Stuff Happened - Week 4 Edition
Thus ends the Great Quarter Arcade Experiment.
The results? Decidedly inconclusive.
After someone said “Anyone can win by mass multi-entering,” and someone else said “You think you can do it? Prove it.” I decided to prove it. I won $15 on $12.50 in entries. My ROI on the tournament was 20%. Was it worth the time I put in? Not a chance.
You see, I had … issues, which sucked up gobs of time. First off, the Quarter Arcade has a 50-entry max, not 150. That didn’t stop me from uploading 150 lineups. I also uploaded a bunch for the slate that included the London game, accidently. Basically, I completely murdered my LINEUPS page, which left me scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling all weekend. I’m sure Saahil and csuram88 and the rest of MME community have quick ways to navigate all those lineups saved. I don’t have those ways. In fact, I would have paid $12.50 just to buy those ways.
Another thing that just lit my time on fire was trying to figure out the RotoGrinders Lineup Builder. It’s not the tool’s fault at all. I’m new to using it, and I just didn’t know the most effective way to get it to game stack. There is a “Stack” function that I couldn’t figure out, which might have saved me some time, if I had figured it out. I don’t know. I just know I ended up going in and editing nearly every lineup on the DraftKings site itself.
Now, by using the Lineup Builder to build lineups, that allows you to export all those lineups directly to DraftKings, which is a huge time saver. And in order to export the lineups, you had to download the RotoGrinders browser extension, which is also phenomenal. I’m actually ashamed I hadn’t taken the 15 seconds to put it on my browser prior. It is so helpful, giving you overlay figures, as well as your personal ownership percentages across the slates you’re playing. Also, if Nicole Valencia isn’t a liar, and I don’t believe she is, the head-to-head community is going to be on cloud nine with the newest addition to the extension.
Anyway, I did twelve Kirk Cousins lineups including my main lineup (cashed 5), ten Carson Palmer lineups (cashed 7), ten Matt Stafford lineups (cashed 3), eight Drew Brees lineups (cashed 1), five Ben Roethlisberger lineups (cashed 5), a Marcus Mariota, a Brock Osweiler, a Cam Newton (cashed), a Philip Rivers, and a Joe Flacco lineup. Cashed 22 of 50 overall.
It’s not surprising to see all five Roethlisberger lineups hit paydirt, as he went for 36.9 points. Ironically, among the ten quarterbacks I played, the next three guys in terms of PT/$K were Flacco, Rivers, and Osweiler, none of which cashed. For Flacco, the problems were one-off Hopkins and Ware, combined with game-stacked Cooper. For Rivers, it was the Benjamin/Williams/Cooks game stack. For Osweiler, the issue was game-stacked Hopkins/Walker. It just goes to show you that sometimes it’s not the quarterback succeeding, but rather the quarterback succeeding in the way you expect.
The real reasons I cashed at a 44% clip were these settings on the Lineup Builder:
50% – Le’Veon Bell
45% – Jordan Howard
35% – Melvin Gordon
50% – Marvin Jones Jr.
50% – Will Fuller V
25% – Antonio Brown
25% – Terrelle Pryor
I think this is the right way to go at MME; you need a concentrated core. If you’re wrong, you can tank an entire week, but if you’re right, you’re very likely to have the ancillary pieces come together in at least one lineup. Or, in your single Cam game stack (194.7), the ancillary pieces can carry the lineup and your core can do just enough not to screw it up.
While the financial results were tepid, I would say this: Try it. There were a couple illuminating things I took from it, that I think can be helpful for your overall game.
Stuff Happened, Week 4 Edition
Here’s the best. Then, we’ll cover the rest.
When the second highest priced RB, WR, and TE all produce, to go with the fifth most expensive RB and the sixth most expensive QB, you end up with a situation where the highest scoring lineup doesn’t fit within the $50,000 salary parameters DraftKings has set. As you can see, both running backs had to be subbed out, but at a cost of only 1.5 DK points. That’s because there was a log jam at running back this week, all hovering around 25 points:
DeMarco Murray — $6,800 — 25.9
Le’Veon Bell — $7,500 — 25.8
Ezekiel Elliott — $6,900 — 25.7
Isaiah Crowell — $4,400 — 25.4
Melvin Gordon — $6,300 — 24.9
Matt Jones — $4,300 — 24.8
That’s different than at other positions. Only one quarterback was within 12 points of Matt Ryan (Roethlisberger, 36.9) and only one tight end was within 12 points of Jordan Reed (Olsen, 21.6). Selecting either of those two gave you leg up on the field.
At wide receiver, Julio Jones’s 51 nearly lapped the wide receiver player pool, and in second was Michael Crabtree. His 33.8 points were still 5.7 more than the third best wide-out for the slate. From there, five WRs were within a point, before another five-point drop-off down to WR #8:
Steve Smith Sr. — $4,500 — 28.1
Dontrelle Inman — $3,300 — 28.0
John Brown — $4,300 — 27.4
Will Fuller V — $5,300 — 27.1
Eddie Royal — $3,500 — 27.1
A few other notes from wide receivers. There were surprisingly only five 100-yard receivers on the main slate (Jones, Jo. Brown, Inman, Smith Sr., & Royal). Also, you’ll notice I abbreviated John Brown as “Jo. Brown.” You see DraftKings, was that so hard?
Lastly, at defense, the Rams (17 points, $2,700) and the Bills (15 points, $2,600) would have saved you a $1,000 over paying for the Broncos (15 points, $3,700), but all three would have yielded roughly the same score, one that was at least 4 points better than every other defense.
Making a Millionaire
This week, a fellow who is not warm took down the top prize in the Fantasy Football Millionaire. That is, Steiniscool won a cool million. That or he got a fun souvenir from a German bar?
He did it with a score of 245.12, which was almost 89% of the Optimal Lineup’s score. That matches RandyRanderson1’s 89% from Week 1. He rostered 5/9 of the Optimal Lineup (Ryan, Crowell, Jones, Smith Sr. & Reed), as well as two more (Elliott & Royal) who just missed the cut. Of the 31 points he was shy of perfect, 18 were in rostering Pryor instead of Crabtree and 12 were from the Cardinals instead of the Rams.
Oh, and sadly, our string of Gates-related winners ends at two. It was a good run. As a ceremonial ending to our streak, here’s the Swinging Gate, going horribly wrong.
Grout for a Shout
This was a more moderate week, here in Grout land. No 10 PT/$Ks. No 0 PT/$Ks. We had 51 entries and 50 of them didn’t pick the correct “J. Brown”. The person that did was none other than dinkpuppy. Not to be confused with the piece of the same dink persuasion, this dink has a cute puppy as an avatar and 6.372 PT/$K scored by his Grout for a Shout selection. dinkpuppy, I don’t know if you have any special connection to db730, as SwaguarsFan obviously did, and frankly, I don’t care. Offering anything less than a Grade A “shout” is selling you short. This is the best “shout” I can offer:
Here are the complete Week 3 Standings:
One thing you’ll notice in the standings above is a “comment” symbol next to JMToWin’s pick. I’m not sure if he wanted to show me up. Probably not. But by picking both Jordan Howard and Zach Miller, he let me know that not only did I not have the best Grout for a Shout option on the Bears, that I didn’t even have one in the Top Two. (Actually Top Three, with Eddie Royal going off!) Both guys did, in fact, beat my Kevin White, who suffered an ankle injury midway through the second half.
I believe JM’s desire was to have me take a weighted average their scores. For our purposes, it doesn’t matter. He wins. I lose. (JMtoWin – 2, GiantBallOfOil – 2) But for the season long competition, I must set a precedent of one picker, one player. So, unfortunately, I must saddle him with the lessor of his two selections, Zach Miller. Tied for 14th rather than tied for 5th. I think he’ll live.
Speaking of the season long standings…
As you can see, the top four spots remain unchanged, with dethdealers, SwaguarsFan, daddywarbuttocks, and ggmain0831 each offering picks between 4.5 and 5.8 PT/$K. klhbui made a big jump up with a Steve Smith Sr. 6.244 PT/$K selection, while juiblex and 615SCRATCHMAN lost a lot of ground with their Jamison Crowder and Eric Ebron selections, respectively. Plenty of season left, all. Get those picks in!