GPP Leverage: Week 10

18+ Only. Restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Not available in all jurisdictions. Trading is risky. 100% loss can occur. See polymarket.com/tos for more information. The Polymarket US App serves as an independent software provider and affiliate of Polymarket US and Polymarket Clearing, the CFTC-regulated exchange and clearing organization.

Welcome to Week 10 Leverage! Last week, we looked at paying all the way down at QB, as we had a uniquely large pool of cheap options available. Drew Lock and Joe Milton III were fine, but it was Shedeur Sanders who delivered slate-winning value at the $4,000 minimum. This week, I want to approach the QB decision from a different direction, starting with the WRs we want to play.

One topic Drew Dinkmeyer regularly covers on Establish The Million is whether an alpha WR can carry his QB to slate-winning value if the receiver hits his ceiling. That helped inspire this week’s topic, although I’m interested in a slightly different decision: if we’re already playing a chalky WR, should we accept a weaker projection and value at QB to create a low-owned stack, or keep the receiver and use a QB who projects better?

This is a topic I’ve speculated on for a while, but it’s particularly relevant here in Week 10: Justin Jefferson and Drake London stand out as our strongest WR values on Sunday’s DraftKings main slate, while Kirk Cousins and Michael Penix Jr. are much less appealing projected QB values. Both receivers are expected to be popular, with considerably less interest in their QBs. Adding those QBs would give us a less common way to play two of the slate’s most appealing WRs while also correlating our bets.

Last Sunday provided a reminder of why this isn’t automatic. Puka Nacua scored 39 DraftKings points, while Matthew Stafford managed just 12.2. Nacua caught 14 passes for 150 yards and a touchdown, but Stafford finished with only 228 passing yards and one TD. Being right about the receiver didn’t make his QB a good addition. In this week’s edition of Leverage, I want to see how that trade-off has worked across a larger group of similar decisions.

To explore that question, I looked at Sunday main slates with at least eight games from 2022 through last week, using Weeks 1-17 in the completed seasons. I focused on WRs who reached at least 15% actual contest ownership while their team’s primary QB stayed below 5%. Those are the ownerships players ultimately received, rather than a test of what we could have anticipated from projected ownerships.

For each receiver, I compared lineups using his own QB with lineups keeping that same WR but using another team’s QB who projected for both more points and more points per $1,000 of salary. The alternative QB didn’t have to be more popular, and his lineup could also include a stack of its own. The table below shows the percentage of entered lineups in each group that reached the top 0.1% of Milly contests or the top 1% of Spy contests.