Welcome to the DFS carnival! Come on in, take your seats, and get ready for the chaos! But first, before we proceed with the lunacy, let’s look back at last week’s perfect lineup:
MVP Lamar is starting to come through not only in real-life football but DFS too, as he’s now been optimal in two of the last four weeks. Interestingly enough, both times it was naked, without a pass catcher on his team, or his opponent.
Running back continues to be far less chalky this year than last, as all of Isiah Pacheco, James Conner, and Najee Harris were low-owned, low-priced plays.
Davante Adams was always going to be in play, and it’s a great lesson to not get too bogged down in recent box scores when it comes to studs. Keep that in mind for the likes of Stefon Diggs if you’re playing showdown this week.
Other than that, it was a pretty straightforward perfect lineup. There wasn’t even any down lineup correlation, which is something we spoke about last week as a possibility on these big slates. You can think about that again this week, with another 13-game slate on tap.
Moving on to the carnival that is Week 18.
There is plenty of value on a slate like this, with all of the Browns, Chiefs, Rams, and 49ers expected to sit their starters. Check out Anthony Amico’s motivation article for more information on this; it’s important to know what each team is looking like heading into this week. There are some rumblings, for example, that the Eagles may sit their players in the second half if the Cowboys are up big. These are all important scenarios to consider.
I want to look back at the last three years’ final-week optimal lineups to see what we can learn. Particularly, I want to see how many value “randos” that only played in Week 18 were viable. Good news for us all: There is no Davis Mills on this slate — who has been the optimal QB in each of the last two seasons.
One last thing to consider on these bigger slates is that you can leave a bit more money on the table. We saw this last week with $49,200 being optimal on the 13-game slate. Last year’s Week 18 lineup also had an optimal lineup that used $49,200 of their salary, and $48,100 was optimal in Week 17 of 2020.
Taking a look back at the last three years’ optimal lineups:
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