Week 7 Draftkings Review

Week 7 quickly became chalky, but there were still several ways you could go. Though NFL has been highly successful for me this year, I simply had an awful week. My lineup construction and final plays were egregious even though, in hindsight, I feel pretty good about my process. Throughout the year I have continued to stack the falcons or stack against them and it has paid off mightily. With the Lions in town, stacking against ATL seemed obvious. The Falcons are terrible against the pass and solid against the run, and even though Detroit wants to run the ball, it seemed obvious that they would come out throwing. My greatest mistake this week was assuming the Lions would do the smart thing, they still gave Peterson 11 carries against a pass funnel defense. I could blame the Lions for being so inept, but we have seen over and over that they are not a sharp team. Yes, they won, but that’s a product of playing the Falcons than it is them actually winning. Essentially, I only have myself to blame for playing Stafford over Burrow and Murray. I expected Stafford to be a top 5 play on this slate, and while he threw for 340 yards, the Lions seem to Run the ball inside the RedZone more than they should. This is why I faded the DET/JAX game in week 6, and it is exactly why I should have faded the DET/ATL game this week. My two theories, always fade the lions and always stack the ATL game collided this week. Stacking ATL games has paid dividends this year so I found another shootout highly probable. However, I should have valued the Detroit fade theory greater than Atlanta’s porous pass defense. Thinking that a team will do something because they should can be a massive flaw when analyzing fantasy football. Detroit should have never given AP touches and should have given Hock/Golladay more targets, but my flaw was overlooking Detroit’s willingness to adjust. I know this, and can only point fingers at myself.

As for my lineup construction, I had Williams, Gio or both in every lineup. You simply had to play them at their price. I liked CEH coming into the week but crossed him off the list Sunday in favor of James Connor, who narrowly missed out on 2 TD’s. In lineups which had both Gio and Williams, I paid up for Russ and stacked him with Lockett and Metcalf. I reasoned that if Russ was going to pay off his 8k price tag, then 2 of his receivers would go off. I was looking at 50-60 total fantasy points between his weapons and Lockett got all of it. This actually hurt me worse than most weeks when I double stack because of Hopkins and Adams. Typically, this stack would put me in the money, but because of the other chalk WR’s exploding, it hurt me. I locked in McLaurin, but faded Higgins and Boyd once I chose Stafford over Burrow. The remainder of my WR/flex spots went to Golladay and Ridley or Julio. I wanted leverage by playing as much DET/ATL as possible but recognized you could run on the Lions so I never double-stacked Julio and Ridley. I actually played more Ridley, but it didn’t matter which one I played because Adams and Lockett went off. I was essentially faced with the decision to play all chalk, or play the chalk RB’s and pivot to a different passing game. While it’s easy to see that was a bad decision, it has worked thus far. I don’t play random guys at 0.5% ownership, but I do look for lower owned stacks that will create leverage. While Golladay was reasonably owned, Stafford was not, so if he goes for a top 5 day, then my afternoon looks very green. At TE I played Hock in two lineups with Stafford and Golladay then I played Njoku or Harrison Bryant in the others. The constant lesson of this year has been to pay down at TE. I didn’t even need Hock at 5k, even though he had a good day. Just find someone cheap with opportunity and play him. I don’t know why anyone is paying up at TE anymore. You can call it a good tournament or leverage play, but I think you are just getting too cute. The same goes for defense, I played WAS or the Jets. It worked out as it always does. I have had several gpp contenders by taking a 0 from a cheap TE or DEF because of the stacks it affords me. For instance, if you had Lockett, Hopkins and Adams, you were fine regardless of what your DEF and TE did, they were just icing on the cake this week.

Screenshot of the final plays spreadsheet I put together each week. Plays are entered by Saturday night, and then I build my lineups Sunday morning as news breaks. I cross off the players I could not fit in. Green was a good play, Red was bad. Overall success percentage is at the bottom.(This is to see how accurate I was Saturday night) Worst mistakes this week were Stafford and Adams which led to poor success rate with my actual lineups.

Overall, my Saturday night player pool had one of the highest success rate’s of the season. However, my final cutdowns and roster construction was full of mistakes, as I discussed. Hindsight is always 20/20, but I like my process. It has been good, I was simply wrong this week and in the words of GaryV, “If you’re not losing, you’re not playing.” This game requires risk, and when you’re right and everyone else is wrong, man is it beautiful. But sometimes, when you play the game, you lose. Recognize it, learn from it, and move on. Now it’s on to week 8.