GPP Leverage: Week 5

Welcome back for the fifth NFL GPP Leverage column of the season. If you missed the Week 1 edition of GPP Leverage, I recommend you take a minute to read the intro from Week 1 to get a feel for the goals of this column.

The Week 4 main slate ran out fairly well for the concepts we discussed here in Leverage, as a direct path to winning most DFS tournaments involved low-owned and fairly concentrated game stacks with a bit of chalk mixed in around them. For example, having a Jordan Love double stack with Jayden Reed, Tucker Kraft, and an Aaron Jones bring-back scored over 100 points on its own on DraftKings. This stack provided excellent leverage off of the much more chalky Cardinals-Commanders game stacks, most of which utilized TE Elijah Higgins, who failed at roughly 10x the ownership of Kraft. From there, all you needed to add in was a chalky Nico Collins and Diontae Johnson to be in contention for first place in most GPPs. Easy game! (If only.)

Through the first four weeks of the season, we’ve used this space to introduce an additional concept for gaining leverage each week. To recap, in Week 1, we focused on opportunities to gain leverage arising from general uncertainty around macro team identities and micro player roles. We built on that in Week 2, continuing to look for uncertainty leverage while also seeking leverage opportunities based on potential overreactions to the previous week by the field. In Week 3, we discussed late-swap leverage, and in Week 4, we considered utilizing the recently-lower NFL scoring environment to gain leverage through especially correlated lineups.

Now, in Week 5, it is convenient that I believe this main slate sets up well for utilizing all four of the leverage concepts we’ve discussed so far this season. This week, we’ll go concept-by-concept to explore where we can gain leverage against our opponents.

Late-swap