NFL DFS Sims: SimLabs Lineup Generator Building Blocks for Week 7

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.

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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 7.

Jordan Love + Jahmyr Gibbs

The best fantasy running back in the game is taking on a bottom-five defense against backs, while the opposing QB gets to face the worst passing defense in the league. This one is pretty obvious.

The downside, of course, is that it’s obvious to everyone, and we aren’t slipping this stack by anybody. That’s where SimLabs comes in. The beauty of the tool is that it considers things like ownership, correlation, and leverage and builds lineups that fit your constraints and give you a shot at beating the field.

Plus, you can customize further from there. Boost Matthew Golden and dock Amon-Ra St. Brown. Whatever other takes you have on this game can be factored in. Those are my specific feelings, but if you feel there’s an edge beyond that, it’s very easy to build tons of lineups around it.

Matthew Golden (or Christian Watson) + Tucker Kraft + Jahmyr Gibbs Exclude Jordan Love & Jared Goff

The other approach I’m taking to this game is to try to capture as much of the scoring potential as possible while leaving room for another QB/stack from a different game. The Packers’ passing attack comes down to three players: Golden, Watson, and Kraft. All three have 15% or higher target shares, with no other player getting over 6%. Rostering all three together is probably wrong for large-field contests, but any two can and have gone off together: Kraft’s best game came when Watson dropped 35 on the Bears. Of course, you could go with both receivers instead of Kraft as well, but Detroit ranks dead last in points allowed to tight ends.

On the Lions’ side, this is a much better matchup for the running game, with Green Bay being an extreme run funnel. They rank 2nd in DVOA against the run and 27th against the pass. Plus, he’s Jahmyr Gibbs.

The natural thing to do with those points is to include a QB from that game, but if we’re already capturing most of the points, there might be more upside in chasing a different stack, especially with neither passer offering much on the ground. You could obviously pick one of your own or let the Sims generate it for you. There are a couple of other games where the QBs have more rushing upside and/or a fairly narrow target distribution (Ravens/Bengals, Falcons/49ers) in a high-total contest, so they could easily outperform Love/Goff.

Kyren Williams + Kirk Cousins

To balance out the chalk above, I’m going way off the board with this block. I discussed its merits in my Line Play article early in the week, which came out before news of Puka Nacua’s practice injury. It’s even more appealing now, as Williams has done his best work as a receiver and could easily be the Rams’ top passing target in a game without Davante Adams and potentially Nacua.

On the Cousins side, he should have a clean pocket based on my projections and has topped 20 DraftKings points in four of six games so far. The Raiders have a somewhat condensed passing attack now that Brock Bowers is back. Bowers, Tre Tucker, and Michael Mayer draw most of the looks. This is another spot where I’m happy to let SimLabs figure out the details of who to pair with Cousins.

This is an extremely thin build, but I want exposure to this game that has the third-best total on the board. I won’t play a ton of it, but it’s a part of my plans.

Pictured: Matthew Golden
Photo Credit: Imagn