Dummy Grid 16.22
JMToWin is a high-stakes tournament champion (Thunderdome, Luxury Box, Game Changer, Wildcat) who is focusing this year on single-entry/three-entry max
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-depth 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
Angles Pod
Permanent Price Bump coming at the end of Week 2!
Lock in the lower price for life!
Bottom-Up Build
Full breakdown (of what this is, and what the thinking is behind these players) can (and should) be found in the Angles Pod (above).
Bottom-Up Build
DK Salary Remaining :: $6.1K
Gardner Minshew
D’Andre Swift
Jerick McKinnon
Justin Jefferson
Rashid Shaheed
Demarcus Robinson
Dallas Goedert
Jahan Dotson
Texans
Join The Bottom-Up Build Contest On DraftKings!
Buy-In:
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Rules:
Build with a salary cap of $44k or below!
Prizes:
150 Edge Points (good for two free DFS Education courses!) + ‘Discord Blue’ color in Discord!
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Blue Chips
Derrick Henry
As you may have heard by now, Derrick Henry is on a four-game streak against Houston of 211+ rushing yards and two or more touchdowns.
As Hilow explored in the NFL Edge, the Texans’ defense has been rapidly improving; and with Malik Willis (26 total pass attempts across his previous two starts) under center for Tennessee, the Texans will be throwing everything they can at trying to force the Titans to win “any way but with Henry.” That said: the ceiling on Henry is as high as any player on the slate, and (as examined below), the chances of him really hurting a roster for playing him are somewhat low.
From my DFS Interpretation for this game ::
- “To Derrick Henry or not to Derrick Henry” will prove to be one of the key decision points on this slate. Furthermore, it’s folly to act as though “predicting whether or not Henry hits for a big game” is the edge on this slate. Instead, we should recognize that he easily COULD hit (he saw 32 carries the last time these two teams played), while also recognizing that he could easily NOT hit. Whichever way we play this slate (or whichever way we play an individual roster), we should be accounting for this decision.
- On rosters with Derrick Henry, one thing I’ll be looking to do is to pair him with another high-priced piece that most Henry rosters likely won’t have (with primary focuses being CMC and Justin Jefferson). This way, if 1) Henry hits for 35+, 2) one of these other two hits for 35+, and 3) there are a limited number of 30+ point scores on this slate (which is likely), I’ll have a clear path toward moving ahead of all the other rosters that joined me on Derrick Henry.
- On rosters without Derrick Henry, I’ll want to recognize that while “sub-10 points” is possible (he rushed for 86 yards and no scores, with zero receptions, in his last game against Houston before this four-game hot streak; also, he has been averaging over six DK points per game through the air across his last six starts with Tannehill, but he had only one total reception, for nine yards, across two Malik Willis starts), the likeliest way for Henry to “fail” is nevertheless for him to still rush for over 100 yards and score a touchdown, giving him around 20 to 25 DK points. This is the type of score that “won’t kill those who rostered him,” which means that in order to take advantage of this slight disappointment from Henry, “a big score that the Henry rosters don’t have” is my best bet. Again, this highlights Jefferson and CMC for me. In other words: the Henry situation effectively compels me to play a lot of Jefferson and CMC this week — not because I necessarily “think they’ll both have a monster game,” but because the clearest path to first place WITH Derrick Henry is for one of these other high-priced guys to also have a big game, and the clearest path to first place WITHOUT Derrick Henry is for one of these other high-priced guys to have a big game.
Justin Jefferson
From my DFS Interpretation for this game ::
- Jefferson is one of my favorite individual pieces on this slate. He talked before the season about his goal of going for 2,000 receiving yards, and now that he’s close to reaching that goal, we can comfortably expect the Vikings to give him opportunities to get there (as we noted with the “A.J. Brown vs Tennessee” situation: if you have a players’ coach, and they can help a player in a way that also helps the team, we can generally expect them to do so; i.e., emphasizing Jefferson gives the Vikings their best shot at a win, and also gets him closer to that 2k-yard season). CMC and Henry will be popular on this slate, and the running backs below them include Saquon (no games north of 26 DK points since Week 1), Chubb (only six games in his five-year career north of 30 DK points), Rhamondre (best career game of 30.4 DK points), followed by a long list of players who are “not particularly likely to reach 30 DK points,” while the wide receivers priced below Jefferson include Diggs in bad weather, Chase against the Patriots, A.J. Brown with Minshew, ARSB in a game where the Lions likely won’t need to feed him massive volume, DK Metcalf in an elevated role but with zero 30-pointers on the year, etc., etc. — all of which further emphasizes the importance of getting a 35-pointer at the top of the price range if one comes available. I’d put the chances of a 35-pointer at Henry first, Jefferson a very close second, and CMC third. I’ll have plenty of Henry + Jefferson, plenty of Jefferson without Henry, and probably a decent amount of Jefferson + Dalvin (see Building Blocks Below). I won’t have Giants pieces away from Vikings rosters, but I may have some Daniel Jones and/or Giants pass catchers on the other side of Vikings-heavy builds.
Because of the ceiling on Jefferson and the strategy angles available on both playing him alongside Henry and playing him away from Henry, he’ll be my highest-owned player on the slate.
“Light Blue” Chips
Build-Arounds
Building Blocks
New this year: these are unique player pairings that can be used as foundational building blocks for tournament rosters
Dalvin + Jefferson
Cost: $16.5K DK // $18.0k FD
Story:
“The Vikings score a lot of points.”
Why It Works:
Jefferson will be somewhat popular this week. Dalvin will be somewhat popular this week. But nearly no one will play these two together.
How It Works:
As explored in my DFS Interpretation for this game ::
- Dalvin has four games this year of 26.1 to 28.1 DraftKings points…and in three of those games, Justin Jefferson topped 30 points himself (33.32 // 38.3 // 33.3). This is similar to the old “Derrick Henry + Ryan Tannehill + A.J. Brown” setup, in that these two are specifically uncorrelated (one of them scoring points is taking away points from the other), but their ceiling games can end up somewhat correlated as they can come in “Vikings score a lot of points” setups. As Hilow has noted in multiple Vikings writeups this year: this team generally “marches the field” rather than attacking splash plays, which helps illustrate how Dalvin seems to hit in games where Jefferson is also hitting, as each player is helping to put together sustained drives that end in one of them scoring a touchdown. I won’t have to “worry about” Daniel Jones ownership on my Daniel Jones roster(s), as I’ll almost certainly confine my DJ exposure to rosters that have BOTH of these pieces from the Vikings. In those three games where both players hit, they went for around 60 to 65 points, which is exactly in range of 4x their combined salary, and is a combo that basically no one will have.
POTENTIAL DOWNSIDE:
The story plays out differently, and you don’t get first place — which is really all that matters.
Swift + Chark
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 ::
Patrick Mahomes || Geno Smith || Jared Goff || Daniel Jones (on Vikings-focused builds) || Joe Burrow (only place I’ll play Chase) || Gardner Minshew
RB ::
A Wrap ::
I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!
-JM
