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 12 featured an 11-game slate with the standard $20 buy-in Millionaire Maker contest.
User jbigglesworth came out ahead with one of their 41 lineups on an extremely high-scoring week. Besides their winning lineup, they placed four rosters in the top 25 of the 147,058-person contest. Let’s see how they did it.
The Lineup
The Stack
A double stack of Jahmyr Gibbs and Amon-Ra St. Brown was my top stack of the week — only I wasn’t sharp enough to pair them with Jameis Winston like jbigglesworth was. Winston was not only considerably cheaper than Detroit QB Jared Goff, but he also put up a much bigger day, that included a receiving touchdown in the overtime loss to the Lions.
They also paired Winston with Giants de facto #1 wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson, who himself had a massive day, with nearly 150 receiving yards before halftime. Lions-Giants was the top game of the week based on the Vegas total, but with the Lions massively favored, building stacks around Winston and the G-men was by far a less popular approach.
I’m not entirely sure what the takeaway is here. The Lions defense is/was overrated? It’s never a bad time to play Jameis? Perhaps it’s just leaning into your convictions, as jbigglesworth rostered Gibbs in over 90% of their lineups, with 10 total players coming in north of 50%. That put them in position for a “first place or bust” type of day depending on how those conviction plays fared — and they fared just fine.
Other Correlations
While we don’t typically think of them as correlated, the top two wide receivers from the same team actually have a positive 0.18 correlation, stronger than (for example) the classic RB+DST pairing that we still see plenty of in tournaments.
A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith were even stronger plays than that, considering that both were priced under $6,000, while taking on one of the league’s two worst defenses. It felt inevitable that the Eagles passing attack would eventually get going, and in retrospect a matchup with the Cowboys was a fairly obvious time for that to happen.
The Eagles put up just 21 points in a disappointing loss, with two of those touchdowns coming from Jalen Hurts on the ground. Still, Smith and Brown combined for 14 catches, 199 yards and a score, and by rostering both of them jbigglesworth didn’t have to try to decide who the better play was — a difficult task thanks to their virtually identical usage this season.
Both Eagles receivers were among the players they had more than 50% exposure to, with a bit more of Smith than Brown. While flipping those exposures would’ve been better in retrospect, that’s not something I’d concern myself with while cashing a million-dollar check.
The Chalk
Cleveland was the fairly obvious best play on the slate, thanks to their elite pass rush and an excellent matchup against Geno Smith and the Raiders. The Browns came into the week 2nd in sacks per game while the Raiders were second in sacks allowed, which is a great combination at $2,900. The Browns defense was jbigglesworth 3rd most used “player” behind Gibbs and Hunter Henry.
I’m not sure if Henry really qualifies as chalk at 13.3% ownership, but Bigglesworth had nearly 90% exposure. I was also on Henry — though to a much lesser extent — thanks to the elite matchup. The Benglas had allowed the most (real life) points per game in the NFL, and the most fantasy points to tight ends in the league. Tight ends tend to be more matchup-dependent than other positions, so loading up on whichever tight end gets to play the Bengals might be a wise idea moving forward.
This lineup also included Emmanuel Wilson, who was thrust into a starting role for the Packers with Josh Jacobs injured. There was some doubt about Jacob’s status until pregame inactives were announced with likely kept Wilson’s ownership lower than it otherwise would’ve been, but he was a screaming value as a solid home favorite against a mediocre run defense. Wilson was not one of jbigglesworth’s most-owned players, but at 29.3% they were a bit ahead of the field.
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The Sleepers
The only players in this lineup with single-digit ownership were the main passing stack of Jameis Winston and Wan’Dale Robinson, whom we’ve already covered. Yet that serves as another reminder not to blindly force low-owned players — especially without correlating them — as the field is sharp enough now that players go under-owned for a reason.
Pictured: Jahmyr Gibbs
Photo Credit: Imagn
