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 15.
Jared Goff + DK MetCalf — Boost Jahmyr Gibbs, Amon-Ra St. Brown, and Jameson Williams
This is a few more steps than my typical building block, but stick with me.
The Lions have the highest team total on the slate and, due to injuries, an extremely concentrated offense around Gibbs, Williams, and St. Brown. However, in each of their last six games, no more than two of that trio have gone for big games in the same week, as there’s not enough total volume and touchdowns to go around.
Therefore, I want to stack Goff with two of his skill position players in most of my lineups, though the boost would also allow for one or all three to be included. On the other side, the Lions have allowed the second-most points to wide receivers, have an extremely depleted secondary, and are favored enough that we can expect a high pass rate (relative to their baseline) from the Steelers.
Since Pittsburgh doesn’t have any other players with a realistic shot at big upside, it makes sense to include Metcalf in all of your Lions stacks, with SimLabs leaving open the option to include additional Steelers pieces.
=Quinn Ewers + Darren Waller + Greg Dulcich
Rookie Quinn Ewers is replacing Tua Tagovailoa for the Dolphins at QB this week and comes in with the stone minimum salary on DraftKings. He gets a near-ideal debut matchup against the Bengals, who have allowed the most (real life) points of any team this season and by far the most points to tight ends.
As I mentioned in my main slate article this week, the best tight end in the league in terms of fantasy scoring is Trey McBride, who averages just under 20 DraftKings points. “Tight ends against Cincinnati” average 23.4 points. Waller and Dulcich collectively cost just $6,000, so they could fall well short of the Bengals’ average and still go for 3x their combined salaries.
Plus, there’s a reasonable argument that a rookie QB making his debut is more likely to check the ball down to tight ends (and/or his running back) than take shots downfield, so it wouldn’t be a shock for the Dolphins duo to exceed the Bengals’ average scoring allowed.
The real beauty of this block is the salary savings, though. On a slate with plenty of $8K+ players in good spots, taking up the QB, tight end, and FLEX spots for just $10K in salary allows for much more exposure to those stars than we’ll see from most lineups this weekend.
Justin Herbert + Javonte Williams
The other game with a 50+ point total is Chargers-Cowboys, which features a Chargers team still jockeying for playoff position taking on a Cowboys team with nothing left to play for but pride.
However, the home Cowboys are still favored in this matchup, and they’re facing one of the heaviest run funnel defenses in the league. Los Angeles ranks 5th in DVOA against the pass but 21st against the run. The combination of game script and matchup could lead to a big day for Williams if the Cowboys are playing from in front.
If that happens, it would correlate nicely with the Chargers’ passing attack. Herbert ranks second (behind Goff) in the Optimal-Projected Ownership metric, in large part due to a matchup with the league’s second-worst scoring defense. They have three wide receivers and a tight end who are all heavily involved, so I don’t want to try to pick which pass catchers get the bulk of the work, but SimLabs will mix them all in against a poor Cowboys defense.
Pictured: Justin Herbert
Photo Credit: Imagn
