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 10 featured a 10-game slate with the standard $20 buy-in Millionaire Maker contest.
This time, user Standish won with one of their 21 lineups. Not quite a single-entry player, but certainly an impressive outcome in a field packed with 150-entry portfolios.
The Lineup
The Stack
The most notable thing about this lineup was that it actually employed a triple stack around the quarterback. Baker Mayfield was joined by WR1 Emeka Egbuka, tight end Cade Otton, and fellow rookie wide receiver Tez Johnson. Ironically, Mayfield and Egbuyka — the two pricier parts of that stack — were two of the lower performers in the lineup relative to their salaries.
With that said, I was big on stacking Bucs-Patriots as the top game on the slate. There were plenty of high total games, but only that one had a spread within a field goal. That gave a better shot at a back-and-forth game where both teams had to stay aggressive throughout. Pairing that stack with Patriots running back TreVeyon Henderson also (correctly) built around a scenario where the Patriots gained, and tried to hang on to through the running game, the lead.
That likely made this stack much less popular than the combined ownership levels would suggest, especially since it was built around a slight favorite winning the game. That’s a fairly sneaky, low-cost way to be more unique with your lineup builds that should be noted moving forward. Particularly when the spread is tight, the field probably focuses too heavily on the favored team’s run game and the trailing team’s passing attack, while the vice versa isn’t that much less likely to hit.
Other Correlations
With the primary stack and bring-back taking up more than half of this lineup, there were no other correlations at play.
The Chalk
Outside of the individually popular pieces of the stack, the somewhat-chalky parts of this lineup were running backs Jahmyr Gibbs and De’Von Achane, plus wide receiver Jauan Jennings. Rostering Gibbs was probably the most important part of this lineup, as the electric Lions back exploded for 40+ points at about half the ownership of Achane, though both were fairly popular.
Achane’s Dolphins surprisingly controlled their game against the Bills, while Gibbs’ Lions predictably did the same against the Commanders. Either way, the game scripts worked out perfectly for the star backs: their team controlled the action enough to go run heavy, but not so much as to see the starters get benched down the stretch.
Jennings was one of the few healthy 49ers wide receivers in a game where they were solid underdogs. He lived up to his projection but wasn’t a smash play, but at $4,600 did enough for Standish to eke out a narrow victory in the milly maker.
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The Sleepers
Outside of Mayfield — who as we discussed, was the less popular QB in his own game — the only sub-10% owned piece of this lineup was the Jets Defense. There were a lot of solid D/ST options on the slate, many of whom actually lived up to their billing. That made it even more important to go slightly contrarian at the position, and the Jets ranked outside of the top five projected units in our models, while finishing even lower than we projected.
In retrospect, any defense against the Browns should be much more popular than the 3.6% ownership the Jets saw, but it’s also another reminder to, at a minimum, diversify your D/ST choices. They’re relatively hard to project accurately, but the field continues to overuse the top projecting options.
Pictured: De’Von Achane
Photo Credit: Imagn
