Dummy Grid 16.23
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-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
Notes On A Unique Week
Every DFS slate is unique in its own way — and more often than not, every DFS slate gives us at least one or two components we have never dealt with before. But from an OWS perspective, this week is unique beyond just the slate itself, as I finally caught the laryngitis my wife was dealing with, and on my heavy podcast day, I can only talk at a whisper, and I’m supposed to not talk at all. Because the Angles Pod, in particular, typically functions as a complement to the Player Grid, I wanted to start this week’s Grid with some macro thoughts and notes on the slate.
For starters — as I explored in the Angles Email — small slates generally play to our favor. We tend to be better than the field at identifying the true “best plays on a slate,” and when we have less to sort through, it becomes that much easier for us to narrow our pool of sharp plays to its finest point. We also tend to be better than our competition at the strategy side of DFS — and the smaller the slate, the more clearly we can see “where the field is going,” and where we can build in +EV edges as a result. This deep into the year, however — in the war of attrition that is an NFL season — a 13-game slate generally feels smaller than a 13-game slate in September or October…and this nine-game slate feels more like a six- or seven-game slate might feel to us earlier in the year. On top of the lower scoring across the NFL that is already part of the landscape this year, we could have as few as 10 QBs this week who were the expected starters for their teams when the season began. (My goodness!)
Along these lines, one thing I would encourage you to keep in mind is that this IS a small slate, and it SHOULD feel even smaller than it is. If your pool is smaller as well, that’s okay.
At the same time: a slate this small, this deep into the season, is absolutely going to provide some plays that “are only chalk because of the slate these plays are on” — some plays that fall into the “fragile chalk” category. While these plays might truly be “the best plays on this slate,” they wouldn’t be “the best plays” on a different slate, and the gap between those plays and the overlooked plays might not be nearly as large as the gap sometimes is between the “mega chalk” and “the other plays.”
One of the things we should be looking to do — this deep into the season, and especially this deep into the season on a slate like this — is find a few places where we can move away from “the best on-paper plays.” If you’re not an Inner Circle member, that might not make much sense to you, but in this week’s Winner Circle pod, we spent some time digging through the biggest fantasy scores from Week 15, and we saw a lot of spots where taking “the second best option on a team in a good spot,” or taking “a really good player in spite of a sub-optimal matchup” would have paid off much better than taking the fragile chalk everyone else was chasing. This week, more than any other, I would encourage you to look for a few places where you can do that.
Finally, you’ll see in my Player Grid that I have a narrow QB pool, a narrow RB pool, a narrow TE pool, and a fairly broad WR pool. The breadth of that WR pool isn’t truly representative of how I’m seeing this slate, as the WRs attached to my QBs will be most central to my list, while ARSB and Mike Evans (not attached to QBs, but still on my list) are right behind those guys in terms of expected exposure on my end. But I also want to recognize that WR is the most high-variance position, so on a week in which the field is expressing confidence in somewhat fragile spots, I want to take swings on spots that could pay off in a big way. Said differently: WR is the primary position where I’ll be looking to mix and match some home run swings as the eighth or ninth pieces on some rosters.
While lacking in nuance (and also lacking in potentially time-wasting thought trails), that’s generally what I would have looked to cover on the Angles Pod.
Let’s dive into the Player Grid!
Bottom-Up Build
Bottom-Up Build
DK Salary Remaining :: $6.0K
Nick Mullens
Chuba Hubbard
Bijan Robinson
Jordan Addison
Parker Washington
Jameson Williams
Trey McBride
Jake Ferguson
Titans
Join The Bottom-Up Build Contest On DraftKings!
Buy-In:
Free
Rules:
Build with a salary cap of $44k or below!
Prizes:
1st Place = 250 Edge Points + Rare Blue Name Tag in Discord
2nd Place = 100 Edge Points
3rd Place = 75 Edge Points
4th Place = 50 Edge Points
5th Place = 25 Edge Points
*1 Edge Point = $1 in DFS courses on OWS
<< Join Here >>
*must use an OWS avatar (found on your profile page) to be eligible to win
Blue Chips
Trey McBride
Only three teams have faced more tight end targets than the Bears (a defense that, as we know, is fundamentally structured to push passes away from wide receivers and toward running backs and tight ends). McBride’s recent targets: 11 // 9 // 9 // 7 // 9 // 5 // 14. Hollywood Brown is out this week, and Greg Dortch could miss as well. Since taking over the lead tight end role, McBride is averaging 17.6 DK points per game, which is in line with Mike Evans, Michael Pittman, and D.J. Moore. He costs $5.7k on DK at a tough-to-fill position. He’s not guaranteed to hit. But he’s definitely a Blue Chip play.
“Light Blue” Chips
Build-Arounds
Building Blocks
“Fields+”
Fields + DJM + Kmet + McBride
Story:
“This is the stack others will be chasing”
Why It Works:
If Fields hits, we know that D.J. Moore is almost certainly hitting, and we have a pretty good shot at Kmet hitting as well. And if the Cardinals are doing anything, it’s likely that McBride is a big part of that. This adds the highest-ceiling QB on the slate to the only Blue Chip and only Light Blue Chip in my player pool this week, in a heavily correlated manner. Adding Kmet dramatically lowers combinatorial ownership while giving us a player who has scored 15+ in all four of Fields’ “hits” (going back to last year), with 22+ scored in three of those four games. If Fields “hits” by having around 25 points, Kmet may not do enough to make the cut; but if Fields posts a true had-to-have-it, Kmet is likely coming along, while setting your Fields roster apart from the others.
How It Works:
If this block hits for its ceiling, you’ll have a nice edge on the field; but you’ll also have some popular pieces hitting, which means your edge will be tangible, but not dramatic. With this in mind, it’s worth considering additional “upside” pieces, including, potentially, at least one more low-owned play with upside (“with upside AND leverage,” if you can find it).
POTENTIAL DOWNSIDE:
The story plays out differently, and you don’t get first place — which is really all that matters.
“Not The Droids You Are Looking For”
Bink Machine
A look at some of the rules I’ll be applying in the Bink Machine this week.
No RBs in Flex // Split TEs/WRs
This week, I want to maximize my exposure to WRs and TEs, and limit my exposure to RBs. Obviously, it’s unlikely that three-RBs proves to be the optimal way to build this week. Obviously, it’s also possible that this will nevertheless prove to be the optimal way to build this week, so if you wanted to change this to say 5% or even 15% RB, that wouldn’t be sub-optimal — and for hand-builders, realize that three-RB builds will probably be low-owned this week, so on the off chance it does prove to be optimal, it would be a nice edge. But I don’t mind taking some stances on my end (a handful of clear stances allows you to create a higher springboard for ALL your rosters if you end up being right; think of it like getting a three- to five-leg parlay correct :: if you get your stances correct, you’re now ahead of the field with ALL your rosters), and this is one stance I don’t mind taking this week.
Note this rule says what % of rosters the Bink Machine is allowed to put the position in question in the FLEX. I’ll have immense exposure to Trey McBride this week, so this allows me to chase other tight ends. I could have a tight end in the FLEX on as many as 50% of my rosters, but it could also come out to as little as 30% of my rosters (with up to 70% WR allowed).
“Fields+”
This rule says, “On at least 40% of rosters, play this entire block of players.”
I might have another rule that says, “On at least 70% of rosters, play at least Fields, DJM, and McBride together” (talk about a stance!). As explored in my Interpretations, this stack has the highest probability on the slate to be “the stack that everyone will need to be chasing.” And while “highest probability” obviously doesn’t mean “70% chance,” it does allow me to take a confident stance that would make me money over time.
Double Dolphins RBs
I would recommend reading my DFS Interpretations for this game (in the Building Blocks section, or in the NFL Edge), as I explore one of the interesting paths along which this game could play out. On this thin running back slate, that path might justify going Double Dolphins RBs. This set of rules is built around this thought. The first rule is in the Team Constraints section of the Team Stacks tab. This allows the Bink Machine to play two running backs from the Dolphins. The second rule (Mostert + Achane, no anchor) tells the Bink Machine to play this pair of players together on at least six percent of rosters.
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 ::
Fields || Lawrence (if he plays) || Flacco || Mullens
RB ::
A Wrap ::
I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!
-JM
