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 3 featured an extra-large 13-game slate and the standard $20 buy-in Millionaire Maker contest.
For the second week in a row, we had a 150-entry player take down first place. Long-time pro DFS player ehafner is no stranger to million-dollar prizes, so let’s see how he did it this time.
The Lineup
ehafner squeaked by with a 4.5-point win with his tightly correlated lineup.
The Stack
This week, a single stack with no bring back was the path to victory. Surprisingly, Drake Maye and Hunter Henry found their way into the winning lineup despite the Patriots only putting up 14 points. It helped that all 14 of those points came on passing touchdowns from Maye to Henry, with Henry also accounting for more than two-thirds of their total passing yards.
They were also both fairly low-owned, which was probably the reason why ehafner rostered them. However, he was under the field on Maye and barely over it on Henry, so this lineup was likely the result of a solid runout from an optimizer or simulation tool.
It’s also worth pointing out that while Maye did help ehafner win the contest, he wasn’t a necessary component. Marcus Mariota outscored Maye at $1,300 cheaper and was, in theory, a better play—though Mariota lineups probably wouldn’t include Henry, who was in fact a necessary piece.
Other Correlations
The more impressive part of this lineup was all of the other built-in correlations. To start, he rostered the two top receivers in the Rams-Eagles games, Puka Nacua and AJ Brown. We saw the same dynamic last week with Rome Odunze and Amon-Ra St. Brown.
That strategy makes sense with concentrated offenses like the Rams. More than 30% of their total pass volume had gone to Nacua heading into Week 3, so if the game turned into a shootout, it was highly likely he’d be involved. While Brown hadn’t seen that usage yet this season, we had a long track record of him being the alpha receiver they leaned on when they needed to attack downfield.
This lineup also featured the classic RB1 and defense stack with Jordan Mason and the Vikings Defense. The logic there is that running backs, especially those who aren’t pass catchers, benefit from the same positive game script as their team’s defense. Our correlation tool shows that the impact isn’t as strong as one might think, but it worked out here. When a defense scores multiple times in the first half, it makes it easy for a team to kill the clock with their running back.
Finally, this roster featured an opposing RB/WR duo in Chuba Hubbard and Darnell Mooney. There’s a similar logic there, in that a positive game script for the running back’s team also increases the pass rate for the opposing team. The data bears that out, with the correlation roughly double that of RB1/defense. Neither Hubbard nor Mooney scored well, but the logic was sound with Carolina winning in a blowout.
The Chalk
The only player we’ve yet to mention from this lineup is Jonathan Taylor. The Colts RB came into the week behind only Christian McCaffrey in opportunities on the season and saw 20 more touches in a dominant Colts win. The game script, matchup, and usage were all strong for Taylor, who came in a good bit cheaper than the other elite backs on the slate. Taylor was ehafner’s most rostered player outside of Jordan Mason.
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The Sleepers
The two least popular pieces in this lineup were the correlated duo of Hubbard and Mooney. Sometimes players are unpopular for a reason, as those were the only players in this lineup not to crack double digit points. Henry and Maye were also fairly low-owned, but they paid off.
The lesson here is that you don’t need to be perfect with every spot in your lineup, even in huge contests like this. ehafner took swings on a handful of low-owned pieces and only needed half of them to hit to walk away a million dollars richer. Keep that in mind when building rosters, and don’t be afraid to take some big swings.
Pictured: Puka Nacua
Photo Credit: Imagn
