This season marks year four 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 5.
Jared Goff + Trey McBride + Michael Wilson
Week 5 stands out because Lions/Cardinals is by far the best game to target, with a total 8 points higher than any other game. As I noted in my main slate breakdown, on the rare occasions when similar games have come up, there’s been a >50% chance that the game also produced the most DFS points, with top-three finishes even in the bear case.
None of the players are likely to reach 50% ownership, so in theory, picking the right players from that game will result in +EV selections even after factoring in ownership. More accurately, the goal is to avoid the wrong players, since all the obvious options project well.
My favorite approach is to pair Goff with the Cardinals’ top two options. McBride and Wilson have combined for 56.6% of Arizona’s total targets and over 60% of their receiving yards and touchdowns. Plus, Detroit is the worst team in the league in fantasy points allowed to both receivers and tight ends. On the Goff side, Detroit has a somewhat more spread-out target distribution, so it’s hard to capture as much production in as few spots.
That’s where the Sims come in. They’ll match Goff with various stacking partners in a way that balances upside, ownership, and correlation.
Jared Goff + Jahmyr Gibbs
I’ll start with the disclaimer that this is my preferred starting point for smaller-field contests, single-entry play, or both. The thesis is that by pairing Goff with Gibbs – the NFL leader in opportunity share and carry share – you effectively gain exposure to all of the Lions’ points. Detroit has the highest team total on the slate by about five points, so getting all of their points could be massive.
Unless you use multiple single-entry/3-max lineups across a wide variety of contests, you won’t be able to enter all the lineups created. But this is where SimLabs works well as an effective filtering tool, getting you started on various builds that you can then tinker with by hand (or not). The Sims evaluate their Expected Value for the specific types of contests you’re playing. After syncing your simmed lineups to the models, you can tweak any of them to reflect your specific reads.
Of course, this lineup block will almost certainly include some Cardinals players and potentially other Lions, but you’re not forcing any specific options. Less-owned players from that game, like Marvin Harrison Jr., Jameson Williams, or Isaac Teslaa, among others, could pop with this pairing. I want some exposure to all of the secondary and tertiary options as well.
Joe Burrow + Top Pass Catcher(s)
The Bengals have the highest team total behind the Lions, lead the NFL in PROE, and have a very condensed passing attack centered on Tee Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase. At the time of writing, both players are officially questionable. Chase has yet to clear the concussion protocol, while Higgins practiced for the first time Friday.
I like this block a lot better if just one of Burrow’s top weapons is active, as the combined salary of all three is somewhat restrictive. Still, it’s an interesting leverage play with most of the field piling onto the Lions game, and Burrow doubles have won plenty of tournaments in the past.
This build also likely forces some exposure to the lesser options from the Lions and Cardinals, which could be the key to the slate. That makes it a double whammy of high-upside, semi-contrarian picks.
Pictured: Joe Burrow
Photo Credit: Imagn
