Last Week's Optimal Lineup: DraftStreet Week 13
The concept of picking the optimal lineup is something that we all strive for each week. Whether you play in head to head games or large field tournaments, we all have the same goal to score as high as possible. While this is definitely not attainable each week, or any week for that matter, Rotogrinders has come up with a new feature that calculates what the optimal lineup was each week for each site. The optimal lineup is basically the best possible lineup that you could have put together with the roster requirements and salary restrictions.
I thought it would be fun to pick a site each week and go through what its optimal lineup was for the past week. While just looking at the perfect lineup for a past week doesn’t necessarily have any value with regards to future performance, I will try to add my two cents about how valuable that player will be in the upcoming weeks. It’s also fun just to look back and see where your teams could have been much better.
Before I get into this week’s optimal lineup, I want to make sure you know how to locate it on Rotogrinders. To look at the best possible lineups just click the following:
- On the home page, click “Daily Research”
- Click on the site that you want to see the optimal lineup for (“Draftstreet,” “Fanduel,” etc.)
- Click on “Football”
- Then finally click on the “Last Week’s Optimal” tab on the right hand side of the screen
For this week’s column, I’ve decided to start with Draftstreet and show what the optimal lineup from Week 13 was. While my score barely covered half of this lineups total, I’m sure plenty of you grinders out there had this exact lineup:
QB – Cam Newton ($18,084) – 38.76 Points
What a game for Cam Newton. He finishes with 3 rushing TD’s and absolutely crushes the Buccaneers defense. This week Cam faces the Falcons at home. This isn’t quite as good of a matchup as the Falcons D has been playing much better recently.
QB – Christian Ponder ($11,188) – 25.44 Points
Big scoring day for Ponder and Harvin. Ponder has surely made mistakes as a rookie, but he has looked very impressive at times. The Vikings travel to Detroit this week to play the Lions. I think he could put up some decent numbers without Suh in the game.
RB – Shonn Greene ($9,550) – 30.9 Points
Who saw this one coming? Shonn Greene has a huge day and goes for 3 TD’s against the Redskins. He has a great matchup this week against the Chiefs who haven’t been great against the run. Don’t count on 3 TD’s though.
RB – Chris Johnson ($12,858) – 28.2 Points
Looks like CJ2K is back to his old form. Or maybe young form. Another big day for Chris Johnson and if that’s a sign of things to come, keep playing him. This week he faces the Saints who give up a lot of points, but if the Titans get down early, he probably won’t see as many touches.
WR – Percy Harvin ($12,012) – 33.5 Points
This is the type of game that the Vikings have expected out of Harvin ever since they drafted him. He and Ponder seem to have a good thing going and he has a good matchup against the Lions this week.
WR – Pierre Garcon ($8,067) – 31.5 Points
ORLOVSKY! Who cares that most of Orlovsky’s and Garcon’s stats were in garbage time. They still count! Although I don’t expect much of anything from those two against the Ravens this week.
TE – Rob Gronkowski ($13,667) – 27.1 Points
Big Gronk was a beast once again. It didn’t even look like the Colts were trying to guard him. This week he takes on the Redskins and you can chalk up another TD or two for Gronk.
U – Demaryius Thomas ($2,754) – 28.4 Points
Tim Tebow got to show off his arm a bit against the Vikings and Thomas had a huge fantasy day. It’s hard to know what to expect from the Broncos WR’s from here on out, but if you took a flier on Thomas, it was well worth it.
U – Robert Meachem ($4,384) – 20.2 Points
Trying to decide which Saints receiver is going to have a big day is like trying to decide which shot to take at the bar. You never know which one is going to be good and which one you will regret.
D/ST – Steelers ($3,907) – 7.5
The Steelers defense has been playing great the last few weeks. They should put up some high scoring games the rest of the way.
So if you had this team you would have put up an astounding 271.50 points!
I’m pretty sure I’m going to pick the exact optimal lineup this week so watchout!