James Gagnon continues with our weekly winners recap and thoughts on the winners lineups.
Breaking Down The Winners Lineups
DraftKings
TheBrewster – Wins a Million Draft Kings
There was pretty much one thing all winners had in common, and that was that they all owned Russell Wilson, Doug Baldwin, and Odell Beckham Jr., and TheBrewster had all three and rode them to a cool million dollars.
Wilson and Baldwin were the actually the 2nd-highest owned QB-WR pair next to Jameis Winston and Mike Evans.
Tampa stunk the bed against New Orleans and the Seattle pair did exactly what they’ve been doing for the past two weeks. ODB Jr. has also been on a tear recently and obviously continued that Monday night against the Dolphins.
TheBrewster saved some money at running back to be able to afford two high-level wide receivers in Alshon Jeffery and Brandon Marshall, who combined for a total of 53.2 points.
The “cheap” running backs TheBrewster hit on were Isaiah Crowell and Eddie Lacy. Crowell hadn’t scored double-digit points since week 3 and was only owned by .3% of teams. Think about that, 0.3% of approximately 1million lineups comes out to about 30,000 teams rostering Crowell…and 3 of the top-10 had him on their teams.
Eddie Lacy being so lowly owned, at 5%, was a bit of a surprise to me as he had two really good games before his benching against Detroit and all news was he would regain his starting job against Dallas. Lacy hit 100 yards rushing for the 3rd of his last 4 games.
Julius Thomas and the Kansas City Defense rounded out the rest of TheBrewster’s team. Julius Thomas is beginning to carve out his role in what is one of the most explosive passing offenses of the 2015 season. Kansas City continued their defensive prowess by scoring double-digit points for the 9th time in 14 games.
Players Owned On The Top-10 Teams
QB
R. Wilson – All 10 teams
RB
T. Gurley – 5 of 10
I. Crowell – 3
D. Martin – 2
E. Lacy – 2
L. Miller – 2
D. Williams – 2
TJ. Yeldon – 2
McCoy, Hightower, Stewart, and Draughn -1
WR
D. Baldwin – 10 of 10
O. Beckham Jr – 10
T. Lockett – 5
B. Marshall – 3
J. Landry – 3
Maclin, Watkins, Hurns, Cobb, Ginn Jr, Green, and Jeffery -1
TE
J. Reed – 5 of 10
Gates, H Miller, Barnidge, Thomas, and Z Miller – 1
FanDuel
Perfect Lineup
QB – R. Wilson – 32.28 pts – 10.7% – $8,500
RB – I. Crowell – 27.9 pts – .2% – $7,900
RB – T. Gurley – 27.2 pts – 5.5% – $5,200
WR – D. Baldwin – 29.2 pts – 18.6% – $6,800
WR – O. Beckham Jr. – 32.1 pts – 20.8% – $9,300
WR – T. Ginn Jr. – 25.5 pts – 4.7% – $6,000
TE – J. Reed – 22.5 pts – 5.7% – $5,900
K – C. Boswell – 18 pts – 7% – $4,700
DT – Jax – 23 pts – 1.4% – $4,300
What a different lineup from last week’s 5 player Pittsburgh stack. Yet, it still had a QB-WR stack. And followed the trend of winners past of saving money at RB to pay for top receiver talent. While this is the what the perfect lineup could’ve looked like, and not an actual winning lineup, you can see that it’s not far off from TheBrewsters’ winning lineup with 4 out of 8 players being the same.
Top Performers By Position
Quarterbacks
Russell Wilson has thrown for 5, 3, 5, and 3 TD’s in his last four games and should continue the scorching streak against a Cleveland defense that has given up less than 24 points only twice all season. You read that right, Cleveland has allowed 24 or more in 11 of 13 games this year.
Eli Manning is a tough read. We know he can put up games like this, we just never know when. With his Giants playing the Carolina Panthers in week 15, you can probably bet against Eli…then again, he could go off for a ton. Who knows with this guy.
Blake Bortles is on pace for 4,337 passing yards and 37 TD’s.
Ryan Fitzpatrick is averaging 27.6 points over his last 3 games and 22.71 over his last 6.
Mariota continues to score points by any means necessary by catching a 44 yard touchdown to count for 11.4 points of his 23.36 in week 14.
Running Backs
Isaiah Crowell was the top scoring running back this week, but don’t look for that to continue. His line of 20-145-2 accounts for nearly a third of his rushing yards on the year and half of his total touchdowns. With Seattle up next, his ownership level will be justifiably low.
Todd Gurley came back onto the scene to be the 2nd scoring back this week. He’s got a short turnaround and plays on Thursday night, so he probably won’t be on most of your radars this week. Still, pay attention to what he does.
Eddie Lacy and James Starks each scored over 24 points as the Packers decided to ground and pound the Cowboys. I don’t see Starks as a viable weekly play as long as Lacy’s healthy and meeting his curfews. This is Lacy’s time of the year and he’s heating up while his price is low.
Wide Receivers
Odell Beckham is from another planet. Sure, he has super sticky gloves, but so does everyone else and none of them are doing what he’s doing. Well, some are, but you get my drift. Becks has gone over 100 yards receiving in each of the last 6 games, but has a tough matchup upcoming against Josh Norman and the Carolina D.
Baldwin and Lockett are a product of a change of philosophy due to injuries in Seattle, along with stellar quarterback play from Russell Wilson. When you peel back some of the numbers, however, these guys are too reliant on the TD ball and don’t get huge amounts of targets or huge chunks of yards. The Browns are next so the streak could continue.
Tedd Ginn Jr is another boom or bust player who gets huge chunks, being tied for 4th in the league for plays of over 40 yards. He also has 8 TD’s on the year, but is just too unreliable for me to play in cash games.
AJ Green has obviously got some issues ahead of him with the loss of Andy Dalton. He connected on a long strike with the other AJ, as in McCarron, but that dude is young and untested and AJ Green can only do so much by himself.
Brandon Marshall has had a great year so far with a line of 89-1187-11. Outside of a 3 game injury stretch where he played subpar football, he’s been a must play every week.
Tight End
Jordan Reed was the 8th highest scoring play in all of DFS this week with his 30 points. In the real world, he’s 2nd among TE’s in receptions…7th in receiving yards…4th in TD’s…and has 10 plays of 20+ yards. He is healthy and he is playing great football right now.
Good luck in the final weeks of the NFL season, but most of all, have fun!!!
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