DraftKings Millionaire Maker Trends Through Week 12
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 12 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
I discussed on the Premium GPP show the strong trends we have been seeing with RB’s in the flex so far this year and with RB’s appearing in 9 of the 10 Flex spots for Week 12 the trend continued to get stronger. I played RB’s in flex in 100% of my GPP lineups on DK this week and while my results were not great as I was under on McCaffery, I am confident that being overweight on RB’s in the flex is the correct strategy as we close out the season. RB’s have been in 65% of the Top 10 lineups so far this season and even though the field looks like they are catching up with a season high 67% of entries using a RB in the flex in Week 12, there is still meat on the bone when you look at recent results.
Average Ownership by Position for Week 12
You might be getting tired of high owned RB’s dominating every single week but there is no doubt they are likely the correct plays as Week 12 saw high owned RB’s all over the Top 10 lineups. We had the highest D/ST ownership of the season this week as the Ravens at 20.8% ownership led the slate in scoring with 18 FPTS which was five more than the next closest D/ST. At QB we had the third highest AO of the season as all four of the highest owned QB’s performed well enough to give you a chance at the top.
Average Ownership Through Week 12
Here are the totals of the AO each of the first 12 weeks of the season. The AO across the season isn’t going to change much moving forward although I do expect a small downward trend across the board as we have more games on the main slate with bye weeks over for the rest of the season.
Stacks for Week 12
The winner this week used a “naked” Lamar Jackson lineup to win which is the first time a non-stack has won all season. I noted last week that Lamar on his own was a very viable option as a run first QB and it seemed to work well for Week 12. You had to have McCaffery to sniff an elite lineup this week as he appeared in all of the Top 10 lineups and was also paired with someone else in that game in nine of ten lineups. I focus on QB based stacks in my articles as I generally consider the QB as the start of my stack but it can also be beneficial to include correlated game stacks that are separate to your QB stacks as noted by the CAR/SEA game this week.
Stacks Through Week 12
Team Stacks now outnumber Game Stacks 64-45 on the season with 11 non-stack teams making the Top 10 all season. The emergence of Lamar Jackson who has been in three Top 10 lineups over the past two weeks has added an interesting wrinkle in GPP’s as running him without any players from his own team is a very viable strategy. I still recommend making a variety of team and game stacks to give yourself a chance of hitting the best stack options every week.
Bust Rates of Top 3 Highest Owned at Position Through Week 12
Week 12 was easily the best week the field has had this season as just three of the highest owned players failed to live up to the hype this week. Only Marlon Mack (31.69%), Odell Beckham Jr. (24.69%), and George Kittle (28.57%) flopped among the Top 3 highest owned players at each position this week.
On the season QB and RB are proving to be the easiest positions for us to predict while the higher volatility of WR and TE look like good positions to go a little off the board and search for lower owned plays.
Low Owned Plays (Sub 5%) Per Lineup
Week 12 saw the second lowest amount of low owned plays hit the Top 10 as sub 5% owned players appeared just 11 times throughout the Top 10 lineups. David Moore (2.7%) appeared on three of the Top 10 lineups and both of the Top 2 teams as his 23.3 FPTS was a very strong outing at miniscule ownership. I’m expecting an uptick in low owned plays with 13 games on the main slate this weekend.
Week 12 Winning Lineup
Congratulations to Pajamadaddy17 who no doubt will have some of the freshest holiday themed pajamas under the tree this year as he took down $1,000,000 and had just TWO entries this week. The lineup construction here is off the charts. He paired a “naked” Lamar Jackson lineup with the Ravens defense while also using two separate game stacks of CMC/ David Moore and Juju/ Emmanuel Sanders to win by a comfortable margin. Utilizing multiple stacks in a single lineup adds a good deal of correlation to your lineup and was utilized here perfectly by pajamadaddy17.
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.