GPP Leverage: 3-Game Saturday Slate

Hey, guys — welcome back to a special edition of the GPP Leverage column, where we are going to focus on three-game slates! We have a few of these three-game slates coming up to close the season, starting this Saturday afternoon, as well as on Christmas day.

Three-game strategy is completely different than our normal main slates, and we’ll be looking back at the history of some optimal three-game slate lineups as well as discussing general large-field strategy for these smaller slates. Then we’ll take a closer look at this Saturday’s slate specifically.

I know last week I teased the defense and defensive correlation column, and I promise you that is coming, but we will be pushing that to next week’s W16 column. It will be a fun one.

Before diving into three-game strategy specifically, let’s still take a look at last week’s main-slate perfect lineup to see what we can learn:

Are we starting to trend toward our high-priced QBs being more viable again?!? I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but this is now the second time in the last three weeks that either Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen has been optimal, and it’s been someone $6K or better for the last six weeks in a row (since Week 8 — Sam Howell). Perhaps this is nothing, or perhaps the raw points and more efficient pricing are settling in, making it difficult for the true cheap guys to be the perfect QBs. That doesn’t mean they still aren’t viable quite often — like Desmond Ridder almost was this past week. It’s something to continue to monitor. In hindsight, Lamar was always a great play, and I mentioned paying up to be contrarian at QB in the column last week. The Rams have shown an ability to push and score with most teams, creating fun fantasy environments, something we’ll potentially see again this week in a matchup with Washington that sports a 49 O/U. Lamar hits here as a naked QB, with neither a WR coming along with him (Odell Beckham Jr. wasn’t far off) or a bring-back (Cooper Kupp also wasn’t far off).

The RB pivots hit again! Here were our RB ownership numbers last week — Zack Moss 38.78%, Christian McCaffrey 33.40%, Joe Mixon 26.02%, Alvin Kamara 24.50%, and Clyde Edwards-Helaire 21.43%. It then took a big jump down to a bunch of guys at 10% or under. I still believe that RB is the one place to more comfortably eat chalk, but of course pivots can pay off here like any other position. James Cook was 5.61% owned and Breece Hall was 1.55% owned while both were pretty reasonably priced.

In fact, it was a bit of a reversed week in that regard, as Drake London and D.J. Moore were chalky WRs that were great plays and hit.

We also had another double-TE optimal, which was the second time in three weeks, but only the seventh time since Week 10 of the 2020 season.

Alright — let’s dive into three-game slate histories!