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
This is, instead, a look at the player pool I’ll be fishing
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).
Jameis Winston
Derrick Henry
Rico Dowdle
Jerry Jeudy
Elijah Moore
Michael Woods
Jordan Akins
Jalen McMillan
Broncos
Free
Build with a salary cap of $44k or below!
1st Place = 150 Edge Points + Rare Blue Name Tag in Discord
2nd Place = 75 Edge Points
3rd Place = 40 Edge Points
*1 Edge Point = $1 in DFS courses on OWS
What a unique week this is.
Yes, there are 12 games on this slate. Yes, there are some teams implied for nice totals. But this is also the type of week in which Kyler Murray (seven games this year of 17.2 or fewer DK points) is expected to be the highest-owned quarterback, followed by Justin Herbert (only two games all year of 20+ DK points). It’s a week on which C.J. Stroud (seven consecutive games without topping 18 DK points, with under 15 in six of those) is projecting to garner top ownership, while taking on a Dolphins defense that has allowed the fewest fantasy points per game to quarterbacks. It’s a week on which Anthony Richardson, Will Levis, and Drake Maye are projected to be among the seven highest-owned quarterbacks — and it’s a week on which I have only two quarterbacks on my own list after working through my research and running through the slate several times.
I also have only five running backs on my initial list — and two of those five running backs are Chuba Hubbard and Rico Dowdle, who are projecting to be the two highest-owned running backs on the slate. This is how you know it’s Week 15. “Chuba and Dowdle chalk week. What could go wrong!?”
As of this writeup, Tee Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase are projected to garner top-three ownership at high price tags in a game that isn’t all that likely to see points pile up from their opponent. Calvin Ridley and Brian Thomas Jr. are also on track for top-five ownership, relying on Will Levis and Mac Jones to get them their production. There are currently nine wide receivers tracking for double-digit ownership, and Malik Nabers (relying on Tommy DeVito) is another.
And then, of course, we have tight end, where the most expensive option in Trey McBride and the least expensive (viable) option in Stone Smartt are on track to combine for nearly 50% of the field’s exposure to the position.
Are you confident in how this week will play out? Because you probably shouldn’t be. This week will probably see a lot of volatility among higher-owned pieces…
And with all that, I’m not necessarily saying these plays are “bad chalk” within the context of the week.
What I am saying, however, is that this looks like a slate that could require us to do something different than just “following the logic trail toward the same Best Plays everyone else is seeing.”
This also looks like a slate that justifies a different Player Grid structure — and that’s what we’re going to do.
This week, I have no plays that line up as Blue Chips or Light Blue Chips. But also, I have a small list of QBs I like and a small list of running backs that stand out to me on paper, which leaves me with a very small pool (as those QBs will come with double- and triple-stacks, leaving me with only a few spots left to account for on each roster — assuming that’s my starting point across the board). Rather than providing a bit of a skeleton Player Grid structure, then, I’m going to go position-by-position, listing A) The Guys I Like, B) Some Guys I Don’t Dislike, and C) Some Alternate Angles.
Guys I Like = guys who were in my initial pool, post-research
Guys I Don’t Dislike = high-owned pieces that I’m not necessarily excited to play myself, but that I also don’t have strong arguments against (in the context of what else the slate provides)
Alternate Angles = lower-owned guys who have high ceilings and could provide a unique path to first
In my Angles Pod this week, I defined players in terms of letter grades, essentially noting that there might be a handful of “B-” options on the slate, but that most of the popular pieces are more in the “C” to “C+” category. To be clear, that’s just the type of week this is. It’s not a week where we have “C+” chalk and “A-” pieces that everyone is overlooking. We have “C+” chalk and “C”/”C-” pieces that everyone is overlooking. But when the “correct chalk” is in that “C+” range, we have an opportunity to take equally strong (or…equally weak) plays that no one is on in order to bet on things playing out differently than everyone is expecting. This is a week to take some swings, in my opinion. We’ll see some volatile production among high-owned pieces, and it may be some lower-owned pieces that ultimately define the week.
Let’s dive in — starting with the quarterback position.
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 Tagovailoa || Jameis Winston || Josh Allen || Jared Goff
I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!
-JM
