I guess I’m with Bill here:

Belichick%20meme.JPG

I’m ashamed. The degen life is real.

ksc…We Do Lineups Right

Every week here on Above the Field we focus on a 150-entry Millionaire Maker player that finished with great results overall but not necessarily the coveted 1st place finish. In Week 13 that distinction goes to ksc333, who used a large pool of players (122) to land 8 lineups in the top 581, including finishes of 6th, 23rd and 26th

Like many of us, ksc333’s running back pool was huge (21). It was weird week in that way. Tons of viable choices due to bounteous heavy favorites in potentially good game scripts. Nothing outrageous to report here. A bit above the field on the obvious chalk and plenty of sprinkles throw in. In fact, in examining all of ksc33’s allocations, there isn’t any obvious cases of sticking his neck out on a player or risky fades. There were a few semi-strong stances with mixed results and we’ll examine those.

ksc333%20RB.png

Ekeler was supposed to do way better than this, right? I was high on him as well but this game was just ridiculous. Not something that the platoon of Chargers special teams coaches will want etched on their resume, that’s for sure. Bill Belichick has a way of identifying your weaknesses and exploiting them. This was gross. 

Hard to give credit for being almost 3x overweight on James Robinson because a lot of us thought he’d be owned somewhere in the mid-twenties. Dude has a 7,000,000% share of running back touches for god’s sake. Play him! 

This lineup that finished in 23rd is pretty interesting. Probably titling as hell for ksc. The ageless alien life form known to earthlings as “Frank Gore” suffered a concussion on the 2nd play of the game and was replaced by Ty Johnson. Johnson proceeded to carve up Dolphins defense for 22.7 points which would have been enough for this lineup to take down the Milly with over nine points to spare! Add to that Tyler Boyd’s 2nd quarter ejection while on pace for about 30 points and ksc333 could have won the Milly by 25. 

Unreal. 

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Definitely contrarian to run back the Derek Carr/Darren Waller stack with not one but two Jets players. Interesting that this unorthodox “4 stack” was so successful because he didn’t do much in terms of stacking this slate at all. More on that later.

ksc333 planted his flag a bit at wide receiver. He narrowed the position down to a three-player commitment and then played a bunch of other dudes in small doses. Two of his three choices didn’t work out that well but I think they were sharp nonetheless. He trotted the Mitch Trubisky/Allen Robinson stack out there twenty times which gave him a chance to mix and match those two a bunch of different ways in case they ethered* the vulnerable Detroit Lions defense. I thought going 3x the field on Keenan Allen was a sharp play. Anytime you can commit only 12% of your resources to a HOF-type player and still leverage public ownership, it makes sense to bet on his talent regardless of game environment or matchup. 

*ethered is a term owned exclusively by Evan Silva. © 2009, all rights reserved 

Sadly, you can’t “play all the dudes” at WR every week…or I should say “you can’t play all the dudes more than the field”. I like how ksc333 chose to address this issue. Notice the exact 10% allocation to five of the chalkiest receivers. It feels like 10% is enough of a piece to have some live lineups should any of Robert Woods, Brandin Cooks, Justin Jefferson, Adam Thielan or Keke Coutee post a slate-breaking score.

Now, there will be those that say “why bother underweighting the field on these chalky guys? You should just grow some balls and X them out completely.” 

To those people I say, “You seem angry, I suggest meditation…or opiates” and go about my business. 

ksc333%20WR.png

ksc33 took a similar approach to the chalk at the tight end position. Rostering but “going under” on Robert Tonyan and Anthony “the ever-so-tempting-almost-min-priced-chalk” Firkser. 

Was that too many hyphens? 

No? Good. I have a pocketful of those fuckers and I need to get rid of em. 

My mind sees them like golf tees. If you keep them in your pocket for too long, you’re asking for a punctured scrotum. 

Perhaps my current weird mood is the result of having a couple of live lineups with Geoff Swaim as my way-too-clever-for-my-own-damn-good leverage play (more hyphens!) and then watching MyCole Freaking Pruitt fall into the end zone…twice!

He’s not MyCole Pruitt. You can have him. 

(Dad-pun use courtesy of @TodfromPa, who can be heard weekly on OWS’ Run to Daylight podcast)

At least I wasn’t alone with the Swain idea. ksc33 used him at a 5.33% which was roughly 17x the field. Imagine how cool he would have felt if Swain smashed and won him the Milly. 

No regrets. 

ksc333%20TE.png

Obviously, it was that 18% of Waller that became the tide that lifted all of ksc333’s boats. Four of those had the Patriots DST.  A pairing which was key to ultimate success this week. 

One thing worth noting was his stack sizes. Only twenty (13.3%) lineups utilized 4 or more players from the same game. The majority (59.3%) consisted of three players from the same game, varying between QB/Pass Catcher/Pass Catcher and QB/Pass Catcher/Opponent. 

Simple QB/Pass Catcher “skinny” stacks were utilized in 41 (27.3%) lineups. 

I thought the usage of smaller stacks was perhaps a reaction to the ugliness of the Week 13 slate. This would certainly make sense with less potential shootouts and more lopsided Vegas lines, making the cherry-picking of the best plays from multiple games the more +EV play. Peeking at the Week 12 results proved that 3-stacks are simply ksc333’s preference, as he used them in an overwhelming 83.3% of lineups for that slate. 

As we learn in this space every week, there are multiple effective approaches in NFL tournament DFS. What works for one person, may not be comfortable for another. What works for one slate may not be optimal in another. 

Examine each slate as its own beast. A unique puzzle to solve…your way.

Good luck in Week 14, friends. I hope to hear tales of your exploits. 

Take a minute before lock to think everything through. Don’t do the DFS equivalent of Greg Williams’ galaxy-brained final blitz. 

Yikes.

Get Inside Of Sonic’s DFS Mind

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Sonic’s DFS Q&A. This is awesome stuff if you’re looking to keep improving your DFS game!