Fantasy Football Millionaire Review: Week 13
The Millionaire review series will provide the reader with a breakdown of the exposures of “top of the leaderboard” players, the top single-entry lineup, and a comparison between all single entry lineups and professionals for the weekly DraftKings Millionaire Maker GPP.
This week, we looked at the $3.5M Fantasy Football Millionaire [$1M to 1st!] on DraftKings with a buy-in of $27 and maximum entry limit of 150 lineups per person.
Multi-Entry Grinders of the Game
As opposed to a contrarian strategy, Kcannon over-exposed himself to most of the chalk on the day. With the context leading up to the weekend late, it looked like a near guarantee that Brees was a lock for 300+ yards and 2+ touchdowns, thus, the strategy was not without merit.
However, on the other side of the ball, we had recency bias of a somewhat improving Saints defense and poor performances by Matthew Stafford, that he was only owned by the field at a 6.9% clip. Game-stacking the Superdome allowed Kcannon to land on a large amount of Golden Tate and combined with the great RB/TE chalk plays, Kcannon finished with a 54.4% cash rate and two top-30 lineups.
While Kcannon decided to over-expose himself to the chalk on the week, Reztes757 went the opposite route and played a mostly contrarian lineup construction. Eli Manning would certainly need to match point for point Ben Roethlisberger at home if the Giants would have any chance, while Russell Wilson had shown his usual self after healing from his early season ankle injury. Dion Lewis showed his immense ability last season and for his likely increasing workload, many would play the wait and see approach and miss his first dynamite game. However, his contrarian RBs aren’t what did it for him as he kept an adequate ownership in studs (David Johnson, Le’veon Bell) to bail himself out in times like this.
His contrarian pick for tight end (Ladarius Green) absolutely killed it as Big Ben gave him looks early and often and Ladarius finished with 11 targets for six catches, 110 yards, and one touchdown. Even though the Jaguars weren’t able to get much going against the lowly Paxton Lynch, Reztes757 still cashed at a 48.9% rate and finished with a 72nd place finish on just 47 entries.
Shawnzhan is a more familiar name, but his ownership table definitely made me do a double-take. With Alex Smith on the road in the Mercedes-Benz stadium, playing against one of the better offenses of 2016, Shawnzhan may have counted on him to return to Week 1 form and sling the rock in a shoot-out. However, even with Alex Smith putting up a typical Alex Smith stat line, Shawn did have 75%+ ownership in two of the best running back plays on the week. David Johnson once again showed us why he will most likely join Antonio Brown as the only players to go over $10,000 salary on the season. He dominates through the ground as well as through the air with 175 yards from scrimmage, one rushing, and one receiving TD.
The absolute lock plays in Julio Jones, Dorial Green-Beckham, Tyreek Hill, and Travis Kelce may seem crazy at first, but with nearly 30% of the prize pool going to the top score, locking in a lot of top value and rotating a number of combinations around them doesn’t seem as bad. Even though Shawn wasn’t able to secure that top spot, he cashed at a 67.3% rate and pocketed a small win.
Single-Entry Winner of the Game
Skdoyle67 and a handful of others kept the faith when no one else did. The elite Joe Flacco showed off his playoff-form early as he threw for only his third multi-touchdown game of the season and put the hapless Miami dolphins out of their misery. LeGarette Blount was certain to be featured in a game where the Patriots were favored by over 13 points and Gronk wouldn’t be spiking footballs out of the back of the endzone.
From there he made a number of solid plays with some contrarian/leverage options mixed in. Jordy Nelson ownership had fallen with the rise of Devante Adams, two down games, and a weather report of snow fall. Cameron Brate was a leverage play off of Mike Evans and a great option overall as the Buccaneers feature their tight ends heavily in the red zone. The squeaky wheel narrative was in full effect as Skdoyle rostered Brandin Cooks coming off a 0-target letdown. On the other side of the field, the Marvin Jones-less Lions had been turning Golden Tate from an early season-long drop into the clear #1 WR that we had known he could be (filling in on Megatron injuries).
Single-Entry vs. Kcannon/Reztes757/Shawnzhan
Out of 149,860 entries in the Fantasy Football Millionaire, 28.4% of those entries were entered courtesy of players using a single bullet. The table below compares the exposures of those single entries to the exposures of Kcannon, Reztes757, Shawnzhan, and 80 other top professionals picked off of RotoGrinders’ leaderboard:
