Week 5: DraftKings Optimal Lineup
Before we get into this week’s optimal lineup on DraftKings, I have to congratulate SamENole for taking down the first Millionaire Maker event and walking away with a cool $1 million first place prize. How great would it be to wake up to your DraftKings account balance with all of those zeros? Luckily for us, there is another Millionaire Maker event this week so make sure to throw a few entries in. There aren’t many times in life where you have a chance to win a million dollars playing daily fantasy football.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s move on to Week 5. It was an interesting week overall where we saw lower scores than usual. Low scoring obviously wasn’t the case for this week’s optimal lineup though. Unlike last week, there were some extremely contrarian plays that made the optimal lineup. Let’s take a look:
Week 5 DraftKings Optimal Lineup (Sunday Games)
| Player | Pos | FPs | Salary |
| Austin Davis | QB | 33.96 | $5,600 |
| Branden Oliver | RB | 37.2 | $3,000 |
| Matt Forte | RB | 31.2 | $7,800 |
| Demaryius Thomas | WR | 45.6 | $7,400 |
| Golden Tate | WR | 29.4 | $4,900 |
| Kendall Wright | WR | 27 | $5,500 |
| Andre Ellington | FLEX | 33.4 | $5,600 |
| Greg Olsen | TE | 25.2 | $5,300 |
| Philadelphia Eagles | DST | 23 | $3,300 |
| Total | 288.4 | $48,400 |
QB Austin Davis had a huge game and ended up being one of the best value plays out there.
The Peyton Manning and Demaryius Thomas pairing was huge this week. Manning finished with a career-high in passing yards and close to half of those went to Thomas.
Golden Tate had a fairly predictable big game, as Calvin Johnson was once again used as a decoy and the Lions were facing an average Bills secondary.
After that, the rest of the optimal lineup is comprised of some very contrarian plays. I’m not sure anyone could have predicted Branden Oliver going off for 37 fantasy points. In addition to Oliver, Andre Ellington and Kendall Wright were both off-the-board plays that had huge fantasy outings. Overall, it would have been extremely tough for anyone to target a few of the players in the optimal lineup, let alone target them on the same lineup.
My Week 5 Lineup
| Player | Pos | FPs | Salary |
| Drew Brees | QB | 22.74 | $8,900 |
| DeMarco Murray | RB | 27.2 | $7,500 |
| Le’Veon Bell | RB | 16.8 | $7,300 |
| Jeremy Maclin | WR | 18.6 | $5,600 |
| Kelvin Benjamin | WR | 5.8 | $4,800 |
| DeAndre Hopkins | WR | 12.3 | $4,800 |
| Rashad Jennings | FLEX | 9.2 | $5,500 |
| Travis Kelce | TE | 9.5 | $3,000 |
| Denver Broncos | DST | 4 | $2,600 |
| Total | 126.14 | $50,000 |
While I didn’t win the million, it was a pretty solid week overall. My main cash-game lineup scored 126.14 fantasy points, which was good enough to cash in the majority of my double-ups.
DraftKings had a very soft salary cap structure in Week 5 and my goal was to take the underpriced players along with the star players that I felt had the highest floors. I spent up on Drew Brees, DeMarco Murray, and Le’Veon Bell, all of which put up solid enough performances.
The weakest part of my lineup was once again the receiver positions. While Jeremy Maclin did manage to score a late touchdown to salvage his fantasy day, Kelvin Benjamin and DeAndre Hopkins were both fairly quiet. I would have liked to have seen a little more production from them.
The key thing to remember in cash games is to construct a team with the highest floor possible. Your goal is to beat out at least 50% of your competition, so you don’t need to take many risks.
ON TO WEEK 6!