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
:: 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
:: a new category for 2024! — these are 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
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).
Andy Dalton
Chuba Hubbard
Bijan Robinson
Diontae Johnson
Adonai Mitchell
Jalen Tolbert
Dalton Schultz
Tre Tucker
Buccaneers
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
Lamar Jackson + Isaiah Likely costs $12.3k. In Week 1, they combined for 59.5 DK points.
Lamar Jackson + Derrick Henry costs $15.8k. In Week 3, they combined for 59.4 DK points, and in Week 4, they combined for 63.5.
Lamar Jackson + Zay Flowers costs $14.3k. In Week 5, they combined for 59.4 DK points.
Not only is the Washington defense attackable, but the Washington offense ranks top-five in pretty much every important offensive category. What this means for your weekend? :: there’s a good chance the Ravens A) stay aggressive for much of this game, and B) perform well once again. If you don’t have the pieces from this offense that hit, someone else in the tournament you’re in probably WILL have those pieces…which means you should think about positioning yourself to be the roster that HAS these pieces, so that others are left chasing you.
Individually ::
But collectively, this offense sets up as a Blue Chip option for me this week.
As explored in my DFS Interpretation for this game :: Washington pieces (McLaurin, running backs, cheap pass catchers) can be considered opposite Baltimore pieces, but the next tourney-winner from this offense will be the first, and the Ravens have a track record over the last couple seasons of crushing high-end competition (see their blowout wins over the 49ers, Lions, and Bills over the last two seasons as examples). Terry McLaurin would probably be on the Tier 1/2 Bonus border for me if isolating him from this game environment, whereas no one else on the Commanders would really make my list.
With all the Lamar exposure I expect to have, I’ll also have some trail bets on Jayden Daniels.
“This game shoots out”
This is a ‘pick a lane’ game, in that it could play out a variety of ways, and each roster you build this week has to account for one of the ways in which this game could play out. Said differently :: In many scenarios, at least one high-end score will emerge from this game. In many others, multiple high-end scores will emerge from this game. Rosters that choose not to attack this game in any way are picking a lane that says, “Tournament-winning rosters won’t feature players from Lions // Cowboys this week.” And the wild thing about this game is that that’s a viable way for things to play out as well.
I’ll have some rosters that ignore this game completely.
But I’ll also have rosters that build around a scenario of this game genuinely shooting out.
Last season, CeeDee and Dak (carrying a combined price tag this week of $15.3k) had games in which they hit for combined scores of 61.7 // 63.5 // 63.9 // 68.5 // 76.1 // 84.4. Wild. Even more wild, however, is that in five of those six games, you could have added either Jake Ferguson or Brandin Cooks (now Tolbert’s role) and remained on a 4x salary pace ($20.3k; scores of 83.1 // 85.5 // 85.6 // 90.8 // 119.7) — and the one time the $20.3k block fell short of 4x was a 77.9 score that would have kept you on a 192-point pace.
If this block were to hit, this would mean a lot of points in this game. Depending on how the rest of the slate shapes up, this could easily mean that rosters NOT built around this game are out of the running on the weekend. This would, of course, leave you competing against only a small percentage of remaining rosters, so rosters with this starting point shouldn’t worry too much about “differentiation” elsewhere.
The story plays out differently, and you don’t get first place — which is really all that matters.
A look at some of the rules I’ll be applying in the Bink Machine this week.
The Ravens are likely to produce at least one tourney-winner this week, and could easily produce two or three solid, price-considered scores. This rule says, “On 92% of rosters, play at least one player from this pool.”
(Note :: I have individual exposure prescribed to each of these players as well, with Likely // Andrews capped in the teens, and with Flowers capped in the 20s. In other words: This rule isn’t risking something like 30% Mark Andrews, or 50% Isaiah Likely. Henry will be my primary piece from this group.)
See the “Zoom Zoom” block above.
This rule says, “On at least 30% of Amon-Ra St. Brown rosters, play Jahmyr Gibbs.”
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:
Lamar Jackson (possibly with a tighter-build Daniels roster) || Dak Prescott (possibly with some Goff) || possibly Spencer Rattler // Andy Dalton || possibly Love // Kyler (or I may just save this for large-field play)
I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!
-JM