Larejo is a mid-stakes tournament mastermind who specializes in outmaneuvering 150-max players with a small number of entries
A pendulum swings, and it swings. And it swings, swings, swings, swings. (Sorry, I’ve read a lot of Dr. Seuss books lately.) As it goes back and forth, so does an NFL season and the DFS slates within. My Thanksgiving slate didn’t turn out how I planned, with the seemingly inverse outcomes all taking place (light on the first two games, heavy on the last, and the slate goes the inverse direction). Looking back, however, and reflecting on lessons learned, my only clear oversight was the current state of the Lions defense and the effect of Sunday overtime games on Thursday teams (Lions, Chiefs). One of the real outcomes from Thanksgiving games this week is that no real game-overstack hit. Even with combined game totals of 55, 59, and 46 points, we had no clear, condensed game stack truly go off. All of the Mahomes-Rice-Kelce stacks did just fine, as did Love-Watson-Wicks, but the optimal lineups sprinkled players from each game throughout. Interesting to see, and rare as a three-game slate would more often condense on one game environment with target and volume “hogs” soaking up work. Instead, we had a slate where we were mostly left to guessing on touchdowns, with the Ravens and Lions flops stalling many lineups in the mud (like mine).
It’s Week 13 now, and my commitment from here on out is to overstack on every lineup I play. I am often stubborn in this endeavor, as my biggest wins have always come from going uber heavy on specific games, but as the pendulum (optimal outcomes) will swing from left to right and some will feature minimal correlation, while others will feature maximum correlation, I am tired of guessing. Pick a lane and go 100 mph (commit to it!). That’s a GPP mindset. It’s no fun to chase your tail week after week and always be a week early or late (feels like my whole 2025 season so far). Six weeks to go, I rarely expect many of you to build with me, but I’ll be throwing my entries into their own fields as much as possible, meaning I’ll be looking to build in niche paths and remain there. We’ll see what happens, as always, and that is why they play the games.
This “game overstack” or bust mindset came to mind first thing Friday, and then I looked at the mud on the Week 13 main slate. Then I saw JM’s Journal entry on why this is a perfect week to overstack. Then I felt even better (and also questioned whether I need to think more for myself), so here goes nothing this week.
