GPP Leverage: Week 3

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

In Weeks 1 and 2, we focused much of our discussions around onslaughts — that is, the strategy of stacking your QB with at least two teammates. Onslaughts hit in a major way in Week 2, as many tournaments were won with either Giants onslaughts featuring Russell Wilson, Malik Nabers, and Wan’Dale Robinson, or Lions onslaughts featuring Jared Goff, Amon-Ra St. Brown, and Jameson Williams. Bring-backs were also key to each onslaught, particularly with Jake Ferguson and Rome Odunze. Although we won’t be focusing today’s discussion on the onslaught approach, I want to continue looking for opportunities to gain leverage via onslaughts throughout the season.

As we move into Week 3 of the NFL season, here’s one quick anecdote to serve as a reminder of how little we really know at this point in the season. Last year entering Week 3, the market was convinced that the Saints’ revamped offense was unstoppable and the Eagles had one of the worst defenses in the league. This combination of sentiments resulted in Week 3’s Eagles-Saints game being the chalkiest game of the week, yielding the following ownerships in the 282-entry, $1,500 buy-in Game Changer on DraftKings:

• $5,800 Derek Carr, 17%
• $7,500 Alvin Kamara, 32%
• $6,300 Chris Olave, 31%
• $5,300 Rashid Shaheed, 20%

The Eagles won this game 15-12, and Shaheed failed to score a single fantasy point. While I can’t predict which matchup or team is going to be the biggest landmine this week, I want to keep in mind how much more fragile the chalk is early in the season and be willing to think critically about how strong or fragile each spot is.

Moving back to Week 3 of the current 2025 season, I want to highlight some leverage spots that arise from our ability to utilize late swap. For those who need a refresher, late swap refers to our ability to edit which players we roster in our DFS lineups up until the moment each player’s game kicks off. NFL main slates provide the unique opportunity, due to their games generally being played in two distinct kickoff waves that only slightly overlap, to use information from the early window of games to inform us of how we should approach the late window of games with respect to our lineups. If our lineups are off to extremely hot starts through the early games, we should be more willing to play the chalk in the late games and “block” our opponents from catching up to us. On the other hand, if we get off to rough starts through the early games, we should be swapping away from the chalk to contrarian pieces who provide us with unblocked paths to chasing down our opponents on the leaderboards.

Late swap is just one of many tools we can utilize to gain leverage against our opponents, and it’s certainly not necessary that we consider late swap in all of our lineups. But for those lineups that we do plan to consider late swap for, it is crucial that we have a plan for (a) what information we’re looking for in the early games, and (b) how we plan to use that information in the late games. Week 3 sets up as an interesting slate from a late-swap perspective because, despite having 13 games on the slate, a considerable amount of ownership is projected to come from the four games in the late window. If we can use the early window of games to learn important information about where our lineups stand relative to our opponents, we can make smart, informed decisions about how much chalk we can afford to play in the late window.

This week, we’ll go game by game through a handful of matchups to review some of the projected chalk in each window of games and how we can leverage it with late swap in mind.

DAL @ CHI (4:25 p.m. ET)

• We’re starting at the end and working backwards here, as this late-window matchup is projected to carry the heaviest ownership of the day. This matchup has the highest total of the slate by a sizable margin, is the top game in Pat Thorman’s Snaps and Pace column, and is also currently the top game in our GPP Game Scores.
• Caleb Williams, Dak Prescott, Javonte Williams, CeeDee Lamb, George Pickens, Rome Odunze, D.J. Moore, and Jake Ferguson are all expected to carry notable ownership in this game.
• If you’re planning to stack this game in the late window, I suggest making sure you’ve gained important information in the early window to ensure you can afford to play the chalk here. For example, if you fade the chalky Jordan Mason in the early window and he scores 30 points, you should absolutely utilize late swap to pivot off of this matchup.
• I expect the most common way to play this game will be a Williams stack with Odunze and a Ferguson bring-back. With so many offensive options on each team, there are plenty of ways to stack this game uniquely. For example, D’Andre Swift and Olamide Zaccheaus will likely go overlooked but provide excellent leverage off their much chalkier teammates, such as Odunze.