DraftKings Millionaire Maker Trends Through Week 9
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 nine 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
Week 9 saw a season-high eight RBs in the flex spots of the top 10 lineups, as all three of Hunt/CMC/Kamara came through for the field as rather heavily owned plays. Running backs now have a 52-29 lead on WRs in flex usage this year in top 10 lineups, when on average only 50-55% of the field has been using RBs in the flex. Jamming RBs into the flex has been a very solid move nearly every week.
Average Ownership by Position for Week 9
RB ownership saw its lowest AO since Week 3 as Duke Johnson at 1.8% and Tevin Coleman at 1.9% were spread throughout the top 10 lineups. This brought the total down even though Hunt/Kamara/CMC all went off at 25%+ ownership. D/ST has its highest AO of the season as the Bears against Nathan Peterman were the highest owned defense on the week and unsurprisingly put up 28 FPTS. TE ownership also hit a season high with Howard/Kelce/Olsen all coming through as high owned plays.
Average Ownership Through Week 9
I’ve been talking every week here about the highly owned every down RBs and how it has become nearly impossible to fade them. I have generally been running a somewhat wider RB pool this season when I mass enter, and I think I’m going to really tone it down to only the high touch backs moving forward.
Stacks for Week 9
Even with the chalk games going well over their implied totals, we still didn’t have any five-man game stacks enter the top 10. This has been a strong trend since Week 2, which was the last time a five-man stack made it into the top 10 lineups. The last two weeks have been much more narrow in the types of stacks that hit the top 10 while this week we saw four different types hit the top 10. Centering your lineups around the LAR/NO game would have yielded big results this week. Also one interesting note is that all three of the top lineups had one player under 10 FPTS, which shows you can still miss on one spot even in these large field GPPs and have a great day.
Stacks Through Week 9
Team stacks now outnumber game stacks 46-39 on the season. There are four stacks types that are predominantly winning this year and I find it hard to make anything other than those moving forward, as the trends seem to be very strong in regards to what is winning as we cross the halfway point of the season.
Bust Rates of Top 3 Highest Owned at Position Through Week 9
With all three of the highest owned QBs producing and all thee of the highest owned WRs failing, we now have QBs as the most stable position this season, while WRs have nearly doubled them in bust rates this season. Sutton and Moore did not deserve to be as highly owned, as they were as rookie WRs in new roles and the field failed to adjust as both gave us under 10 FPTS. If you have been fading or underweight the highest owned WRs every week, you have likely come out on top of the ownership game this year.
Low Owned Plays (Sub 5%) Per Lineup
Low owned plays were only used 20 times in the top 10 this week with Duke Johnson (1.8%) showing up five times, Tevin Coleman (1.9%) showing up three times, and Adam Humphries (0.80%) showing up twice. The one play I wish I had more of was Duke Johnson, as we should have been able to see this coming after the firing of the offensive staff in a game the Browns were going to have to pass. Duke’s ownership will rise exponentially for Week 10 as we all chase it against the Falcons. As the bye weeks pass, I expect we start to see more low owned plays per lineup since ownership gets spread out with more games to choose from.
Week 9 Winning Lineup
Congratulations to jab76r on the $1,000,000 win. The lineup used a 3/1 four-man game stack of the TB/CAR game while also smartly using both Thomas and Kamara from the Saints game. We see the very strong trend of high owned workhorse RBs in this lineup as well. Looking back, this is a lineup that outside of Adam Humphries was easily attainable as most of the plays here were on peoples radar this week.
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.
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