Sonic is a Milly Maker winner and large-field tournament mastermind who focuses on mass-multi-entry play
Zaccheus Malik Moss is obviously the story of the week. Many of you may think an MME degenerate like me would be pulling a fade. Nah. The projection is just too good. I’ll be taking the free square in about 70% of my lineups. Taking on a player of this immense popularity adds additional importance to the correlation and ownership numbers of the players we add around him.
We’re always hunting for those high-ceiling combinations to add to our existing game stacks. It’s better to aim at getting four things right instead of trying to hit a nine-way parlay. I’ll lean on a handful of core secondary stacks that will be finessed into lineups whenever feasible.
Henry stacked with the Titans D is the obvious leverage play from Moss. You could paint the picture of Tennessee moving the ball and Henry scoring early, burning a bunch of clock, and forcing Indy into a pass-leaning plan. Gardner Minshew proceeds to turn the ball over, etc. IF Moss is going to fail, we might as well pull some levers that exploit this result.
My plan was to include a Henry/Josh Downs or Michael Pittman play here but it appears the Colts receivers are coming in at double-digit ownership themselves, rendering my point somewhat moot.
So… Will Sonic be running an onslaught (or three) with Minshew/Moss/Pittman/Downs?
Does JMToWin wear weirdly expensive yoga pants?
Hell yes, and I’ll be bringing DeAndre Hopkins and/or King Henry back in a couple of those.
And I need those pants.
We’ve seen Nuk hit a massive ceiling from the effortless flick of the Will Levis pass. If this game catches fire, it’s likely to come from this type of push from the Titans side. This could result in a spike in targets for Mr. Moss, which is something we’ll be hoping for once we’ve stuck our neck out and placed it on the proverbial chopping block by rostering Moss. The addition of Hopkins’ potential correlative ceiling at a modest 6.9% ownership helps take our overall chalkiness down to a more palatable level. Don’t worry, we’ll go further in that direction below.
Kyren broke the slate last week and was priced up from $6600 to $7200. DFS players do not want to come across as donkeys who chase last week’s results. He’s playing the Cleveland Browns who have a nasty reputation. All of this adds up to a bellcow running back being owned at a mere 7% clip.
I may be biased because Williams almost won me a million dollars last week, but I cannot resist this spot.
Since we’re so concerned with finding contrarian plays to offset our Moss chalk, we might as well throw in the 1.3% owned Amari Cooper. Joe Flacco might be a lot of things, but he has a cannon for an arm, and Cooper makes for nice leverage off Elijah Moore, whom everyone appears confident will be the beneficiary of this quarterback change.
WHAT IF Flacco ignites the Browns offense by leaning on the veteran, contested-long ball winner, and the Rams shift into overdrive to keep up? The path of least resistance to score points against the Browns is through the running backs, and in this case, the running back.
I’m probably only going to employ this strategy in a handful of lineups because the raw projection just isn’t awesome from an opportunity cost standpoint, but it makes for a good exercise in terms of looking at DFS through an if/then lens.
At his price of $8200, I think it’s safe to say that Kamara (9%) is unlikely to put up a tourney-winning score unless he has one of his insane pass-catching games.
If we feel that the Lions establish it early and run the ball down the Saints throats, the 4.5% owned DMont will make for a nice play opposite AK in the scenario where New Orleans is forced into catchup mode early. AK gets peppered with targets since the Lions are playing to take away any quick-hitting splash plays.
If we play the scenario where this game shoots out, then Gibbs/Kamara is an enticing combo. Stuffing your backfield full of targets and touchdown equity in a game that hits 55 total points is generally +EV.
If we think the Saints play from ahead, I’m not going anywhere near AK. In this scenario, I like the peculiar pairing of Taysom Hill (1.3%) and the Saints DST (1.1%). Hill has smashed twice this year, and both came in decisive wins, one of which featured a 13-point output from the Saints defense. If the shorthanded Saints are to prevail this week, it feels likely that this pairing will be a factor.
