JMToWin is a high-stakes tournament champion (Thunderdome, Luxury Box, Game Changer, Wildcat) who is focusing this year on single-entry/three-entry max
This is, instead, a look at the player pool I’ll be fishing
:: 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”)
:: 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
:: games, offenses, situations, or scenarios I’ll be looking to build around across my rosters
:: unique player pairings that can be used as foundational building blocks for tournament rosters
:: 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
Permanent Price Bump coming at the end of Week 2!
Lock in the lower price for life!
Full breakdown (of what this is, and what the thinking is behind these players) can (and should) be found in the Angles Pod (above).
Trevor Lawrence
Austin Ekeler
Travis Etienne
Davante Adams
Van Jefferson
Terrace Marshall
Evan Engram
Donald Parham
Jets
Buy-In:
Free
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!
Join Here – Contest 1
Join Here – Contest 2
* With the BUB becoming more popular, we’ve set up two contests. ONLY ENTER ONE. The best score between the two contests will be credited with the win! *
I could probably leave this space blank. You know Ekeler is a sharp play, and you know why. But Papy’s writeup on Ekeler in the NFL Edge perfectly sums up this play, so I’ll post the full writeup here:
Austin Ekeler ($8,800) – Ekeler deserves his own subheading because he has been unlike any other player this season. The RB1 overall in total PPR points, despite having had a bye, and the vast leader in PPR points per game, he has been the RBs answer to Deebo Samuel, seeing WR-like target totals, including 12/16 in his past two games. The crazy part is he might have more upside. His season target totals have mostly come with Mike Williams healthy, which won’t be the case this week. It’s wild to think, but Ekeler’s role might still be expanding as well. He has played 61% of the snaps on the year, but he saw 77% of the snaps last week. If one of the “tweaks” the Chargers make coming out of their bye is using Ekeler as every down player, watch out. If you want to try and poke holes, you could say that his numbers are buoyed by an unsustainable eight touchdowns in his past four games, but this isn’t likely to be the game he slows down. Ekeler is the most expensive RB on the DK slate by $1,000, but he’s still underpriced. RB and WRs have posted “must have” stat lines against the Falcons all year, and Ekeler is a “Running Receiver.” I’ll almost assuredly have exposure to Ekeler on my tighter builds this week.
New this year: these are unique player pairings that can be used as foundational building blocks for tournament rosters
“The Raiders score around four touchdowns”
While Jacobs is projected for high ownership, Adams currently projects to see only 5.8% ownership, and very few people who play Adams will be playing Jacobs on the same roster, creating a naturally low-owned pairing
In three games before last week (when Adams was playing through a bad flu, and the entire offense crumbled as a result), Jacobs + Adams had combined for DraftKings totals of 57.0, 63.7, and 60.0…and this week — against a middling Jacksonville defense — they cost $15.4k combined (meaning that a combined score of “roughly 60” would keep your roster on a 200-point pace). As explored in various places this week :: this building block works in large-field play, but is better-suited to small-field play (I’ll say 2k or fewer entries — though obviously, it’s a sliding scale), as there isn’t a ton of room for additional upside over what they’ve already posted (i.e., this block isn’t likely to be “the reason you win a tourney,” which puts a bit more pressure on your other pieces than you might want in large-field play. But in smaller-field play, in particular, “60 points in-pocket” has immense value, and “4x from 30% of our salary” has immense value. I’ll have some exposure to this block in large-field play, and I’ll be seriously considering it as a core starting point in small-field play.
I’ll also note that Davante’s FD price is the equivalent of about $6.7k on DK, which is just absurd. All wideouts are underpriced on FD (Justin Jefferson and Cooper Kupp are the equivalent of $7.5k!), but given the touchdown-heavy nature of scoring on FD, the fact that Davante derives much of his upside from TDs, and the fact that Davante TDs are taking away from a more popular player in Jacobs, this is a nice fit as a one-off as well.
Speaking of one-offs, I’ll also have plenty of one-off rosters of Davante and Jacobs in large-field play, alongside my handful of “building block” rosters.
The story plays out differently, and you don’t get first place — which is really all that matters.
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:
Tua || Fields || Herbert || Mariota (with Chargers) || Burrow || Lawrence || Heinicke (with McLaurin)
I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!
-JM
