DraftKings Millionaire Maker Trends Through Week 11
Sometimes we need to think about other ways to win in DFS other than simply playing the best plays. Looking at trends of top lineups is one route to take to do just that. One of the easiest tools to become a better tournament player is studying the trends of lineups that win or nearly win.
I’ve been keeping track of some trends for the DraftKings Millionaire Maker for the first 10 weeks and wanted to share some of those here in a simple format for you to understand. These are all trends from the top 10 lineups each week.
If you want to follow these yourself with a little excel work, you can create your own trends to follow by either downloading the CSV from DraftKings, or just make it easy on yourself by using ResultsDB here on RotoGrinders to gather information.
Flex Usage
We saw some of the highest usage of RBs in the flex this season by the field, as almost 59% of players used three RBs, but with seven of the Top 10 lineups using RBs in the Flex in Week 11 there was still an edge to be had by using them. RBs have been used in 62.8% of the Top 10 lineups this year, and using workhorse RBs in the flex remains a very strong trend of Top 10 lineups this season. If you are using a TE in the flex, you are paying the rake this season.
Average Ownership by Position for Week 11
Week 11 saw the second highest AO at the RB position this week, as both Saquon Barkley (29.8%) and Ezekiel Elliott (25.4%) posted monster games and David Johnson (31.3%) did well enough to give you a chance. All three of the highest owned TEs, busted with Ertz and RSJ both failing rather hard. I noted on the Premium Final Takes Show that using RSJ at high ownership in GPPs based off one game of results was one of the worst moves you could make.
Average Ownership Through Week 11
Here are the totals of the AO each of the first 11 weeks of the season. After Week 12 I will expect the AO to start falling with more teams on the main slate, as bye weeks will be over after this week. If you want to incorporate total lineup ownership into your builds, you can do so very easily with the Ownership Tool in LineupHQ.
Stacks for Week 11
Only seven of the Top 10 lineups were stacks this week, as we had two Lamar Jackson lineups and one Cam Newton lineup with no players paired to the QB. I tend to make every lineup with at least one player paired to my QB, but you could make a very strong case for “naked” Lamar lineups this week, as he was just $4,700 with enormous rushing upside. The Newton non-stack would have won by a large margin if they had used D.J. Moore over Larry Fitzgerald albeit the prices on the two players were in different tiers. The keys to winning this week were the high owned RBs paired with Hilton/Moore/Tre’Quan, which all came from different teams, and as you can see this is reflected in the stacks that won, as only one team in the Top 10 was a game stack. It’s always good to make a variety of stacks each week to help ride out the variance on a week to week basis.
Stacks Through Week 11
Team Stacks now outnumber Game Stacks 61-40 on the season, with just nine non-stack teams making the Top 10 all season. The non-stack teams have all been rushing upside QBs, so don’t go making Philip Rivers lineups without any of his pass catchers if you are going to try to run a non-correlated lineup. Game stacks bring more theoretical upside to your lineups, but more things have to go right in the game for that upside to come to fruition. I expect to see Game Stacks gain some ground on Team Stacks as we close out the season.
Bust Rates of Top 3 Highest Owned at Position Through Week 11
All three of the highest owned TEs busted this week (Ertz,RSJ/Engram) and 2/3 of the highest owned WRs fell flat as well (Amari Cooper #corey-davis)Corey Davis”:/players/corey-davis-36949). I was a little surprised to see Lamar Jackson become the third highest owned QB at the position this week, as it was very tough to pair him with anyone in my eyes, but he did come through for those that used him and he appeared in two of the Top 10 lineups. If you have blindly been fading the high owned WRs this year, you have been winning the ownership game as 2/3 of the high owned WRs have failed this season.
Low Owned Plays (5% or less) Per Lineup
Week 11 saw 19 Low Owned players hit the Top 10, with D.J. Moore (5%) showing up in eight of the Top 10 lineups as the must-have low owned player of the week. Peyton Barber (3.5%) rose from the dead at a cheap price to make into onto two of the Top 10 teams. In theory you should always have a group of lower owned players spread throughout your builds, as there are always talented players in good spots that go overlooked that are typically the keys to winning once the week is over.
Week 11 Winning Lineup
Congratulations to BillyVonElds, who made 20 lineups this week and managed to best everyone else for $1,000,000. He centered this lineup around the Drew Brees to Tre’Quan Smith stack and paired that up with two workhorse backs in amazing spots with some other great plays mixed in. He had the optimals everywhere but Corey Davis and was still able to win despite Davis putting up a dud with just 4.9 FPTS. I have been surprised this year at how many of the Top 10 lineups have players like Davis in them on the season, and it goes to show that you don’t need to smash every spot in order to win these enormous field GPPs.
Hopefully this can help you look at the way you make your teams in a different light and help you make lineups more correlated with what the top lineups are actually doing.