One of my favorite pieces of content to make is my weekly review of the winning Millionaire Maker — or occasionally other large prize pool — lineup. While we (rightfully) spend most of our time looking forward to the next slate, reverse-engineering what works in GPPs is a valuable exercise to make us better DFS players.
Week 7 featured a 10-game slate with the standard $20 buy-in Millionaire Maker contest.
We were back to having an MME player take down the top prize, as user alexandercole4 won it all with one of their 150 lineups. Here’s what the winner looked like:
The Lineup
The Stack
He built a lineup around one of my favorite pairings — Justin Herbert and Jonathan Taylor — but they got a similar lineup as I did when locking that pairing in SimLabs.
I never would’ve independently thought of stacking Herbert with Oronde Gadsden, but SimLabs gave me that combination in a full 50% of my Herbert builds, all of which featured two tight ends like this lineup. They were joined by Keenan Allen in one-third of my Herbert builds as well.
The logic was fairly straightforward, as Herbert and the Chargers are one of the pass-heaviest teams in the league and are taking on a team that funnels production to the air. On the other side, Taylor is/was the league’s best fantasy back, facing a team with a run-funnel defense.
All it needed to go right was for the Colts to take a lead, which led to more Colts rushing and Chargers passing — and is exactly what happened. Taylor was alexandercole4’s most rostered player, though they were just slightly ahead of the field on Herbert.
Other Correlations
There were no other actually correlated pieces in this lineup, but there’s one that I would consider somewhat correlated. That would be rostering Javonte Williams without any other players from that game.
Cowboys-Commanders was widely considered a smash spot for DFS, with massive ownership around key pieces on both teams. If that game was to be a letdown, it makes sense that a running back from the leading team would do the bulk of the heavy lifting.
Since running backs don’t bring anyone else along with them when they score, and their production slows down the pace of the game, in some ways this was a correlated bet on the rest of the game not producing the expected outcomes.
The Chalk
The heaviest chalk in this lineup came from the previously discussed running backs. That’s probably a good strategy, as backs are typically easier to accurately project, so the better plays will end up with higher ownership. This line also included the very popular Rashee Rice alongside moderately popular Trey McBride and Chris Olave.
Rice and Olave led a group of mid-range wide receivers who all stood out in our projections, with likely target shares far stronger than their salaries implied. Both posted scores in the mid-20s, which exceeded our projections but was in line with the prevailing thought heading into the slate.
McBride was also our top-rated tight end and one of the most popular. However, by pairing him with another tight end, alexcandercole4 certainly ended up with a very unique build, since most users don’t roster two tight ends. That’s another example of a way to roster chalky pieces but still increase the uniqueness of your lineup.
Be sure to check out all the pick’ems Sleeper has to offer with our Sleeper Fantasy promo code.
The Sleepers
Outside of the Chargers pieces, which all came in at 6% ownership or less, the one low-owned piece of this lineup was the defense. Carolina’s 8.5% ownership isn’t especially contrarian by team defense standards (with 20 choices on the slate, the average defense garners 5% ownership), but they also weren’t one of the most chalky.
That’s always a solid decision from a roster-building standpoint, since defensive scoring is highly random. That, paired with the two tight-end build, was plenty contrarian enough to set this lineup apart, even when paired with mostly chalk at running back and wide receiver.
Pictured: Justin Herbert
Photo Credit: Imagn
