Fantasy Football Quarter Millionaire Review: Wild Card
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 $2M 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
Smitty42 liked the conditions at CenturyLink field as he game-stacked the DET/SEA game for a total of 70% of his QB ownership. This same philosophy was followed into his RB core as he completely faded Thomas Rawls (as Rawls isn’t the pass-catching type) and owned Zach Zenner at a near 60% clip (saw 10 catches over his last three games). From there, he filled in the rest of his RB from Paul Perkins (starting RB at cheap price) and Lamar Miller, who was starting for the Texans while being home favorites. Predictably, his top-3 owned wide receivers matched with his quarterbacks, but were followed up by a few Miami receivers for which he completely faded their quarterback. All three (Kenny Stills, DeVante Parker, and Jarvis Landry) were in a good position as they would certainly trail the Steelers, had a solid rapport with Matt Moore, and had each produced adequate points recently in line with their current salaries. By taking a single receiver over each of his lineups instead of stacking them, he was banking on one being the go-to (Jarvis Landry owned lower than the others being in the slot; Miami might have played deep being in a large deficit).
Eric Ebron had been fairly consistent with the number of targets he had been receiving while being one of the only ‘weaknesses’ of the Seahawks. As Randall Cobb injury news didn’t come out until late due to the game times, he was quite low owned. However with Jordy Nelson getting injured early, Cobb really stepped up as the red-zone threat and banked three touchdowns and allowed Smitty42 to take a 44th place finish with a score of 198.48.
Youdacao played a similar strategy at quarterback and somehow made the list while completely fading Aaron Rodgers. Obviously this hurt his top-end scores and deep finishes, but the overall quality of lineup construction allowed him to bank a 72.7% cash rate and produced a nice ROI over 150 lineups. Ben Roethlisberger started off hot with two TDs to Antonio Brown and everyone who had each under-owned began to cringe. Fortunately, he slowed down and just gave up two interceptions to actually finish the game with less points than Russell Wilson (who barely finished over 2x value). Le’Veon Bell obviously produced once again in the Steelers up-tempo home-game offensive sets and a 94% ownership set the stage for a solid outing. At just $4100 and increasing from 15 touches to 21 over his last two games while being declared the starter, Paul Perks became one of the premiere value plays on the slate (albeit against a stout Packers run defense). Jarvis Landry headlined his WR ownership as what made Landry great previously, his volume, was coming back to him as he returned to the central focus of the offense.
Doug Baldwin had been hot and cold as of late, but if Russell Wilson was to go off, Baldwin would be a large part of it (putting up solid numbers even when Jimmy Graham produced against SF and BUF). Antonio Brown was featured lightly in each pro’s lineups due to his price and overall salary constraints; most pros chose the solid floor and high peak of Le’Veon Bell over Antonio Brown massive peak but more instability.
Single-Entry Winner of the Game
Cutler7, along with the other top-15 finishes (besides #1 somehow miraculously), led his squad with Aaron Rodgers up against the highly regarded New York Giants pass defense. However, Aaron Rodgers is exceptional at home and had been on literal fire to finish the regular season. Cutler7 played the injury news and minimal ownership as he slotted in Randall Cobb (who had been stone cold entering Sunday) alongside Davante Adams. With Jordy Nelson going down with injury into the game, Cutler7 was sitting pretty as the target share narrowed further.
Le’Veon was obviously a center point in his lineup, but Zach Zenner and Lamar Miller produced adequately compared to the rest of running back efforts on the slate. Jarvis Landry was due for his massive volume as discussed earlier and the Seahawks defense had a soft matchup against the ineffective (since finger injury) Matt Stafford at home. Wille Tye was a cheap option at tight end, but had seen increasing market share over his last three games and had been dependable. Cutler7 rode the contrarian stacks to victory as he finished in 7th place for a healthy $7,000.
Single-Entry vs. Smitty42/Youdacao
Out of 85,634 entries in the Fantasy Football Millionaire, 28.0% 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 Smitty42, Youdacao, and 80 other top professionals picked off of RotoGrinders’ leaderboard:
