This season marks the third year of our SimLabs tool being available to the public. It’s a powerful feature that allows casual players to build competitive lineups effortlessly — or serious players to leverage their convictions more effectively. We’ve also added the feature of being able to export lineups from SimLabs directly to our models for easy tweaking of lineups.
I broke down some general uses of the tool from an evergreen perspective last season. Moving forward, we’ll be checking out some suggested starting points for building lineups.
The process is simple: from the SimLabs home screen, first select the field size and desired range of outcomes for your lineups. The field size depends on the contest type, while the “results range” allows you to customize how unique you want your lineups to be.
Then, find the box titled “include players” and type your preferred options — then sit back and let the sims do their thing. You can generate as many or as few lineups as you want, then upload directly to DraftKings to be entered into contests.
For more on what SimLabs is and how it works, check out our user guide.
Let’s check out some potential starting points in Week 9.
Josh Allen + Keon Coleman + Rashee Rice
With the Bills/Chiefs game being the clear best DFS spot on the slate, I want to be slightly contrarian with how I approach it. Allen’s ownership projection is about half that of Mahomes, so simply rostering Bills’ stacks is a great starting point.
I also laid out the case for Coleman as a GPP option in my main slate breakdown this week, as he’s the highest variance option in the Bills passing attack. Rice is both the best and the most popular Chief’s flex play — but we can afford to eat the ownership given the relatively contrarian Allen + Coleman stack.
Allen is the number one QB in our Optimal – Projected Ownership metric on SimLabs this week, while Rice and Coleman are #1 and #3 at wide receiver — with fellow Bill Khalil Shakir slotting between them. I’m sure SimLabs will produce a good chunk of lineups with both Bills receivers, so I won’t force the issue myself, but either way it should result in relatively unique lineups.
Daniel Jones + Jonathan Taylor
SimLabs conveniently has a setting for which type of tournament you’re targeting, with the options being large field, small field, or single entry. This particular grouping isn’t one I’ll be targeting for large field GPPs, but it is one I absolutely love for smaller field or single-entry contests.
With the wide range of single-entry GPPs available on DraftKings every week, you can make and enter a dozen or more “single entry” teams and spread them out to various contests. That can be an edge, as it allows you to take chances most single-entry players are scared to take — since they view it as their one shot (this week) to build a winning lineup.
Anyway, the logic behind pairing Jones and Taylor is fairly straightforward. The Colts are the league’s highest-scoring offense, and pairing their QB and RB accounts for the vast majority of their offensive production, while double dipping on Taylor receptions. With the Steelers defense ranking 22nd in both points allowed and defensive DVOA, this is a fine spot to target them, and their 27-point implied total is just two points shy of the slate leader.
Jared Goff + Amon-Ra St. Brown + Boost Jahmyr Gibbs and Sam LaPorta
The Lions are favored by double digits against the division rival Vikings, which means the likeliest outcome for their game is solid scores from the primary offensive pieces but nothing GPP-winning, since Detroit could take their foot off the proverbial gas relatively early in the game.
That is, unless Dan Campbell decides to run up the score on their opponent. Detroit has had a few of those games over the past few years, where Campbell is either sending a message or giving the offense a chance to work on some things in a game that’s already decided. Either way, those random blowup spots have produced massive scores — like St. Brown’s 42 points in Week 2 against the Bears.
A divisional matchup against the Vikings while coming off a bye week is a likelier-than-average spot for that to happen again. If it does, Goff and the Sun God are the obvious beneficiaries, but I’ll be using the SimLabs “boost” feature to get some extra exposure to LaPorta and Gibbs. Since Goff doesn’t provide much with his legs, double stacks are typically the better way to build around him, and those two are the next best options.
Pictured: Jaredd Goff
Photo Credit: Imagn
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