Fantasy Football Millionaire Review: Week 9
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 $4M Fantasy Football Millionaire [$1M to 1st!] on DraftKings with a buy-in of $20 and maximum entry limit of 150 lineups per person.
Multi-Entry Grinders of the Game
In a week with only a few mouth-watering shoot-out-looking games (IND@GB, NO@SF), I noticed across the board, much narrower and dense player exposures. Cjkalt was no exception as he shows a QB profile that looks similiar to jakz101’s ownership from last week (three quarterbacks covering almost all his lineups; each near 1/3). With Drew Brees great play in Arrowhead Stadium (Week 7) against a tenacious home defense, I saw much more than the casual fan brush aside his usual home/road splits for a juicy match-up with the 49ers. Add in the quarterback on the other side looking to match points, Colin Kaepernick was one of the more popular cheap QB plays on the week due to his recent rushing totals and opportunity against the porous Saints D. On the ground, cjkalt went heavy on Darren Sproles who had appeared to take away the majority of RB reps from Ryan Mathews while still priced for his usual 3rd down role. It was a great value play, but one that did not pan out. Why cjkalt still made the list with such heavy Sproles ownership was his heavy-handed ownership in other breakout players in Melvin Gordon, Michael Thomas, and Vance McDonald. Cjkalt was able to cash on over 50% of his lineups and reach a 255th and 402nd finish on just 25 lineups.
Papagates saw a resurging Aaron Rodgers, at home, and without a steady run-game. Add in that they were playing against the Colts, who would also not be able to run the ball either and without their starting free safety, and papagates pushed his entire stack of chips into the middle of the table. While he must’ve been sweating most of the game as Rodgers and Davante Adams didn’t turn it on until the 2nd half, Rodgers ended up as one of the top scoring QBs on the week. What really catapulted papagates up the leaderboards was significant ownership in both Melvin Gordon and Latavius Murray, who both had top-tier performances and were significantly overshadowed by Ezekiel Elliot and Le’Veon Bell on the slate. With Isaiah Crowell priced at just $3900 and having previously shown a propensity to rip off long runs behind solid blocking, papagates went all-in on the Cowboys leverage-play and flexed a RB in 100% of his 150 lineups. He didn’t fare as well on his non-standard wide receiver plays, which ultimately limited his upside as he topped out at 196.88 points, good for a 234th place finish. With the solid point base from Rodgers, Murray, and Gordon, papagates was able to cash on 62.7% of his lineups.
Rayofhope played the type of ownership breakdown that we would expect on any given week. With the majority of the field on ARod, rayofhope took the contrarian side and played a heavy amount of Andrew Luck and others who were seemingly in poor match-ups (albeit missing the standout Eli Manning). He continued the contrarian theme throughout much of his RB/WR core. While a majority of the field was enthralled by the matchups presented in the GB/IND & NO/SF games, rayofhope seemingly based his RB/WR cores on previous performance and carry/target market share. Le’Veon Bell has proved to be one of the top backs in the league since returning from suspension and has done so without a single touchdown. With Big Ben back early from surgery, he was sure to see an increased role and continue to see the high number of targets on short passing routes. On the other side, Golden Tate was minimally owned with Theo Riddick back in the lineup, who was likely to steal back some of the short passing game that Tate recently thrived on. However, in overtime, Tate showed that he was the x-factor as he broke two tackles and butt-tackled a Viking defender into the end-zone for a game-clinching touchdown. Hilton would surely be low-owned with Donte Moncrief back in the lineup, but Hilton had been carrying team and would still see the lion’s share of targets in critical situations. While being exposed to the ceiling of Antonio Brown and Odell Beckham Jr. at significant ownerships versus the field, rayofhope was poised to conquer the leaderboards with a slight change in game scripts. Still, he cashed in 56% of his lineups and finished inside the top-1000 four times.
Single-Entry Winner of the Game
At first look, beautifulloser1964 made a lot of typical plays that you may have contemplated using yourself, but he managed to fade the leading player, by ownership, at each position sans Ezekiel Elliot. This allowed him to miss the Le’Veon Bell, Charcandrick West, Jarvis Landry, Ty Montgomery, Davante Adams, and Kyle Rudolph GPP duds and keep himself somewhat differentiated. Stefon Diggs had flashed brilliance earlier in the season and would be facing one of the leagues worst defenses without their top cornerback in Darius Slay, at home. Michael Thomas had been one of Drew Brees favorite targets whether on the road or at home throughout the season and proved to be quite consistent. Jay Ajayi and Jason Witten proved to be his dark horse picks that saved his day. Nobody expected Jay Ajayi to continue to have the success that he did, much less against one of the best run defenses in the league. Jason Witten has been approaching Antonio Gates territory in his lack of speed and YAC. Yet, he averaged 16.75 yards per reception and snagged a touchdown in a game where everyone expected Cleveland to be continuously gouged on the ground.
Single-Entry vs. cjkalt/papagates/rayofhope
Out of 231,213 entries in the Fantasy Football Millionaire, 27.4% 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 cjkalt, papagates, rayofhope, and 80 other top professionals picked off of RotoGrinders’ leaderboard:
