Week 11: DraftKings Optimal Lineup

by Derek Farnsworth (Notorious) Last Updated 2014-11-20 22:46:01

Week 11 was full of land mines. There were a ton of players that just didn’t live up to expectations which led to a lot of lineups having gaping holes in them. Obviously, the optimal lineup didn’t have any of these letdown players though. This week’s optimal lineup put up an impressive score of 279.24. I’m starting to realize that this “Optimal” guy is pretty good at fantasy sports. Let’s take a look at his lineup and see what we can learn from it.

Week 11 DraftKings Optimal Lineup

The biggest standout in this week’s optimal lineup is Jonas Gray. Most of the NFL “experts” had a Patriots RB listed in their top ten RB rankings for the week. The problem was that they had the wrong RB listed. Everyone was expecting last week’s game against the Colts to be a back and forth shootout which led everyone to predict a big game from Shane Vereen, who is the Patriots passing back. No one expected Jonas Gray to get 37 carries.

Other than Gray, the optimal lineup didn’t really have any surprise players. Aaron Rodgers, Le’Veon Bell, Mike Evans, and Kelvin Benjamin all had very favorable matchups and all had a fairly high level of ownership. Kenny Britt, Jamaal Charles, and Coby Fleener were contrarian, but we they weren’t players that anyone was surprised to see have a big game. The moral of the story is that you can afford to take a few “obvious” picks even in your tournament lineups. You don’t have to construct that is strictly full of contrarian plays in order to take down these big tournaments. For a listing of contrarian plays each week, check out RotoGrinders’ NFL Contrarian Corner.

Noto’s Week 11 Lineup

Overall, it was a good week. Luckily, I was able to make edits prior to lineup lock, despite the site crashing. My score of 161.10 easily cashed in 50/50’s and triple-ups, but it wasn’t a GPP winning week. This seems to be the common theme with my NFL lineups this season. I typically have one or two players that turn what could have been a great week, into an average week. This week’s letdowns include Drew Brees, Julio Jones, and Travis Kelce.

My thought process on Brees was that he had basically been a lock for 300+ yards and 2+ TDs at home over the last few years. I thought that he would easily reach the 300-yard bonus. While he finished with an impressive 33/41, he only had 255 yards and a single TD which didn’t come close to paying off his expensive salary. Julio Jones continues to see a ton of targets, but the TDs just haven’t followed. Over the last two weeks, he has seen four redzone targets with no TDs, while Roddy White has seen two redzone targets with two TDs. The TDs are coming for Julio, but unfortunately it just wasn’t in Week 11.

The final bust of the week was Travis Kelce. This was predicted by many to be a blowup week as Anthony Fasano was out and he would finally see a full complement of snaps. What we didn’t see coming was Jamaal Charles running all over the Seahawks defense, leaving little need for Alex Smith to air it out.

The lesson of the week was simple. If you can create a lineup that you can analyze on Tuesday morning and tell yourself that you would make the same exact decisions, then you have done your job correctly. If you look at your lineup on Tuesday morning and say, “Why on Earth did I pick that guy?” then you need to put more research into your picks. The more research that you do each week, the less likely you are to feel down about your selections come Tuesday morning.