As the 2020 NFL DFS season nears it’s close, it’s been interesting to notice how it’s been a tale of two seasons for the winning lineups in large field GPPs across the industry. Through the first eight weeks of the season, the winning lineups were consistently of the “double stack and bring one back” build variety with correlations and game stacks being the clear path to victory. Over the past two months though MME tournaments have descended into a realm of anarcho-chaos in which naked QBs, two TE lineups, playing offensive players versus their opposing defence, and multiple players from non-QB stacked offences have won millions of dollars. It will be interesting to see how the remainder of the season plays out and playoff teams lock up bye weeks and rest players going into the stretch and other teams without postseason aspirations rest veterans to evaluate younger talent.
DraftKings
NFL $3M Fantasy Football Millionaire [$1M to 1st]
On DraftKings, the million-dollar winner on Sunday was “jhudson1” with a score of 237.32 points. This is the third single entry winner of the NFL $3M Fantasy Football Millionaire this season. The winning lineup featured a naked Jalen Hurts with two pairs of players from other teams. Last weekend it was the pairings of Montgomery/Robinson and Henry/Brown that were joined with a David Carr stack, and this week it was Montgomery/Mooney joined with Swift/Jones that won the day. It’s amazing that the Bears bottom of the league offence has put together two weeks in a row in which they have multiple players in the winning lineup and that this week they were paired with a pair from another struggling NFC North offence that got blown out by the Titans. There is indeed a stark difference between real world and fantasy success.
On a week where most players were building “stars and scrubs” lineups to fit in Henry, Cook, Kamara, Hill, and Kelce while being greeted by screaming values like Pollard, Fournette, Sanders, Bowden and Kmet, it was a balanced build that included only one player over $8k and one player under $4K that actually won it all. A week after the Bears put up over 30 points, Montgomery and Mooney carried only 5% or lower ownership. In all, only two players in the lineup carried double digit ownership and none of these were even in the top 20 owned players in the contest. If having a two TE lineup win the past week wasn’t enough to tilt veterans of the game into oblivion, certainly a lineup playing a TE versus their opposing defence winning the million-dollar prize will.
$12.5M Fantasy Football World Championship Final [$2.5M to 1st]
If a one-million-dollar prize isn’t enough to peak people’s interest, the $2.5 million-dollar top prize for the Fantasy Football World Championship is something to behold. The huge winner on the day was “theWhistlesGoWooo” who had a whopping eight entries of the 200 total in the contest. Their double stack of Murray with Edmonds and Hopkins put together an 87.74 point core to build around and the huge games from Ridley and Pollard – who were beneficiaries of injury related boosts to their workloads- were more than enough to cover for lacklustre performances from the chalky Kamara and Sanders. Taysom Hill lives to crush dreams and Sean Payton hates your fantasy teams.
Of their eight lineups in the contest, all were double stacks with no bring backs, with two Mahomes, two Murray, and one of each of Jackson, Brady, Rivers, and Goff. Even quarterbacks that garner much of their scoring in ceiling games from running like Murray and Jackson were double stacked. Leonard Fournette who has never been a competent receiver was a part of the Brady double stack. Kelce and Andrews made up half the TE exposure in the group, but the rest were punts like Smythe, Schultz and Everett in this year of punting TE. The rest of the lineup group exposure broke down like this:
| Player | Exposure | Ownership |
| Alvin Kamara | 75% | 74.0% |
| Tony Pollard | 62.5% | 32.0% |
| Lynn Bowden | 62.5% | 32.5% |
| Arizona Defence | 62.5% | 11.0% |
| Dalvin Cook | 37.5% | 3.5% |
| Leonard Fournette | 37.5% | 27.0% |
| Emmanuel Sanders | 37.5% | 30.5% |
| Travis Kelce | 37.5% | 23.5% |
| Calvin Ridley | 25.0% | 7.0% |
| Durham Smythe | 25.0% | 1.5% |
| Seattle Defence | 25.0% | 19.0% |
| Allen Robinson | 25.0% | 6.5% |
| Kyler Murray | 25.0% | 29.5% |
| DeAndre Hopkins | 25.0% | 27.5% |
| Patrick Mahomes | 25.0% | 17.0% |
| Terry McLaurin | 25.0% | 9.0% |
| Tre’Quan Smith | 25.0% | 27.5% |
| Tom Brady | 12.5% | 9.5% |
| Chris Godwin | 12.5% | 8.0% |
| Lamar Jackson | 12.5% | 8.5% |
| Marquise Brown | 12.5% | 1.5% |
| Jakobi Meyers | 12.5% | 1.5% |
| Mark Andrews | 12.5% | 11.5% |
| Chase Edmonds | 12.5% | 1.0% |
| Dallas Defence | 12.5% | 1.5% |
| Phillip Rivers | 12.5% | 2.0% |
| Cam Akers | 12.5% | 13.5% |
| TY Hilton | 12.5% | 17.5% |
| Michael Pittman | 12.5% | 3.5% |
| Christian Kirk | 12.5% | 13.0% |
| Dalton Schultz | 12.5% | 0.5% |
| Jonathan Taylor | 12.5% | 16.0% |
| Sammy Watkins | 12.5% | 4.5% |
| Jared Goff | 12.5% | 3.0% |
| Robert Woods | 12.5% | 5.5% |
| Denzel Mims | 12.5% | 5.0% |
| Gerald Everett | 12.5% | 1.0% |
| Clyde Edwards-Helaire | 12.5% | 4.0% |
Kamara disappointed relative to expectations again this week in what has been a largely disappointing season for him. The inconsistency at QB for the Saints has really hurt him in 2020. Playing on the field there didn’t hurt the lineup set as his relatively low score hurt everyone. Being well overweight on Pollard – following the Zeke inactive news – and well overweight on Ridley put “theWhistlesGoWooo” in a great spot to begin with as they were both in the top seven scoring players in the contest. Heavy overweight positions on Bowden and Smythe didn’t hurt them too much in the end either as both came at punt level prices. Congratulations to “theWhistlesGoWooo” on their big win in the final.
NFL $270K Luxury Box [$75K to 1st, Single Entry]
In the world of high stakes single entry contests on DraftKings, “kancoltex” was the big winner with a score of 180.44 points. Their single stack of Kyler Murray with Dan Arnold was an unconventional one, given the condensed target share around Hopkins, but it led to a $75K win despite single digits scores from all of Chark, Arnold, and the Washington DST. All of Murray, Aiyuk, Jones, and Pollard and enormous days and provided two thirds of the lineups total score. Kamara, Aiyuk, and Pollard were three of the top four owned players in the contest, but avoiding all of Sanders, Henry, Bowden, Fournette, Tre’Quan Smith and Jared Cook saved them from some terrible chalky failures. Those six players were each between 22-34% owned in the contest.
Players that adjusted to the Zeke inactive news on Sunday morning were ultimately the ones that had winning days as it allowed them to get off of Fournette, Bowden, and Sanders if they wanted to.
Fanduel
$2M NFL Sunday Million ($500K to 1st)
On Fanduel, the big MME winner was “fanduelbrainlet69” with a score of 203.72 points. Their naked Hurts lineup didn’t include any team correlations and just a single pair of players from the same game in Pollard and Aiyuk. The rest of the lineup was made up of players from seven different games on the eleven-game slate. Despite Kamara and Sanders being two of the chalkier players in DFS on Sunday, neither were featured in the winning lineup as they both struggled with Drew Brees back and QB and with Taysom Hill stealing touchdowns in goal line sets. The most interesting play of the lineup though may have been the previously winless Jets defence as they were expected to be blown out on the road versus the 9-4 Rams. The punt level pricing on the Jets DST allowed “fanduelbrainlet69” to fit in numerous studs at other positions on the way to their big win.
Congratulations to all the big winner in Week 15 of the NFL DFS season!
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