Dummy Grid 12.25
JMToWin is a high-stakes tournament champion (Thunderdome, Luxury Box, Game Changer, Wildcat, King of the Hill/Beach, Spy, etc.) who focuses on the DraftKings Main Slate
OWS Fam ::
This is not a complete list of all the good plays on the slate
This is, instead, a look at the player pool I’ll be fishing
The Grid ::
Bottom-Up Build
:: covered in the Angles Pod (it’s highly recommended that you listen to the breakdown of the roster in order to see the thinking behind it, and in order to understand what we’re talking about when we look at a “bottom-up build”)
Blue Chips
:: my “Tier 1” plays: the plays I feel confident leaning into across different types of builds; these players have a high ceiling and a low likelihood of price-considered failure
Build-Arounds
:: games, offenses, situations, or scenarios I’ll be looking to build around across my rosters
Building Blocks
:: unique player pairings that can be used as foundational building blocks for tournament rosters
Bonuses
:: players who don’t fit into the categories above — either Upside pieces who don’t have the floor to be Blue Chips (and are not being focused on within my game-focused builds) or players who may not have a strong shot at ceiling, but are worth keeping in mind from a “role” perspective
Beta
:: players who are not going to be “featured” on my tighter builds (i.e., one could show up on a tighter build, but they are not being prioritized as such), but who I will be mixing and matching across some portion of my MME builds
Bottom-Up Build
Bottom-Up Build
DK Salary Remaining :: $6.0K
Jared Goff
Jahmyr Gibbs
Rhamondre Stevenson
Amon-Ra St. Brown
Jameson Williams
Adonai Mitchell
Austin Hooper
Mike Gesicki
Saints
Join The Bottom-Up Build Contest On DraftKings!
Buy-In:
Free
Rules:
Build with a salary cap of $44k or below!
Prizes:
1st Place = $100 paid out to the winner(!) (OR free Bink Machine access!)
<< Join Here >>
*must use an OWS avatar (found on your profile page) to be eligible to win
Blue Chips
Trey McBride
I prefer to play McBride with Brissett, because (as we’ve been saying for weeks, and as has held true for weeks) if McBride is hitting at his price, Brissett is almost certainly hitting at his price. But there are enough other ways to go at quarterback this week (and while nothing is guaranteed, McBride is a high-confidence enough bet that you may want him on rosters with other quarterbacks as well) that I don’t think you have to stick to that rule. McBride can be played any which way.
I’ll touch on McBride + Brissett in the Building Blocks, but to keep this tight and neat ::
Per Lord Reebs (Sharp Football), the only players with more fantasy points per game than McBride since Week 6 are Jonathan Taylor and Christian McCaffrey.
McBride remains underpriced.
It’s as simple as that.
“Light Blue” Chips
Build-Arounds
Building Blocks
“Six for Six”
Jacoby Brissett + Trey McBride
Story:
“This block hits for the sixth game in a row”
Why It Works:
At $12.1k in salary, our target score for this pairing is 45-50 DK points.
In five games so far, this pairing has gone for scores of 45.9 // 50.2 // 41.3 // 52.1 // 57.4.
That’s absolutely remarkable.
That’s also the same way I started this writeup last week, except that I changed “five for five” and “fifth game in a row” to “six” // “sixth,” and I’ve updated the salary, the target score, and the fifth game in the game log. You get the picture: this block just keeps on clicking. The Cardinals can’t run the ball, and you can’t really run against the Jags. The Cardinals can throw the ball, and you can throw against the Jags. Let’s keep this wagon train a-moving.
How It Works:
Starting here doesn’t win you a tourney. But it does have a high likelihood of starting you out with a nice haul of points.
POTENTIAL DOWNSIDE:
The story plays out differently, and you don’t get first place — which is really all that matters.
“KC Throwback”
Bink Machine
A look at some of the rules I’ll be applying in the Bink Machine this week.
“Down The Drain”
A little something different this week in this section.
I’ve mentioned quite a few times throughout this season that I’ve been using the Bink Machine differently this year. In Week 9 of the 2022 season, I played MME using an optimizer for the first time, and throughout 2023, I was deep in the MME streets. In 2024, I started getting burned out on MME, but I kept at it for a while (primarily because I had finished second place in the Slant three times in 2023 without winning it(!), and I wanted to get that first-place finish). This season, I’ve found joy in shifting back over to SE/3-Max, and have shifted back over to primarily hand-builds. This means that instead of using the Bink Machine to take a comprehensive set of rules and build most of my rosters for me, I’m using the Bink Machine this year for idea-generation. Sometimes I’ll run a set with very little input. Sometimes I’ll run a bunch of sets using only my pool. Sometimes I’ll lock in a group of players and run a set with a broad pool of players, and then with my pool of players. (And a lot of weeks, I’ll do all of the above.)
The screenshot below shows a locked-in set of Tyrod + Metchie + Mitchell (click the “Handbuild” button to open that pop-up with the roster, lock in the players you want, then run a set of rosters), on which I ran 100 rosters.
This is a really fun way to see some of the powerful things you can pull together with this block, and to get ideas for hand-builds off this block on your end.
Bonuses
If Building For Single-Entry // Three-Entry Max
This is my narrowest pool, which means it’s the pool likeliest to change a bit as I move deeper into builds. If it changes throughout Saturday night, I’ll add an update in this space.
If I were building for single-entry // three-entry Max, my tightened-up player pool would be:
QB ::
Drake Maye || Lamar Jackson || Patrick Mahomes || Jalen Hurts || Jared Goff || Jacoby Brissett || Tyrod Taylor
RB ::
A Wrap ::
I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!
-JM
