Week 4 of the 2020 NFL season brought some offensive fireworks to the table, making game stacks again the winning formula of the day. The Cowboys and Browns put up a combined 87 points, while two other games went over 60 points and seven other games went over 50 points. It’s no surprise that with Dak Prescott on pace to break the single season passing yards record, that a Dak “double stack and bring one back” accompanied by Joe Mixon, Mike Davis, and Odell Beckham Jr was the winning combination in every winning lineup in the big contests on Sunday. Joe Mixon was the low owned difference maker in lineups as he parlayed a matchup versus the woeful Jaguars into 181 combined yards and three touchdowns including an enormously high 17% team target share. Mike Davis continued to do his best discount rate Christian McCaffrey impersonation with five receptions for 111 combined yards and a TD, while Beckham made his usual virtuoso performance versus the Cowboys putting up 154 combined yards with three TDs. One of the other difference makers on the slate was some “workhorse” backs that didn’t get near their expected workload as Jonathan Taylor, Darrell Henderson Jr., and even Alvin Kamara found themselves mired in unexpected time shares that saw them lose touches and touchdowns.
DraftKings
$4M Fantasy Football Millionaire
The million dollar winner in the $20 entry contest on DraftKings was “RoyalPain21” with a score of 254.08 point. Of the top 36 finishers in the contest, Prescott was the stacked QB in every lineup. This was the first max entry winner of the season in this contest with a full 150 lineups in play. Those 150 though weren’t a shotgun blast, but a very concentrated attack on a few players and games as lineups included only three quarterbacks: 50 Dak Prescott stacks, 47 Josh Allen, and 53 Russell Wilson. All of their Dak stacks were at least “double stack and bring one back” builds.
As with any win, there was some good fortune involved in getting Mixon in the winning lineup while being underweight there, but “RoyalPain21” clearly had a direction they were going, and it worked out. Besides the million dollar lineup, being so heavily overweight on Prescott, Jones, Cooper, Beckham and Lamb must have made for an exceptionally profitable evening of football.
| Player | Exposure | Ownership |
| Dak Prescott | 34% | 8.4% |
| Joe Mixon | 3.3% | 3.8% |
| Ronald Jones II | 42.7% | 16.7% |
| Amari Cooper | 22.7% | 10.3% |
| Odell Beckham Jr. | 26.7% | 15.8% |
| CeeDee Lamb | 26.0% | 9.1% |
| Darren Waller | 22.7% | 17.1% |
| Mike Davis | 17.3% | 19.0% |
| Buccaneers | 39.3% | 18.7% |
Of the top 10 owned players in the contest, three were terrible disappointments in Henderson (23.03%), Lockett (22.54%), and Drake (18.26%), while Kamara (51.67%) wasn’t a killer but certainly not the kind of performance that 52% of people signed up for at $8K.
NFL $300K Game Changer
In the world of high stakes single entry contests on DraftKings, “leonem” was the big winner with a score of 235.38 points. His “double stack and bring one back” lineup including Dak, Cooper, Lamb, and Beckham with Davis and Mixon as the supporting cast was again the winning formula.
Kamara’s ownership was ridiculously high and in hindsight was a good fade opportunity, but Kamara did enough to get “leonem” over the top despite losing two TDs to his running mate, Latavius Murray. Getting a 4.3% owned Mixon in what may have been the best game of his career was also a major help in overcoming the 0 that Adam Trautman put up in his highly touted $2500 DraftKings debut in the Saints starting lineup. Trautman carrying a whopping 36.1% ownership in the single entry contest also softened the blow. The other zero in the top six owned players on the contest was another big win for “leonem” in avoiding the Brandin Cooks landmine.
| Player | Ownership | Points |
| Alvin Kamara | 68.87% | 20.9 |
| Mike Davis | 33.96% | 22.1 |
| DeVante Parker | 33.49% | 24 |
| Ryan Fitzpatrick | 33.02% | 26.3 |
| Adam Trautman | 31.6% | 0 |
| Brandin Cooks | 30.19% | 0 |
Fanduel
$2.75M NFL Sunday Million
The million dollar winner on Fanduel was “notmikestauffer” with a score of 234.78 points. The “double stack and bring one back” lineup construction with Dak, Cooper, Lamb, and Beckham supported by Davis and Mixon was again the winning formula despite the scoring differences between Fanduel and DraftKings. A 3.5% owned Mixon with a three TD day provided the necessary low owned leverage to get over the top to the million dollar prize. The secondary stack of a much higher owned Dalvin Cook (25.2%) with the Vikings DST was also part of the formula despite an unremarkable performance from that unit.
The total 18 TDs scored were pretty close to par for the course this season in the contest winning lineups.
$500K Sun NFL ALL OUT BLITZ
The big winner in high stakes contests on Fandueal was “thedraftcompany” with a score of 221.88 points. Their “double stack and bring one back” lineup construction with Dak, Cooper, Schultz, and Beckham along with Davis and Mixon were the winning combination. Mixon was higher owned here than most contests at 5.6% but the wildly high 71.8% ownership rate for Kamara meant his off day didn’t even matter much as it affected nearly everyone equally. While Lamb was the more common back end of the winning double stack on Sunday, Schultz provided great value at low price point that allowed “thedraftcompany” to fit in an expensive Kamara along with a mid priced highly touted WR in another high scoring game environment in DeVante Parker. In their two other top 10 lineups in the contest “thedraftcompany” also featured game stacks from Dallas/Cleveland with a one off from Miami/Seattle. There was a clear method to the madness.
There has been at least highly owned RB that has failed in each slate this season and pivoting to Mixon on a day that saw Henderson and Drake fail miserably was the leverage move that made all the difference.
Pro Spotlight
“ChipotleAddict” had a top 7 lineup in the DraftKings $4M Fantasy Football Millionaire contest with a score of 249.58 points. The overwhelming majority of lineups of their 150 entries in the contest are “double stack and bring one back” with some “single stack and bring one back” mixed in. The lineup set included exposure to 77 different players including stacks with 11 different quarterbacks. As noted earlier, Kamara’s wildly high ownership helped to mitigate his disappointing performance, but it was likely harder to overcome being 3x the field on Moore and Cooks while having Kirk Cousins as their highest owned QB at 27x the field. While being overweight on Prescott, Cooper, Beckham, and Lamb was a help, being 3x the field on Mixon likely paved the road to their top finish.
| Player | Exposure | Ownership |
| Alvin Kamara | 93.3% | 51.7% |
| Ronald Jones | 67.3% | 16.7% |
| DJ Moore | 44.0% | 11.6% |
| Adam Thielen | 42.7% | 4.6% |
| Tampa Bay DST | 42.0% | 18.7% |
| Darren Waller | 38.7% | 17.1% |
| Brandin Cooks | 35.3% | 13.3% |
| Kirk Cousins | 27.3% | 1.1% |
| Amari Cooper | 26.0% | 10.3% |
| Ezekiel Elliott | 26.0% | 15.7% |
| Hunter Renfrow | 22.7% | 13.4% |
| Justin Jefferson | 22.7% | 7.8% |
| Odell Beckham | 20.0% | 15.8% |
| Jarvis Landry | 19.3% | 7.2% |
| Mike Davis | 19.3% | 19.0% |
If there is any major take away from analyzing these contests weekly and looking at the lineup sets from top players, it’s this:
If you’re not at least single stacking and bringing one back, if not double stacking, you’re burning money. Through four weeks, the winner of every major contest in the industry has been a game stack type build.
Congratulations to all the big winners in Week 4 of the 2020 NFL season!
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