JM’s Player Grid 1.25
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
Sunday Morning Update ::
I dropped some deeper thoughts on the slate in my Winner Circle podcast (recorded Saturday evening, right before I started building), but here’s where I ended up this week ::
Quarterback
Around 60% of my rosters this week (and probably about 60% of my bankroll, when the dust settles on Sunday morning) is on track to being allocated toward Flacco and Baker, as expected.
Trevor Lawrence and Kyler are my other main QBs.
I rounded things out with 5% or less (mostly less) of Penix // Tua // Bryce Young // Russ // Rodgers.
Penix and Bryce are trail bets on game environments I’m betting on, and Tua is a bet on the Dolphins finding their mojo at low attention from the field. Russ and Rodgers are sub-5% combined, and could realistically be replaced with any number of guys (Maye // Nix // Daniel Jones // etc.). Said differently: nothing sets these guys apart; I just like to have a few large-field shots on cheap, low-owned QBs around whom I can build a story of them going for 25+ points.
Running Back
Unsurprisingly, I am moving toward 30%+ of CMC and Achane, and 20%+ of Jonathan Taylor.
More surprisingly, I’m also tilting toward 20%+ of Chase Brown, who I didn’t talk about much this week. He’s in sort of a weird place of pricing, where he’s almost as expensive as CMC and Achane (each of whom is a slightly better on-paper play), and he’s on the other side of a psychological barrier from Conner // Kamara // Chuba. But that psychological barrier (Brown being “over $6500”; the other three being “practically $6k” (or in the case of Chuba, actually $6k)) obscures the fact that Brown is basically the same price as those guys, and is a better player, in a better offense, with a better role. Combine this with my attraction toward Browns pieces this week, and Chase Brown moved up my list a bit.
Kamara // Conner // Chuba are all angling toward 10%+, as is Josh Jacobs, who was just so consistent down the stretch last year, and on whom I’m starting to come around a bit, realizing he could be a focal point in a spot where the Packers have a lot of question marks at wide receiver. “The matchup isn’t all that great.” True. But this lowers ownership, and if Jacobs goes for 100 yards, he can easily score two of his team’s touchdowns and be a moderately overlooked piece that sets a roster apart. He’s not a staple for me, of course, but he has been added to the pool.
Sub-10%, I have Bucky (primarily on rosters built around this game) and Bijan (primarily on rosters built around this game). Sub-5%, I have Jacory Croskey-Merritt and Tank Bigsby.
Wide Receiver
I decided to go heaviest of all on Brian Thomas Jr. and Mike Evans (no real surprises there), followed by Egbuka. I have over 35% prescribed to all these guys (actually, over 45% on the first two).
I’ve swung all over the place with Deebo, but I’m starting to lean toward taking the swing here, at around 20%.
I’ve also swung all over the place with London, but I think the targets have a good chance of being there this week, and I’m landing on around 20% for him as well (primarily on rosters built around this game, and with all London rosters including at least one piece from the Bucs).
In the 10% to 15% range, I have Marvin Harrison Jr. (almost entirely with Kyler), Ricky Pearsall, Tetairoa McMillan, and a marching brigade of older guys with fresh Week 1 legs who used to command much higher price tags :: Cooper Kupp // Davante Adams // Tyreek Hill // Stefon Diggs.
In the 5% to 10% range, I have a large list :: Renfrow // Tillman // Travis Hunter (with Lawrence) // JSN // Jakobi Meyers // Rashid Shaheed // Chris Olave // Nico Collins (all with Davante) // Jameson Williams // Dyami Brown (all with Lawrence) // Marvin Mims // Josh Downs // Jayden Higgins, and sub-5% I have Boutte // Pittman // Slayton (with Russ) // Waddle // DK (with Rodgers) // Brandin Cooks // Elic Ayomanor.
Tight End
Over 80% of my rosters are on track to have Njoku or Kittle, with another 10%+ going to McBride.
I’ll have a little bit of TE in the FLEX, with ~10% total exposure assigned to a group of Jonnu // Freiermuth // Fannin. Arthur Smith is capable of deploying Jonnu in such a way that he could outscore the guys priced above him. Freiermuth is capable of scoring 15-20 at a very cheap price. My small amount of Fannin exposure is insurance against my Njoku exposure.
DST
I have the Broncos on over half my builds, with the Cardinals the only other defense set up to be 20% or higher. The rest is rounded out by the Steelers // Rams // Bengals (telling a different story than all my Flacco builds) // Bucs (including some with Baker, to bet on an aggressive Bucs blowout win) // Dolphins // Jags.
Notes
Note 1: All ownership numbers mentioned above are my prescribed ownership levels in the Bink Machine, and the Bink Machine is spitting out rosters for me that adhere to these ranges. On Sunday morning, I’ll go shopping through all the rosters I’ve hand-built and created in the Bink Machine and settle on my final set of 150 (as well as my rosters for SE/3-Max), so the specifics of these allocations will obviously change, but I’m at least aiming for everything to fall roughly within the ranges mentioned above.
Note 2: There are plenty of good players on this slate who are not in my pool. We have to give ourselves the best shot at winning by determining specific areas where we will focus, and then building around those areas in sharp ways. If you’re building in ways that are different from me, don’t take any of this as a signal that you should rethink things — and if you’re seeing a lot of matching thoughts with mine, don’t assume this means we’ll both be rolling in money this evening (though if we played out this slate a hundred times, I’m confident we would be making money over this stretch).
Note 3: My Bink Machine rules have been published in the Bink Machine. To find these, go to Player Groups, and select the JMToWin preset. (You’ll also be able to find Mike’s rules for Fanduel if you’re playing there.) If you have built your own rules already, you need to download your rules to save them before clicking over to mine. Flipping through my rules is a cool way to see how I’m putting these players together on rosters this week.
Hi Pete
Pete Overzet is apparently big-time now, which I didn’t know until Friday. Let’s see if he still checks the Sunday Morning Update, or if he’s too busy jet-setting with retired NFL superstars…
That’s it!
I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this evening.
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
Full breakdown (of what this is, and what the thinking is behind these players) can (and should) be found in the Angles Pod (on YouTube, or on the One Week Season podcast feed).
Bottom-Up Build
DK Salary Remaining :: $6.0K
Joe Flacco
Jacory Croskey-Merritt
Christian McCaffrey
Josh Downs
Mike Evans
Hunter Renfrow
David Njoku
Trey McBride
Texans
Find The Bottom-Up Build Details and Contest Link on Discord
Blue Chips
Baker Mayfield
I could have slotted in this game environment (Bucs at Falcons) as a Blue Chip piece, but my particular focus flows through Baker Mayfield, so I’m isolating him in this space.
Some numbers ::
- Baker had more DraftKings points per game than Jayden Daniels last year.
- Baker Mayfield doubled Jayden Daniels’ count of “games with 29+ DraftKings points” (Baker had six; Jayden had three).
- This game is tied for the highest game total on the slate, and is being played indoors, with two teams that win games through their offenses.
- Five of Baker’s games of 29+ DraftKings points came in games the Bucs won by 17 points or more, reminding us that the fundamental nature of this team is to attack, and they don’t need help from an opponent in order to do so.
- When Baker hits, you can cover multiple spots on your roster.
Some additional notes from my JM’s Journal this week ::
:: Godwin played 6 games before getting injured last year. The best WR score between Evans/Godwin in those games:
( note :: where both wideouts performed, the second score is in parentheses )
23.1 (22.3)
27.7
17.3
23.4
23.2
38.5
Evans got hurt the same game as Godwin and came back for eight games down the stretch (playoffs included). Taking away the first game (Evans just returning) — without an elite number 2 — the top Bucs WR score in those 8 games:
28.8
21.9
39.9 (18.5)
16.7
29.7 (23)
19.0 (17.9)
22.2
That’s a 13 game sample with only two games under 20 and none under 16.7.
In this 13-game sample, Baker also hit five times (his score is at the end; the game score — Bucs listed first — is after that) ::
23.1 (22.3) | 29.7 — 37-20
23.4 | 31.9 — 33-16
38.5 | 31.9 — 51-27
39.9 (18.5) | 29.0 — 40-17
29.7 (23) | 37.6 — 48-14
Conclusions ::
1) You could justify playing one of Evans // Ebuka on every roster
2) Mayfield + one or two receivers has a tremendously high probability of top-of-tourney numbers
3) Given the game environments in which these smashes happened last year, you don’t technically even need a bring-back. Bring-backs work, of course, but they aren’t required for the Bucs to smash.
IN SUMMARY ::
In our 13-game sample of “Healthy Mike Evans,” we have three games of a Baker double-stack ($17.8k on DK this week) paying off to the tune of 75.1 (4.2x) // 87.4 (4.9x) // 90.3 (5.1x), and we have another two games of Baker + Evans going for 55.3 (4.2x) and 70.4 (5.3x). In the Building Blocks section, deeper down the Player Grid, you’ll see a breakdown of how to think about the math on something like this (the Cardinals writeup), but in short: this is tremendous expected value. If we could play out this slate a hundred times, Baker singles and doubles would have a shot at making the most money on the slate.
FINAL NOTES ::
You’ll find a Mike Evans writeup in the Light Blue Chips, below, and a brief mention of Emeka Egbuka in the Bonus section. Not highlighted in the Player Grid, but still on my radar, are Michael Penix, Drake London, Darnell Mooney, and Kyle Pitts. These are “trail bets” for me; in other words :: “I’m betting on Baker this week, but this also means I want to bet on some ways I could be directionally accurate without hitting the nail on the head.” If this game environment plays to the upside but Baker isn’t “the way” to play it, I want to give myself some outs.
I would not personally play Drake London as a one-off with no other pieces from this game, as his production (given his specific skill set) will almost always be highly game script dependent. London will almost always need volume in order to hit, and if he’s seeing heavy volume, it’s likely because the game environment demands this, which means others from the game are also hitting.
I am not focused on the running backs this week (I’m sure I’ll have some of Bijan and Bucky in large-field play (Note: after writing this up, Bijan did become a late addition to the Bonus section of the Player Grid), but I’ll also note that I don’t see these guys as poor plays. You can definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent paint a picture of these guys being the way to play this game; that’s just not how I’m personally attacking this spot this week. Said differently :: don’t get dissuaded from playing these guys if you like them. The Player Grid, as always, is not a list of all the good plays on the slate. It is, instead, a look into how I’ll personally be attacking this week’s slate.
“Gunslinger Arc” Building Block
See the Building Blocks section below. The “Gunslinger Arc” block is a Blue Chip option to me.
“Light Blue” Chips
Build-Arounds
Building Blocks
“Gunslinger Arc”
Joe Flacco + David Njoku
Story:
“Run it back!”
Why It Works:
On DraftKings, these two cost $9.6k in salary. In six games together in 2023 (in this same offense, with this same coach), they combined for point totals of 34.9 // 48.1 // 46.2 // 52.3 // 52.4 // 20.9.
Think about spending $9.6k in salary on a player. Healthy Christian McCaffrey back in the day? Late-2023 Tyreek Hill or Justin Jefferson? What is the scoring range you would be hoping for? If you looked through their game logs and saw those numbers (34.9 // 48.1 // 46.2 // 52.3 // 52.4 // 20.9), would you be willing to play them, in a good matchup and game environment for production, at the high ownership they would command?
Now take the fact that we get this combination with much lower ownership, and are able to cover two spots on our roster at once.
This block will be a regular feature across my rosters this week.
A FEW ADDITIONAL NOTES HERE ::
- In MME (and possibly even on a sliver of my SE/3-Max builds), I’ll also have some Cleveland WR exposure alongside Flacco.
- Chase Brown is my favorite one-off from the Bengals, and I could have him on some SE/3-Max. (I may also avoid Bengals players altogether on tighter builds.)
- I won’t argue against Burrow stacks, of course (as a general rule, you could play Burrow stacks every week, regardless of matchup, and it would pay off when it’s all said and done at the end of the year), but I also don’t expect this to be a heavy feature on my own rosters this week.
How It Works:
The Flacco + Njoku pairing won’t be totally unique, but it will be unique enough to be a nice separator if it hits (and it can hit at a high enough level to leave the rest of the field chasing you). Continue to target upside away from these two guys, as we would still need to target first place against other Flacco/Njoku builds if this hits to the ceiling outcome, but don’t get too cute or take on unnecessary risks on these builds, either, unless that risk is on a cheap guy who can hit and allow you to collect even more high-certainty upside on other parts of your roster.
POTENTIAL DOWNSIDE:
The story plays out differently, and you don’t get first place — which is really all that matters.
“Cool As A Cardinal”
Bink Machine
A look at some of the rules I’ll be applying in the Bink Machine this week.
VERY IMPORTANT REMINDER :: The Bink Machine is free in Week 1!
- Even if you’re not an MME player, it’s an extremely valuable tool for getting a sense of what the field’s rosters are going to look like on a given week.
- How to do this?
- 1) Remove one player from your player pool (this can be a backup QB if you want; you just have to make one custom change to “individualize” your player pool, otherwise the optimizer will run afoul of DK/FD rules), then
- 2) at the top, put in “25” or “50” or whatever you want for total lineups to be built, and hit the big orange “BUILD” button
- From here, you can also hit the “Run Sims” button to check out your ROI distribution for the rosters built
- You can also handbuild rosters in the Bink Machine and run Sims on these
- Let’s go!!!
Bill Tank
In large-field play, I want to have some rosters that pay down for Jacory “Bill” Croskey-Merritt and Tank Bigsby in order for my salary structure and the rest of my roster to look different from what the field is doing. In order to account for this, this rule says, “On at least 50% of rosters that have Jacory Croskey-Merritt (the locked player here), also include Tank Bigsby.”
Ja’Marr No-Solo
If you are spending big money on Ja’Marr Chase, at high ownership, it isn’t going to help you to get 22 to 25 DraftKings points. Instead, you need him to post a big game. So what would that look like? Well, in his monster 2024 season, he went over a mere 26.5 DK points only four times. Three of those games were mega shootouts, with 69 or more total points scored. Could Ja’Marr hit for a big game without game environment cooperating? Sure. But the chances are very, very low, and most of the field will be playing him as a one-off (which would imply that the chances of him doing this are very, very high). There is quite a bit of edge available in only playing Ja’Marr alongside a piece from the Browns. Whether you are hand-building or using an optimizer, you should apply this “rule” to your rosters.
If building in the Bink Machine, this rule says, “If I have Ja’Marr (the locked player),” I should have two to four players from this pool (or: I should have Ja’Marr, plus one to three additional players from this pool).
The next thing to think about here, if building through an opto, is that you probably don’t want Njoku + Tillman (for example) without Flacco. So this next set of rules says that if I have any two-pass-catcher combo from this group, I should also have Flacco.
Finally, of course, my build settings would instruct the Bink Machine to always stack a pass catcher with my QB (which, in this instance, ensures I don’t end up with something funky like “Ja’Marr + Flacco + no Browns pass catchers).
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 ::
Baker Mayfield (with some Michael Penix trail bets) || Joe Flacco || Kyler Murray || possibly Trevor Lawrence on tighter builds as well
RB ::
A Wrap ::
I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!
-JM
