Dinkmeyer’s GPP Leverage: Week 5

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the fifth edition of GPP Leverage for NFL DFS. This article is going to be a catch-all space for my GPP thoughts during the course of the NFL season. In this space, we’ll mix some macro and micro concepts to help improve your odds in tournaments. The goal is to differentiate your play in an intelligent and correlated way that gives you a better chance to get paid off when you’re right.

I think it’s important to note I’m not a football guy who plays DFS. I’m a professional DFS player who plays NFL. So my play is largely through the prism of using resources around me to do what I do best: Play the game of DFS within the context of the NFL. Whether this is you or you’re a football guy who has a better handle on the schemes and the mismatches, there should be something in here for you to improve your game as a DFS GPP player.

WEEK 4 ANALYSIS

Week 4 feels like a big miss for the issues tackled in Leverage. Chalk RBs continued to struggle as Alvin Kamara set a new ownership high point at over 50 percent owned, yet found his way into just 16 percent of the Top 100 lineups in the DraftKings Milly Maker (data courtesy of Fantasy Labs). The second-highest owned RB in the tournament was a colossal bust in Darrell Henderson while the fourth-highest owned RB Kenyan Drake struggled once again. The difference this time was chalk WRs didn’t quite hit at the same rate we’ve seen the first few weeks. DeVante Parker was the highest-owned WR and he delivered on his 23.7 percent ownership, but Tyler Lockett failed at 22.5 percent ownership and DK Metcalf was underwhelming at 19.4 percent. The next tier of WR ownerships was pretty hit or miss with Odell Beckham (15.8) and Will Fuller (15.5) big hits while Hunter Renfrow (13.4) and Brandin Cooks (13.3) sunk lineups. On the flip side, we touched on RB volume as pivot plays and Joe Mixon (20-19-20 touches previous three weeks) was the slate-winning RB at just under 4 percent ownership. Mixon saw the opportunity bump up to 31 touches in the Bengals’ first positive game script of the season.

Leverage also touched on stacking Seattle without Russ, using Ryan Fitzpatrick as the game-stack coordinator and giving yourself more salary flexibility to build a balanced lineup. The result was mixed as Fitzpatrick performed well but was only successfully stacked with one other piece (Parker) and the Seattle WRs didn’t do enough damage to make an impact on the slate. Results aside, the Fitzpatrick-Parker combination was used in over 11% of all lineups in the Milly Maker. Recommending you’d find your path among the top 28,000 Fitzpatrick-Parker lineups is a poor GPP approach, so we’ll consider that a strong L for the content even if Fitzpatrick himself performed well.

The Josh Allen – Stefon Diggs – Darren Waller stacks Leverage identified last week performed admirably and the combination was used in just 1.1 percent of lineups overall. The results were fine, but fine doesn’t compete in GPPs.