After the Monday flowchart hit on a garbage time touchdown from Nick Mullens to Jordan Reed, we are now on a 7-slate hot streak of winning lineups!! We’ve been hovering around the top 5% of GPP contests since Week 9 with the flowchart, and it really feels like we are close to one of these popping off and giving us a sweat for a takedown. Enough wishful thinking, we have a ton of games in front of us for Week 14, so it’s time to dig in and find our way through the flowchart this week.
One of the macro-level points I want to bring up with you this week is the concept of double stacking or game stacking on these large slates (13 games). If you have followed the flowchart all season, you are well-versed in this concept of stacking up two players with a quarterback and bringing back a skill position player from their opponent. However, what we have seen in recent weeks is that the double stack and bring back stack concepts have not really been necessary to win large tournaments. It has definitely been frustrating seeing this since I am a player who always tries to find ways to make my lineups as correlative as possible. To top that off, there has been a lot of buzz around the industry this week about targeting single stacks and shying away from the bring backs due to the amount of games on the slate. This week’s 13 games are a big jump up from the 10-11 games we have seen through the bye week slates, so it feels like there are a lot of shiny new options. I want to guide you to cut through some of that noise. The first two weeks of the season both had 13 game slates and the Milly Maker was won with a double stack and a bring back in both weeks. Stay true to your process, and you will continue to see better long term results.
NFL DFS Flowchart Week 14 – DraftKings GPP
Team Stack
Jumping right into my double stack for the week, I really want to target this Seattle offense against the New York Jets. Thinking back to Week 8, when the Chiefs played the Jets, the blowout concern kept everyone away from the Chiefs but Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and Demarcus Robinson ended up being the key to a lot of GPP winning lineups. I want to focus on this Week 8 construction, because it aligns well with what I am trying to do with double stacks in Week 14. By starting out with Russell Wilson and DK Metcalf I am loading up on two very high priced studs, who I love from a floor/ceiling standpoint. I want to have room to load up on some of the other studs available on this slate, so I really don’t want to plug in Tyler Lockett (Tyreek Hill comp in Week 8) here because that would tie up too much salary. Enter Jacob Hollister (Demarcus Robinson comp in Week 8). Not only does Hollister correlate the tight end position, but at $3100 he provides a ton of flexibility with my lineup. From an ownership projection standpoint, it does seem like this Seattle offense is going to go under the radar due to some recency bias and blowout risk, so I want to embrace the uncertainty and double down on the Seahawks this week.
Bring-It-Back Stack
The New York Jets receiving corps will be extremely chalky this week since Denzel Mims won’t be playing and now with the news of Jamison Crowder not practicing on Friday. This does make me a little bit nervous, because low-priced wide receiver chalk seems to always have a very wide range of outcomes. Breshad Perriman ($3900) was already going to be one of the best values before Crowder was ruled questionable, and now he will probably end up being one of the most owned receivers. I am assuming that Crowder will end up not playing, so that’s why I love Braxton Berrios on the otherside of the flowchart. Berrios has been a target monster in games that Crowder hasn’t played this season and is priced at the absolute stone minimum this week. I would recommend everyone who is building lineups outside the flowchart to find some receivers to swap to if you aren’t correlating them with Seattle. Michael Gallup, Darnell Mooney, and Jalen Guyton are all good pivots off of these cheap Jets players if you are not correlating them with the Seahawks.
Low-Owned Leverage
I’m going to take you guys behind the curtain here a little bit and talk through how I review my leverage plays every week. I obviously start by finding the highest owned players and seeing if their teammates or similarly priced guys are in good spots. When reviewing whether it’s a “good spot” I account for a range of outcomes number, and matchup rating, and a Defense vs. Position type stat within my player model. With that being said, I absolutely LOVE all of these leverage plays this week! They all check a ton of boxes for me which makes me really excited about the upside of the flowchart this week. I would definitely recommend mixing around your leverage choices if you make multiple lineups this week.
Ronald Jones typically gets lost in the shuffle on this Tampa Bay Buccaneers offense that lines up four fantasy-viable receiving options at the line of scrimmage every week. Tampa Bay has a juicy matchup with the Vikings this week, and a lot of people are predicting this to be a shootout. It seems like the ownership will be pretty spread out between Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Antonio Brown, and Rob Gronkowski so it makes it hard to dial in on a Tom Brady stack. This is why I love Jones here. Not only does he provide leverage against this spread out passing offense, but he also faces a shaky Minnesota defense and is sitting at a very digestible $6100 this week.
The Kansas City Chiefs are heading down to Miami for a tough matchup with this Dolphins defense. Now “tough” is obviously pretty relative for Patrick Mahomes, and he could easily blow up on any slate. I really like Sammy Watkins as a pivot off of Travis Kelce or Tyreek Hill. When healthy, Watkins is a bonafide starter and at $4900 I will gladly take a guy who is on the field for almost every snap in this explosive Chiefs offense.
The Carolina Panthers have been a condensed offense all season, and a great team to target in DFS. DJ Moore is now sidelined with COVID, which makes Robby Anderson and Curtis Samuel really popular players this week. I like Mike Davis as a pivot here. He has a good matchup with a Denver defense that is a lot better against the pass and will probably come at about a third of the ownership of the receivers on his team.
As most of you know, I have been pretty high on James Robinson all season and he has made his way into quite a few flowcharts. He sees incredible volume and DraftKings just never wants to bump him above a mid-$7k price tag. It does seem like Robinson is finally going to be a chalky play this week against the Titans, so there is a lot of value in the Jaguars receiving corps. Yes you heard that right, the same Titans defense who gave up four touchdowns and 38 points to Baker Mayfield and the Browns in the FIRST HALF last week. DJ Chark is in a smash spot this week, I am all about it.
Lastly, we have Mr. “Throw-It-And-I’ll-Go-Up-And-Get-It” Mike Williams on the Los Angeles Chargers. Anthony Lynn proved to us all that telling your team to not worry about the playoffs before they are mathematically eliminated isn’t the greatest motivation technique and that showed out in their 45-0 shutout against the Patriots last week. For this reason alone, I think a lot of people are going to skip over the Chargers when scrolling through players. Austin Ekeler and Keenan Allen should garner any ownership that does settle in on the Bolts, so I absolutely love Mike Williams against the Falcons secondary who has made a name for themselves by giving up big plays all season.
Studs and Chalk Plays
Let’s start with two of the most popular guys on the slate this week, Davante Adams and Derrick Henry. Both of these guys are in incredible plus matchups and have seemingly the highest ceilings on the slate. Both of these guys have been locked in all season, but we only need to look back to Week 2 from this year to be reminded of their ability to dud out. Adams went for 3/36/0 against the Lions and Henry went for 25/84/0 against the Jags earlier in the season. Obviously I am banking on both of these guys to bounce back this week, but it goes to show some of the fragility that’s possible with some of these huge chalk plays.
The two pieces that make Adams and Henry possible in the flowchart are JD McKissic and Giovani Bernard. McKissic should catch a lot of passes with Antonio Gibson out so I believe that he will have a pretty safe floor. Originally I had Duke Johnson in the Bernard spot (which more closely lines up with the chalk title of this column) however I decided to swap him out for the Bengals lead RB. It does not look like we can bank on Joe Mixon playing another game this season, and Bernard is criminally underpriced at $5k against this Dallas Cowboys defense which is bad. Yes I know they are included in the flow chart this week, but that’s mostly due to the interception upside against Brandon Allen and the Bengals passing offense.
To finish off the studs column, give me both of these Minnesota Vikings pass catchers. Adam Thielen and Justin Jefferson have been elite this season, and now they face a Buccaneers defense that is stout against the run but a funnel in the passing game. I think a really interesting way to approach this game is to pair Tom Brady with Ronald Jones (and hope Brady spreads it out through the air and Jones punches in a couple short yard scores) and bring back both Vikings receivers. While it’s risky, I can assure you that this lineup construction will not be very prevalent in your GPP contests.
That does it for my analysis of the Week 14 flowchart! Good luck and I hope to see some screenshots this weekend, let’s keep the hot streak going!
Previous Flowcharts & Results
Week 1 – Optimal Lineup 157 DKPts, min cash in GPPs (top 20%)
Week 2 – Optimal Lineup 175.4 DKPts, 3X-4X cash in GPPs (top 4-5%)
Week 3 – Optimal Lineup 122.3 DKPts, no cash
Week 4 – Optimal Lineup 171.3 DKPts, 2X cash in GPPs (top 7-10%)
Week 5 – Optimal Lineup 178.92, 3X cash in GPPs (top 3-4%)
Week 6 – Optimal Lineup 180.2, 2X-3X cash in GPPs (top 5-6%) (ALL LINEUPS CASHED)
Week 7 – Optimal Lineup 153.34, no cash
Week 8 – Optimal Lineup 140.12, no cash
Week 9 – Optimal Lineup 174.26, 3X-4X cash in GPPs (top 4-5%)
Week 10 – Optimal Lineup 178.92, 10X-15X cash in GPPs (TOP 1%)
Week 11 – Optimal Lineup 168.12, 2X-3X cash in GPPs (top 4-5%)
Thanksgiving – Optimal Lineup 187.42, 2X-3X cash in GPPs (top 5-7%)
Week 12 – Optimal Lineup 189.5, 3X-4X cash in GPPs (top 3-5%)
Week 13 – Optimal Lineup 194.16, 4X cash in GPPs (top 2-3%)
Week 13 Monday – Optimal Lineup 156.14, 5X-6X cash in GPPs (top 1-2%)
