As they say, all good things must come to an end and that’s exactly what happened in Week 14 as the flowchart had its worst performance of the season. There’s really not much to breakdown from last week as it was mainly just a big swing and a miss from all angles. Luckily, we have a couple of shots at redemption this week with two “main” slate DraftKings offerings. For today, I am going to dig into the 2-game Saturday slate and tomorrow I will be back for analysis on the 11-game Sunday slate.
Before we start diving into the games, I want to remind everyone that you have to change up your mindset for these two-game offerings. There are four main things to consider on these smaller slates that you wouldn’t typically do on the main slates. First, it is okay to leave some salary on the table. With the reduced player pool size, the amount of times your lineup may be duplicated increases drastically as you get closer to the $50k salary mark. I don’t think it’s absurd to leave over $1k in salary especially in a slate like Saturday where there aren’t many premier buy-up options. Second, utilizing full-game or team onslaughts is perfectly viable. Typically, I do not like having more than 3 players from the same team or 4 players from the same game, but I am willing to bump both of those numbers up when there are only 2 games to pick from.
The third thing to remember about these smaller slates is that it’s okay to have position players in your lineup going against your defense. Typically, this is not a very smart decision for the overall correlation of your lineup, but once again this is a good way to try and differentiate yourself from the field. The fourth point is more of a personal preference of mine, but I think it is important to consider when building lineups. Oftentimes on Sundays you are trying to build multiple lineups to cover all your bases and make sure that you have pieces from different games that have the potential to go off. I wouldn’t recommend trying to cover all your bases too much on the small slates as oftentimes you will end up spreading your bankroll out too thin and making a bunch of linueps that do decently, but none that really bubble up to the top. Once again, this last point is purely a personal preference of mine and something I have tried to work on over the last two seasons on the smaller slates. Pick a side and hammer a couple of different combinations from that potential outcome.
NFL DFS Flowchart Week 15 Saturday – DraftKings GPP
This week’s flowchart has a much different feel to it, so make sure to read through the analysis section here if you need help deciphering it. There is a distinct decision to make this week. Focus the lineup around a Green Bay and Carolina game that should have condensed production but a slower pace or target the Buffalo and Denver game which projects to have a higher pace and much more spread out production. The DraftKings pricing mostly aligns with this description as the BUF/DEN game is filled with mid and low-tier priced options while the CAR/GB game has almost all the higher priced studs.
As we have done multiple times this season, we are going to continue to make condensed offenses a priority. Starting our stack with Teddy Bridgewater, leaves us with the potential to load up on both of the Packers studs, and provides ceiling upside for a mid-priced QB. Priced down to $5200 (lowest of the season), Bridgewater has hit the 20 DKPt mark in 5 games this season and I think he has the potential to do it again on Saturday against the Packers who haven’t been great at slamming the door on opponents this season. Pairing up with Bridgewater, I really love Mike Davis this week. He will probably be extremely popular, but that’s for good reason as the Packers have been really poor against the run and Davis has multiple reception potential to boot. From there, go ahead and take your pick of DJ Moore and Robby Anderson, who will both get a big boost if Curtis Samuel ends up being inactive.
Now that we have dialed in a nice cheap and condensed team stack we can go ahead and grab both of the Packers studs. You will probably hear a lot about bad correlation between these two, which on the surface is true, but in a 2-game slate where the other options aren’t great the bad correlation matters a lot less. We have seen both Aaron Jones and Davante Adams have really good games together and separately this season, but the reason I want to include them both is purely based on them being projected as two of the best plays on the slate. Even if Aaron Jones has a decent game and just scores 15 DKPts, that still may be enough to be the 2nd highest scoring RB on the day. We have the pricing flexibility, so go ahead and fade the bad correlation noise and grab both Packers studs.
The Denver and Buffalo game is where I want to focus on filling in the gaps for our lineup. Noah Fant had a fully healthy practice or two under his belt this week, so we shouldn’t be too worried about him putting up a goose egg due to illness like in Week 14. Meanwhile, Dawson Knox has become increasingly involved in the Bills passing game as of late, so I don’t mind him as a TE option either. I would prefer to correlate both Tight Ends with cheap receivers on their opponents to help provide the differentiation that we need in this small slate. Jerry Jeudy may go completely overlooked on Saturday since KJ Hamler (2 touchdowns on 3 targets in Week 14) and Tim Patrick (team target leader since Wek 11) bookend him on the pricing scale. We have seen Jeudy have some good games this year (Week 9 28 DKPt explosion), so I think he will be a great low-owned play. Meanwhile Gabriel Davis has had double digit DKPt games in 4 of his last 5 games, so he provides what seems like a great floor at $4000.
This will leave you with one more spot to fill. I like Melvin Gordon and Zack Moss because I believe most lineups will only use two RBs this week, so fitting in a third and hoping for some goal line rushes could work out in our favor. Cole Beasley is another one that stands out in this column, because if we are going to fully fade Stefon Diggs, then it probably makes sense to have the other main receiving threat for Buffalo on our roster.
That does it for my analysis of the Week 15 Saturday slate! Good luck and I hope to see some screenshots this weekend!
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%)
Week 14 – Optimal Lineup 137.44, no cash
