Fantasy Football Quarter Millionaire Review: Conference Championships

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 $1.5M Fantasy Football Quarter Millionaire Championship [$250K 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

FlavorFlav appears to have been playing a stark contrarian strategy by going with the absurdly cheap Ben Roethlisberger (cheapest all season by $800) and corresponding #1 and #2 receivers: Antonio Brown and Eli Rogers. As everyone else was worried about Big Ben’s home/road splits and foot injury, FlavorFlav looked to capitalize on Ben’s low ownership and high ceiling, coupled with a narrow target share. At running back, the duo of Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman had been electric all season as dual-threat backs and there was no reason to fade them in a situation where the Falcons would like to keep Aaron Rodgers off the field as long as possible. In tandem with the Tom Brady fade, FlavorFlav saw a resurgence of LeGarrette Blount, possibly due to the fumblitis experienced by Dion Lewis (regardless of the three-TD day). If it’s one thing we know about Bill Belichick, it’s that he stresses ball security (Blount had just two fumbles in 299 carries in the regular season).

From the salary savings at QB and avoiding most of Le’Veon Bell, FlavorFlav was able to slot in Antonio Brown and Julio Jones at just over a 50% clip each. As they could each explode on any given Sunday, Julio Jones did just that enroute to a 42 point day. With another 42 point performance by Chris Hogan on the exact same stat line, FlavorFlav was able to take down a 92nd place finish on just 16 entries. As he just saw a cash rate of 37.5% due to Big Ben’s lackluster performance, FlavorFlav was still able to score a nice ROI due to his lower-owned options and not completely selling out with an extremely tight core.

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On the flip-side, smitty42 played more of the chalk options on the slate while being over-owned to a select few key plays. With the rash of injuries and news of sickness spreading throughout the locker room, smitty took the field-average Aaron Rodgers ownership and merged it into Matty Ice and the NFL’s #1 scoring offense at home. As it had been seen all season, the Falcons spread the ball around so much that smitty did not put too much faith in one receiver. Devonta had seen a steady receiving workload along with his 12-15 carries and goal line involvement, he would definitely be involved in the Falcon’s success.

With much of the mid-salary chalk receiving options at the top of his ownerships (Randall Cobb and Julian Edelman), smitty didn’t have a ton of room to fit in much ownership of the two elites. However, he was able to make up some of this salary by going extremely heavy on Chris Hogan. As Chris went over 10x value on his 180 yard, two-TD statline, smitty was able to land a 61.5% cash rate, but missed out on a majority of top-level finishes due to his high ownerships in Ty Montgomery and Dion Lewis. Smitty42 topped out with a 319th place finish, dragging along Dion Lewis for the ride.

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Single-Entry Winner of the Game

4thekidz managed to pull off what most of us only dream of: making a single lineup and taking down the premiere GPP in all of DFS. However, due to the nature of a 4-game slate, he was able to share first place honors with nine other ecstatic players. With that being said, the winning lineup featured a majority of the chalk plays on the slate (minus Randall Cobb and Ty Montgomery). The NFL playoff record 60.5 game total for the GB@ATL lived up to expectations points-wise, but ended up slanting towards the home team in a lopsided affair. Julio Jones showed once again why he is one of the best receivers in the NFL as he ripped off a 73-yard touchdown via stiff arm. Julian Edelman and Chris Hogan gave us doubts that the Steelers actually had 11 men on the field at all times as they were able to sit in just about every hole in the Steelers’ zone defense. Sometimes all it takes is one or two pivots from the major chalk plays to make the difference to go from cash game to GPP hero.

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Single-Entry vs. FlavorFlav/smitty42

Out of 64,226 entries in the Fantasy Football Millionaire, 25.5% 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 FlavorFlav, smitty42, and 80 other top professionals picked off of RotoGrinders’ leaderboard:

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About the Author

smurg
Marty Hutton (smurg)

Smurg is a low limit H2H grinder who dabbles in GPPs from time to time. He has played daily fantasy sports since 2012 and has a passion for excel spreadsheets. When he’s not dreaming of fantasy riches, he is qualifying pipeline welding procedures for the oil & gas market.