Fantasy Football Millionaire Review: Week 2
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 $5M 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
Al_Smizzle seemed to target chalk at the top of his ownership % at each position, but also mixed in high-upside contrarian plays at above average ownerships: Marcus Mariota, Joe Flacco, LeGarrette Blount, Ted Ginn, etc. While they might not have all panned out, his scant exposure (one lineup: 0.667%) to Stefon Diggs proved to be the driving force in launching him into first place on the back of a nine-catch, 182-yard, one-TD performance. His winning lineup largely consisted of consensus picks, but deviations at a few spots (Antonio Gates, Stefon Diggs, and the Broncos D) differentiated himself enough to take down the top prize.
As seen in both through the field and pros ownership, Al_Smizzle flexed an above average amount of running backs due to the value that was projected at the position (T.J. Yeldon, Danny Woodhead) and under-priced bellcows (C.J. Anderson, DeAngelo Williams).
papagates took an alternative route to most of the chalk over the max lineups (150) and it paid off (cash rate of 94%! — only nine lineups out of the money). His main plays were in perceived positive game-flow positions at low ownerships. Carson Palmer was playing at home against Tampa Bay’s funnel defense, while Philip Rivers was also at home (with increased WR talent versus last year sans Keenan Allen) and going up against a porous Jaguars defense. While his overall cash rate was indicative of his successful plays, merely missing out on Kelvin Benjamin, Delanie Walker, and the Broncos/Cardinals defense likely kept him from breaking the 200-point barrier more than twice.
smitty42 followed a similar chalk strategy to Al_Smizzle, but increased a few key players to 35%+ ownerships: Travis Benjamin became a WR1 after Keenan Allen went down; Delanie Walker would see increased targets (in a dome) with Darius Slay blanketing his given receiver; and T.J. Yeldon was once again the bellcow with Chris Ivory out, against a Chargers defense giving up 4.98 YPC last season. This may have come back to bite him on a large percentage of his lineups as Eli Manning, T.J. Yeldon, and Doug Baldwin had sub-optimal performances. However, smitty42 still posted a healthy 68% cash rate and with Cam Newton headlining 18 of his top-20 lineups, landed a 51st place finish.
Single-Entry Winner of the Game
Kingoftroy21 went back to the well of Week 1 producing players (Latavius Murray, Will Fuller) while managing to avoid the value-busts of the week (T.J. Yeldon, C.J. Anderson). He didn’t try to get too cute with his lineup as his least-owned player was Latavius Murray at 7.2% (due to his reduced snap counts from 2015) and outside of Sterling Shepard (53 snaps but only four targets), all his players saw a healthy usage in Week 1 relative to their price.
Single-Entry vs. Al_Smizzle/papagates/smitty42
Out of 277,286 entries in the Fantasy Football Millionaire, 101,163 of those entries (36.5%) were entered courtesy of players using a single bullet. The table below compares the exposures of those single entries to the exposures of Al_Smizzle, papagates, smitty42, and 110 other top professionals picked off of RotoGrinders’ leaderboard:
