Angles hits inboxes on Thursday mornings throughout the regular season; you can also find Angles in The Scroll on Thursday afternoons.

We made it!!!

If you’re new here — welcome!

Every Thursday during the NFL season we drop the Angles email in your inbox. In this email, we take an early, overview look at the slate ahead, in order to help us get our feet under us before the late-week crunch. As we often highlight: DFS is not a game of “picking players.” DFS, instead, is a game of strategy, game theory, and outmaneuvering our opponents to maximize our chances of a first-place finish. This overview of the week, then, is a great way for us to start our journey toward those rosters that “would make us money over time” (i.e., “If we could play out this slate a hundred times, would we win money with this roster or lose money with this roster?”).

EVERYTHING FREE WEEK 1 ::

Before we dive in, just a quick reminder that — per tradition — everything on OWS is free Week 1.

If you’re an OWS Free member, this means you have access to all paywalled content this week.

But also(!), if you’re an OWS member without access to the Bink Machine optimizer, this is free in Week 1 as well!

Furthermore, Sims have been added to the Bink Machine this year(!!!). Starting Week 2, Sims will be available for purchase to Bink Machine users — but this week (because, you know, everything is free), even our Sims functionality is available to use for free.

I strongly encourage you to check out Sims this week. Even if you don’t plan to use them the rest of the year, they are powerful enough to be worth leaning into while you have access this week. BWoodman made a quick Sims tutorial for you — though really, it’s all pretty straightforward (and pretty unreal). Seriously: whether you’re an MME player or a single-entry player, I strongly encourage you to tap into  free Sims access this week.

JM’S JOURNAL ::

In case you missed it, I am journaling my developing thoughts throughout each week in Discord this year. This is an Inner Circle feature, of course — but (Week 1 & all…) this is available for free this week.

WEEK 1 :: WHERE WE DON’T KNOW WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

My entry to DFS content was unique.

I started playing MLB DFS in 2014, and I had a great deal of success that summer. At the time, I was a freelance writer, and I’d had a novel that had been published a few years earlier. The confluence of these factors (“good DFS player” // “professional writer”) put me on RotoGrinders’ radar, and at the DraftKings live final in the Bahamas that summer, they asked me if I would be interested in writing baseball content for them the following season.

“Sure,” I told them. “But honestly, we should think about plugging me into some football content as well.”

RG was gracious enough that year to allow me to come up with my own article premise and angle, and I tackled my first-ever DFS article, in Week 1 of the 2014 season, hammering the idea that there is so much we don’t know heading into Week 1.

The landscape in DFS was unique at the time, as the legality of the game was being called into question, and the argument in favor of keeping DFS legal was that it was a game of skill. When I submitted my article, RG sent it back to me and asked me to change some of my wording. Basically: ‘If we talk so much about how little we know, it sounds like we’re saying it’s not a game of skill.’

So I made those changes, and the article moved forward looking a little bit different than it had looked before. And that made sense, because — on the surface, through a non-nuanced lens — simply saying, “There’s a lot we don’t know” would seem to suggest that we’re just hoping to get lucky.

But the funny thing is :: recognizing and acknowledging gaps in our knowledge is a big part of the edge is in DFS. Yes, DFS is a game of skill (as evidenced by the consistent, long-running success of the top players in the space), but the “skill” is rarely about “knowing more than the field.” Of course, there are times where this angle of the skill comes into play (Josh Allen the second half of his rookie year; early-career Diontae Johnson; rookie-year Puka Nacua and Tank Dell — just to name a few), but more often than not, the “skill” in DFS is about understanding the gaps in our knowledge, and accounting for this in the way we play against others who put too much stock into what they “know.”

To summarize that another way :: a big part of the “skill” in DFS is knowing what we don’t know, and accounting for this accordingly.

Last year in Week 1, the Saints put up 47 points (and then they put up 44 in Week 2). The Patriots beat the Bengals. The Cardinals took a 17-3 lead over the Bills and pushed them to the finish in a 28-34 game. The Dolphins only scored 20 at home against the Jags. Furthermore, Week 1 isn’t enough of a sample size to inform our thoughts for the remainder of the season. The Saints fizzled out quickly. The Patriots only won three more games all year. The Bills reached the AFC Championship Game and stomped much tougher competition along the way. The Commanders lost by 17 in Week 1 and reached the NFC title game. The Broncos lost to the Seahawks and ended up as one of the toughest teams in the NFL. The list goes on and on.

Most of us have done Best Ball drafts or season-long drafts, or have read up on teams and players and formed early opinions. And most of our competition has done the same.

Will there be some edges this week in “knowing more than the field”? Yes, almost certainly.

But also, there’s a pretty good chance that tournaments this week will be won by DFS players who lean into the possibilities of what we don’t know.

I encourage you to keep this in mind this week.

WHAT WE MIGHT KNOW ::

There has been talk this offseason that this feels like the kind of year in the NFL where we won’t have many dominant teams, and where we won’t have many awful teams, either — a season in which the “middle class” will be large, and the difference between a few teams making the playoffs and a few teams missing the playoffs will be a handful of plays throughout the season.

This idea carries over into Week 1, where we have 12 games on the Main Slate, with five games carrying a game total of 46.5 or 47.5, and with no games separating from the group. We also have 12 of the 24 teams on this slate implied to score 22.5 to 25.0 points, with only two teams (the Commanders, at 25.5, and the Bengals, at 26.0) climbing above that range.

It’s a wide-open season.

And it’s a wide-open slate.

Here are the games with the top totals on the slate, along with a snapshot of how we might be able to think about each game for DFS:

47.5 :: Bengals at Browns || The Bengals have struggled against the Browns’ defense for years, and have been notoriously slow starters. But they’ve played in preseason this year in an effort to be more ready for Week 1, and they know what has caused them problems against Cleveland, which might allow them to fix these issue. We know the Bengals are a reactive offense, so the big question, really, is: Can the Browns score points, and push this game into shootout territory?

47.5 :: Bucs at Falcons || The Bucs are fundamentally an aggressive offense, and they always force opponents away from the run, which opens the door, plenty of times throughout the season, for Bucs games to either end up as shootouts or as one-sided affairs in which the Bucs are scoring points and the opponent is running into issues as they become more one-dimensional on the other side. It’s fair to say that if we played out this slate a hundred times, this game would come out on top more times than any other on this slate.

47.5 :: Dolphins at Colts || In a dome, with an explosive Dolphins offense and a well-stocked Colts offense. Are the vibes off in Miami? Maybe. But maybe that won’t matter in Week 1…and given how thin the Dolphins look on the defensive side of the ball, there’s potential for both offenses to do well if this one gets going.

47.5 :: Lions at Packers || The Lions are implied to score only 22.5 points (47.5-point game total; Packers favored by 2.5), which stands out right away as a place where we would expect things to go Over more than 50% of the time. And if the Lions go over, and the Packers are the favored team, this opens the door for both teams to be putting up more points than we’re seeing in most other games on the slate. There is uncertainty surrounding usage on the Packers, and there are high price tags on the Lions, but this could nevertheless prove to be an important game on this slate.

46.5 :: Panthers at Jags || There are plenty of question marks on these offenses, but even more question marks on these defenses — and the upside on each offense is very real. This game total feels like a hedge — i.e., given the unknowns here, early in the year, this game could fall well below this total…but if it skews to the upside, it could skew WAY to the upside.

Outside of these games, we also have the Commanders (25.5), Cardinals (25.0), and Broncos (25.0) implied to be among the highest-scoring teams on the slate, and of course, we have quite a few game environments and individual teams that could play out differently than the field will be expecting Week 1.

“WHAT SHOULD I DO FROM HERE?”

1) Keep up with OWS Content in the NFL Edge, The Scroll, and in Discord. (Also, search “One Week Season” on your favorite podcast player, and keep up with our content there!)

2) Leverage the Bink Machine and Sims to super-charge your decision-making process.

3) Get creative! Think outside the box. And build for first place this week.

KICKOFF PARTY!

We’ll be hanging out on Discord tonight during Thursday Night Football.

I’m excited to see you there.

And of course, I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards on Sunday!
-JM

Hilow is a game theory expert (courses at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Northwestern) and tournament champion who focuses on mid/high-stakes single-entry/three-entry max

Kevin Adams is the founder of StatRankings, former founder of Elite Fantasy & FTN, and a longtime DFS player/bettor with countless DFS finals and GPP wins

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

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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

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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

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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

The Bottom-Up Build Contest Will Return In Week 2!

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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 ::

1. Baker had more DraftKings points per game than Jayden Daniels last year.
2. Baker Mayfield doubled Jayden Daniels’ count of “games with 29+ DraftKings points” (Baker had six; Jayden had three).
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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

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Build-Arounds

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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 ::

1. In MME (and possibly even on a sliver of my SE/3-Max builds), I’ll also have some Cleveland WR exposure alongside Flacco.
2. 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.)
3. 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”

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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

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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 ::

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A Wrap ::

I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!

-JM

Mike Johnson (MJohnson86) has racked up nearly $500,000 in DFS profit as an NFL tournament player with success in all styles of contests

Sonic is a Milly Maker winner and large-field tournament mastermind who focuses on mass-multi-entry play

Papy is a full-time DFS player, with a focus on high-stakes tourneys, and with hundreds of thousands in lifetime profit

Welcome to Papy’s Process! This article will be a change of pace from Papy’s Pieces, which highlighted six players ranging from low to high in DFS price. This season, my goal is to focus on the lineup building process while giving the OWS family an inside look at how I make my lineups. My typical pattern revolves around my “tighter builds.” For me, that phrase refers to the five lineups where I’ll bet most of my money for the week. My “main lineup” will be in single entry contests, whereas the next four will be spread out in 3-entry max contests. All five of those lineups will also be entered in large field GPPs. My remaining fifteen lineups will be in large field GPPs and 20-entry max contests. I refer to those as “Milly Maker” lineups, which are entered exclusively in large field, small buy-in tournaments.  My betting strategy means that my tighter builds will typically determine my weekly profitability, and most of my focus for the week is on those lineups. With that in mind, here is how I’m breaking down the first slate.

Picking Games

The first step in creating lineups is picking which games to target. On a full slate, I’m typically going to stack five different games across my tighter builds. That can change depending on the week, but it takes a strong game environment for me to stack the same game in my tighter builds. Week One has seven games that pique my interest:

• Car // Jax (47.5)
• TB // ATL (46.5)
• Cin // Cle (47.5)
• Mia // Ind (46.5)
• Det // GB (46.5)
• SF // Sea (44.5)
• NYG // Wash (45.5)

I like them in the above order and will target players in those contests for my tighter builds.

Carolina @ Jacksonville

My favorite game environment of the week. This game pairs two suspect defenses against two ascending offenses. It’s expected to be a competitive contest and has clearly targetable pieces for DFS. All the most desirable game environments have close totals, which could make it fly under the radar, reducing ownership. There is a good chance my main lineup’s primary stack will come from this game.

Tampa @ Atlanta

A close second place with the same logic used for Car // Jax. I suspect this game will draw the highest ownership of the week, which is the only thing that makes it my second favorite game.

Cincinnati @ Cleveland

The Bengals are going to score a lot of points this season, but their defense stinks, which will make their games a regular target. Bengals games will hinge on their opponent’s ability to keep up, and the Browns are projected to have the worst offense in the league. I’ll stack Bengals and look to use a Browns bring-back, but there is more risk here than in the top two game environments.

Miami @ Indianapolis

This game could explode or disappoint. The Dolphins profile as a shootout team because their secondary is awful, but the Colts passing game is one of the worst in the league. The Dolphins should be better than last year on offense, but they’re already dealing with backfield injuries, are on the road, and their offensive line might still be an abomination. This could be the game you need, or the one you had to fade.

Detroit @ Green Bay

This game has “pick the wrong players” risk. Points will be scored, but who is going to score them? Both offenses could be spread out, and nothing is more frustrating than stacking the right game with the wrong players. The Micah Parsons trade might scare people off this game, and if it looks like ownership will be low, I’ll get more interested in players from both sides. This game has upside, but also a clear downside, which puts it below the top three game environments in my rankings.

San Francisco @ Seattle

The lowest total game to make the list, this game features two of the most concentrated offenses on the slate. The 49ers have long provided predictable volume to their stars, and the Seahawks are thin at WR, which narrows their target distribution. This game might not produce as many points as the other games, but we have a better chance of knowing where they’re coming from for DFS.

NYG @ Washington

This game has explosive upside, but much like the Cin // Cle game, the outcome will depend on the underdog’s ability to keep pace. The Commanders are touchdown favorites at home, and if they control this game, there is a good chance that no must-have DFS scores emerge from either side.

Key Values

The Greatest “Cheat Sheet” In DFS

Larejo is a mid-stakes tournament mastermind who specializes in outmaneuvering 150-max players with a small number of entries

“You’re going to need to score a lot of points to win this week.”

A direct quote this week from our founder, JM, in his Inner Circle Discord channel, JM’s Journal. There’s nothing complicated about this statement, and maybe it doesn’t ring true. But I couldn’t agree with him more.

Week 1 is unpredictable, unsteady, and unconscious at times because we truly don’t know what will happen. Week 1 is when you get the second and third-year players who show signs of a breakout coming. It’s when you get the rookies bursting onto the scene (I remember Cam Newton’s 2011 debut against Arizona very well, and how about Marquise Brown in 2019 at Miami?). Week 1 is when you get new faces in new places, making an impact (Randy Moss in New England in 2008). It’s when we get some old heads starting to show inevitable decline. It’s when we are greeted by the ugly truth of injuries happening, and at times those leading to roster-winning plays (Elijah Mitchell winning tournaments in 2021 with Raheem Mostert’s injury). To put it simply: Week 1 is the best.

And in Week 1 of an NFL season, the path to success is to find the hidden paths to upside and ditch the conventional thinking. To read the proverbial room and think, “you know what? I don’t agree with that.” Week 1 is when we can be one week early, and it becomes normalized a few weeks later (think David Johnson in his first few seasons in 2015 and 2016). If you see a trend developing in training camps and the offseason, and it seems the sites, touts, and analysts are either late picking it up or not leaning in enough, then there is your opportunity.

So, to justify JM’s quote from earlier this week, there will be a lot of points scored this week and we will need to search for ceiling. We also should use our own thinking to see the paths available, and not worry about our opponent’s lineups on this slate. Why? Because in Week 1, of all the weeks, we have the same limited information as our competition does in building lineups. You ARE going to need a lot of points to win this week. You CAN find those points in just about every game on the slate. And if/when you do find these paths to upside (keep reading for mine!), lean in with all you’ve got because building lineups this week is perhaps the most fun exercise this season.

If you’re new here, Willing to Lose is all about finding the high upside, low likelihood plays (strategies, blocks, players) that can catapult your lineups to the top of the leaderboards. Scroll back up for the best plays on the slate and more, but come here for inspiration throughout the season, and we’ll see what we can uncover in the weeks and months to come!

Russ Wilson // Malik Nabers // Theo Johnson // Commanders pass catcher

It’s been 205 days since the Super Bowl, and I get the opportunity again to write this wonderful piece on this wonderful website. And the first player I am going to recommend is new Giants QB Russell Wilson. Yes, we’re back! Mr. Unlimited himself is now on his fourth NFL team in a job he is unlikely to hold through the duration of the 2025 NFL season, and his first game is a divisional opponent on the road, and one who came a game away from the Super Bowl in 2024. Not exactly a matchup that catches the eye. However, Wilson is the starting QB in this game, and he is just $5,000 on DK. He is likely to need to throw the ball a decent amount, considering the Commanders potential on offense and considering the expected low output of the Giants rushing attack. The Commanders also had the second-worst secondary in the NFL last season, and are again projected to be bottom-five (PFF). Wilson is not a name that will be clicked on by many, but he did pop for a 30.9 DK game with the Steelers in Week 13 last season against Cincinnati. The rest of his performances were mostly sub-par, but the Cincy game sticks out to me here because of the propensity of the 2024 Bengals offense and the possibility of the 2025 Washington offense.

Malik Nabers is no stranger to DFS ownership, and he makes this Wilson play a bit more palatable. To finish the 2024 season and with a cast of characters at QB, Nabers went on a tear of 24.2 // 13.8 // 39.1 // 17.4 DK points to solidify one of the best rookie WR seasons we’ve ever seen. Wilson threw his patented moon balls to George Pickens and Calvin Austin in 2024. He gets to throw them this season to Nabers. At $7,000 on DK, and with limited receiving competition, Nabers should be a lock for 10+ targets in a matchup against a defense that can’t cover him, but he shouldn’t garner the ownership of those he’s priced near with the Giants sub-20 point implied total.

Theo Johnson and a Commanders pass-catcher round out this stack. Johnson is the unquestioned every-down tight end for the Giants, after they released Greg Dulcich. His only competition is Daniel Bellinger and Chris Manhertz, who are known for blocking, not running routes. Johnson only scored one touchdown last season, but flashed upside in a part-time role with four games above 10.8 yards per reception. He also finished his season (Week 13) with four straight games with at least five targets. If Wilson hits his ceiling, three touchdowns are going to come along with him, and a 6/70/1 line is fully in Theo’s range of outcomes.

Finally, in order for the Giants to need to push the score, we need the Commanders to score. My gut says to avoid the hot mess of their running back room, as we won’t be able to predict the present there. So that brings us to the inevitability of Jayden Daniels, Terry McLaurin, and Deebo Samuel as the mostly viable Washington pieces. I am willing to guess that the strong Giants front four, with the addition of Abdul Carter, and the price discount you get will push more players toward Deebo over Terry (not to mention the late August contract negotiations), so McLaurin is my preferred target here.

Jameson Williams // Josh Jacobs skinny

Mike Johnson (MJohnson86) has racked up nearly $500,000 in DFS profit as an NFL tournament player with success in all styles of contests

Mike Johnson (MJohnson86) has racked up nearly $500,000 in DFS profit as an NFL tournament player with success in all styles of contests

Mike Johnson (MJohnson86) has racked up nearly $500,000 in DFS profit as an NFL tournament player with success in all styles of contests

Maximus (Steve Kleisath) is a Fanduel focused player who specializes in smaller-field contests under 1,000 entries

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Tony focuses his DFS play on FanDuel single-entry and 3-max contests. He thrives in unique formats and positional twists, always looking for hidden edges that others overlook

When considering contest selection in DFS, there are a couple of prerequisites to consider:

Pre-Req #1: What is your bankroll? For the week, for the season, etc. As a best practice, I’d recommend you cap your weekly exposure to 10% of your season bankroll. For example, if you’ve got $2,500 you’re willing to put into play over the course of the NFL season, I would shoot for $150 -$250 in play each week. Any more than that and you are at risk of going broke or having your play change to a more cautious approach/style. Playing with fear, aka not to lose, is a detrimental mindset, and will likely hinder you from a winning lineup.

Pre-Req #2: What is your goal for the season? Are you playing for fun? Trying to grind out a profit? Trying to hit a big score or have a life-changing win? Being honest with yourself and setting a realistic goal should determine the types of contests you enter.

I want to start by saying that DFS is hard, so much so that a vast majority of players, (probably around 80-90%), are lifetime losers. In order to combat the turnover of players going broke, sites like FanDuel and DraftKings have large advertising budgets to continue to attract new players. One of their key marketing strategies is advertising the ability to turn $20 (or even $5 this week) into $1 million, with their weekly Milly Maker contest. However, in order to win a tournament like the Milly Maker, you have to beat a full city’s worth of entrants, hence why these types of tournaments are referred to as “lottos”, as it’s essentially like playing the lottery. For point of reference, DraftKings’ flagship contest for Week 1, a $5 Milly Maker, will have over 832,000 rosters if it fills. To put that in perspective, that would be just slightly smaller than the population of New Orleans, the 50th-largest city in the US as of 2025!

With that in mind, why make it even more difficult on yourself to be a winning player by playing poorly structured contests? When sorted by prize pool, almost all of the larger-field contests on DraftKings for week 1 have very top-heavy structures, which essentially means, it will take a top .1%, (not 1% but 0.1%) finish to return a strong ROI on your entries. My advice is to avoid those type of contests. Below I’ll outline what you should be looking for and the tournaments to consider at different buy in levels.

So, what should we look for when choosing a contest?

Whether you are playing for fun or to grind out a profit, my recommendation is to seek out contests with the flattest payout structures. Ideally, no more than one eighth (12.5%) of the total prize pool goes to first place. The best GPPs (guaranteed prize pool contests) for sustainability as a player, are structured with 10% to first and 1% of the total prize pool (a tenth of first) awarded to 10th place. Unless there is a decent amount of overlay, I would highly advise against playing in contests like the Milly Maker, where 25% of the prize pool, or even 40% in the $100 Milly Maker in Week 1, goes to first place. It’s unsustainable to play in those types of contests week in and week out, and a leading cause to why many players end up losing players.

Looking at Week 1, what DraftKings contests would I consider / play in?

Lower stakes ::

Weekly exposure: Up to $50

Contests to consider: