JMToWin is a high-stakes tournament champion (Thunderdome, Luxury Box, Game Changer, Wildcat, etc.) who is focusing this year on 150-max and small-field 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
Full breakdown (of what this is, and what the thinking is behind these players) can (and should) be found in the Angles Pod (above).
Justin Herbert
Derrick Henry
Miles Sanders
Nelson Agholor
Kendrick Bourne
Elijah Moore
Chig Okonkwo
Mike Williams
Broncos
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!
With Mike White out for Week 15 and dropping Garrett Wilson below Blue Chip level, there are no players who are standing out to me as True Blue Chips this week. This is not unusual, especially this deep into the season when pricing is generally efficient.
See Build Arounds and Building Blocks for deeper thoughts on this play.
The Eagles have played four games this year against teams that rank bottom 10 in run defense DVOA (Arizona — 23rd || Houston — 27th || NY Giants — 31st || Green Bay — 32nd), and in those games, Hurts has posted DK scores (in order of how they’re listed for DVOA ranks) of 27.7, 21.0, 30.4, and 32.8, while averaging 12 carries and 79.5 rushing yards per game, to go with three total rushing touchdowns scored. With those numbers laid out, it’s worth noting that he’s actually topped 79.5 rushing yards in only one of those four games (his 157-yarder vs Green Bay pulls up his average), but this doesn’t change the fact that Hurts has shown a really nice range in soft rushing matchups. Hurts has gone for 30+ DK points five times this year, with three of those coming with 300+ passing yards (two in pass-funnel matchups vs Washington and Tennessee, the other in an all-around attackable spot vs Minnesota where Hurts threw for 300 yards and rushed for two scores), and with the other two 30-pointers coming via a soft matchup on the ground. Chicago ranks 29th in DVOA against the run. A “bad score” from Hurts here will likely still land you in the 25-point range, while he has clear pathways to topping 30. On a week in which 30-pointers will almost certainly be in short supply, the floor/ceiling combo that Hurts provides is definitely attractive.
New this year: these are unique player pairings that can be used as foundational building blocks for tournament rosters
“Mahomes does what’s expected of him, working primarily through Kelce, while Cooks Dorsett succeeds as the Texans chase points. Miles Sanders scores the touchdowns for the Eagles, clearing out the path to this structure finishing in first place.”
I would have liked this a lot more if Cooks had been active, but with attention flooding to Chris Moore, and with Mahomes + Kelce + Moore sure to be a tremendously popular stack, the addition of Dorsett to this stack (one more snap than Moore last week; same number of pass routes) still creates potential to “place the same bet as everyone else, while separating from the field if it hits” (i.e., everyone will be betting on Mahomes and Kelce smashing, and the Texans putting together some solid receiving production in response; rostering Dorsett places the same bet, at far lower ownership). If Mahomes + Kelce hits, the biggest obstacle to soaring to a first-place finish would be Hurts + Goedert also hitting. By adding Miles Sanders to this build, we account for a holistic scenario that would maximize our chances of a first-place finish: Sanders stealing touchdowns from our biggest competition, and filtering those touchdowns over to our roster.
Even with the expected popularity of Mahomes and Kelce, we would have a very clear shot at a first-place finish — even in larger contests — with this four-player block hitting, as a big game from Sanders would decrease the chances of a big game from Hurts, and the Dorsett bring-back would function as a separator as well. With that, I would be fine going relatively chalky across the rest of my roster here (assuming I liked the chalk pieces that would fit), as this block “does enough” to set us apart already. (Note: that’s not to say I would “go out of my way to play chalk.” Rather, it’s to say I would play whatever I wanted to play across the rest of this build, without worrying about how popular or unpopular those other plays were.)
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:
Jalen Hurts || Patrick Mahomes || Joe Burrow || Justin Herbert || (Possibly Mac Jones)
I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!
-JM
