Dummy Grid 6.23
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
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 (on the One Week Season podcast feed).
Bottom-Up Build
DK Salary Remaining :: $6.4K
Desmond Ridder
Chuba Hubbard
D’Andre Swift
Drake London
Christian Kirk
Josh Downs
Jonnu Smith
DJ Moore
49ers
Join The Bottom-Up Build Contest On DraftKings!
Buy-In:
Free
Rules:
Build with a salary cap of $44k or below!
Prizes:
150 Edge Points ($150 worth of FREE DFS Education courses!) + ‘Discord Blue’ color in Discord!
<< Join Here >>
*must use an OWS avatar (found on your profile page) to be eligible to win
Blue Chips
D’Andre Swift
Okay. So. Yeah.
I’ll assume that most of you who actually read the Player Grid (rather than just glancing through the names) do your reading from the top down. Against this assumption, I’ll go ahead and use this space to provide some background for this week’s Player Grid.
We know that touchdowns are the most unpredictable, high-variance element in statistical output. Obviously, we can pay attention to red zone (and inside-the-10) usage; we can pay attention to offensive philosophies; and we can pay attention to a team’s expected scoring output on the week. All of these can help. But our baseline, before these elements, should be recognizing that pre-touchdown fantasy production can be a useful metric in understanding a player’s true value. By taking away touchdowns, we’re able to better assess the floor from which a player’s (touchdown-driven) ceiling can spring.
If you’ve been on OWS for any significant length of time, you’ve seen me use “pre-touchdown fantasy scoring” from time to time. This is a stat I’ll be leaning on in a number of areas this week…
…and it’s this stat that has Swift popping as a Blue Chip for me.
Some notable (per-game) pre-touchdown fantasy scoring numbers (DraftKings scoring)
- 16.2 :: Josh Jacobs’ elite pre-TD fantasy scoring last year (he’s at 13.1 this year, in a small sample size)
- 10.9 :: Kenneth Walker’s career pre-TD fantasy scoring (part of the reason I roster him less often than the field, and part of the reason he’s topped 20 DK points only three times so far in his career)
- 8.2 :: Travis Etienne’s 2022 pre-TD fantasy scoring output (even this year, he’s only at 11.2; again, part of the reason I roster him less often than the field — though he’s a different case than Walker, as Etienne’s production tends to be more concentrated within individual games)
- 15.4 :: Bijan Robinson’s borderline-elite pre-TD fantasy scoring output through the first five games of his career
- 21.3 :: The “WTF” pre-TD fantasy scoring output for Cooper Kupp since the start of 2021
- 19.3 :: The “WTF” pre-TD fantasy scoring output for Tyreek Hill since joining the Dolphins
- 16.9 :: The “not as good as people might think, but still excellent” pre-TD fantasy scoring output for Ja’Marr Chase in 2022
- 17.7 :: D’Andre Swift’s pre-TD fantasy scoring across four games as the Eagles’ lead back
So…yeah. Swift a Blue Chip, because while we’re dealing with a small sample size here, it’s not as if we have these numbers skewed by “one outlier game,” or by a circumstance we’re unlikely to see again.
To be clear, I’m not “playing Swift on 100% of rosters,” or even necessarily rostering him at a higher rate than the running backs in the Light Blue section. “Blue Chip” doesn’t signify that I’m rostering him at a particular rate, or that you should play him with absolute, unbreakable confidence, “knowing for sure he’ll have a big game.” I also don’t expect him to stay in the 17.7-point range for the entire season. But he can absolutely stretch a 15-point average across the season given his talent, role, and offense, which means he should be priced several notches higher than where he’s priced at the moment (low- to mid-$7ks). This makes him a play that stands out among the rest this week.
“Light Blue” Chips
Build-Arounds
Building Blocks
Home Warriors
Ridder + London + Jonnu (or Pitts)
Story:
“Washington is awful against the pass”
Why It Works:
49.8 // 23.3 // 36.5 // 55.6
Those are the combined scores of this block from Weeks 2 through 5.
At $13.2k in salary, the first and fourth scores are at or above a 200-point pace, while the second and third scores are roster wreckers.
Commanders games have had 60+ combined points in three of five games, and the Commanders have allowed four of five opponents to score 30+. While they rank 16th in DVOA against the run, they rank 28th against the pass. Desmond Ridder has also topped 30 pass attempts in four of five games this year, after doing so in only one of four games last year. It won’t be surprising if this block hits for 50 to 55 points in about half their games the rest of the way this year…and at these salaries, that would mean “a 50% chance at a 200-point pace.” You can’t find that in many other places.
How It Works:
While a 200-point pace is nice, 50 to 55 points from three players isn’t in the range of “separators,” which means you’ll still need to do something different in other spots on your roster. If this block hits, however, you have a really nice starting point from which the rest of your roster can be built.
POTENTIAL DOWNSIDE:
The story plays out differently, and you don’t get first place — which is really all that matters.
Run It Back
Bink Machine
A look at some of the rules I’ll be applying in the Bink Machine this week.
Jags Pass Spread
Ridley // Kirk // Engram cost $16.6k in combined salary and have combined to average 37 pre-touchdown DraftKings points per game (effectively making them a full block that’s “a bit underpriced relative to usage-driven floor,” with plenty of touchdown-driven ceiling from there). On a concentrated offense, with Zay Jones off the field, it’s likely that at least one of these guys posts a really nice price-considered (or price/position-considered) score, with a decent shot at two of these guys producing. In spots like this, I like to take all the players from the block and spread them across my builds, knowing that this positions me for “everything to line up” on whatever rosters have “the guy who hits” (or “the guys who hit”) at the highest levels. You could obviously force this setup with min/max exposures on the individual players, but this particular rule ensures that you won’t have two of these players on a roster together, and ensures that at least 70% of your builds will have one of these three guys.
Notice, there is no anchor set on this rule. This rule says, “On 70% of my rosters, make sure that exactly one player from this pool is represented.”
Vikings Pass Spread
Interestingly, this block of players costs almost the exact same as the Jags block (Jags block is $16.6k; Vikings is $16.7k). This group of players PLUS Jefferson has produced 45.8 pre-touchdown DK points per game. The loss of Jefferson could comfortably be said to take about four completions and 40 yards away from Kirk Cousins’ production, (putting this group in the same general range as the Jags pieces), but with this production likely to settle on this group of three guys, it’s likely that one or two ends up posting a really nice score. Same as the Jags rule above, this forces exposure to this pool of players across a set of builds.
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 ::
Ridder || Dobbs || Stafford || Burrow || Fields || (I may end up adding some Tua to tighter builds as well)
RB ::
A Wrap ::
I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!
-JM
