DFS Payline Analysis: NFL Week 7 Review

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the NFL DFS payline breakdowns column! My name is Alex Gormley and every week I’ll be bringing you a recap of the most popular NFL contests on FanDuel and DraftKings. We’ll cover the winning scores and the number of points it took to cash in both cash games and GPP contests.

After doing as much research as possible and listening to every podcast known to man, DFS players often feel both fatigued and relieved once the week is done but there is important information to be gathered by going over the results of the competitions you entered. By understanding how some of the top players construct their rosters week in and week out, we can be sure to improve our eye for daily fantasy and give ourselves the best chance to make better lineups in the future.

FanDuel

First up on the docket are the GPPs that were offered Sunday by Fanduel.  This week there was one huge winner, tossboss, who placed first in the NFL Dive, Snap, and Sunday Million tournaments, which brought his total winnings to over $330,000 for the day. The lineup he used consisted of a few chalky options (A.J. Green, Jacquizz Rodgers and Mike Evans) that had over 27 percent ownership but was able to separate from the rest of the field by hitting big on a three-man Colts stack which had less than 14 percent ownership on each player.

The Blitz and the Monster both had entry fees of over $100 and due to the higher barrier of entry the score it took to win was significantly lower than the score necessary to win at the cheaper GPPs. A winning score of 193.62 was posted for the Blitz tournament by stawho, who had the same Colts stack as tossboss but ended up using the Chiefs defense and Matt Bryant, who combined for just 24 points. Daveterp was able to win $100,000 in the Monster by playing a three-man Tampa Bay stack of Jameis Winston, Jacquizz Rodgers, and Mike Evans which led to a final point tally of 192.26. Surprisingly, he managed the win with a whopping five players who were over 33 percent owned.

As far as the payline is concerned with the FanDuel GPPs, you needed to score at least 132 points in the big contests to have a shot at cashing. As you advance higher in the scale of buy-ins, the number needed to cash crept past 140. The payline this week seems a bit higher than usual, which makes sense seeing that there were a number of chalky options who ended up paying off handsomely for those who used them. Spencer Ware, Mike Evans, A.J. Green, Julio Jones, and Jacquizz Rodgers all had ownership percentages of 36 percent and above and scored more than 16 FanDuel points with four of them going over the 20-point mark. In future weeks it should be a bit easier to cash in these tournaments as, often times, chalky options can sink teams if the players underperform. The decision to fade chalky players did not pay off this week but in the future, this strategy will surely pay off.

For cash games on FanDuel, the payline was above 145 for almost all of the big double-ups. When you think about the dichotomy between cash game lineups and GPP lineups, people inherently go with safer options in their cash games, so it makes sense that it took about 10 more points to cash in the big field double-ups. Daily fantasy players are less willing to take risks in a large cash contest, which means the payline is bound to be high due to the fact that there won’t be significant variance in the different players used in most lineups.

In a similar fashion to the GPPs, there was extremely high ownership of many of the chalkier players this week in cash games. Jacquizz Rodgers, Julio Jones, A.J. Green, and Mike Evans all had over 67 percent ownership and Spencer Ware had over 53 percent ownership after news broke that Jamaal Charles’ knee had experienced swelling. If you didn’t play most or all of these players, you were a longshot to cash this week but there will be weeks where highly owned guys fail to reach value and more contrarian plays will pay off. The places where most people differentiated in cash games on FanDuel this week came at the quarterback, kicker, and defense spots.

Click Next to get to Draft Kings Payline Analysis --->

[pagebreak]

Draft Kings

With all of the FanDuel competitions out of the way, we’ll swing over to Draft Kings and take a look at what went down in their neck of the woods for Week 7. In the smaller buy-in tournaments, the score that it took to win was in the range of 233-244 points. Due to bountiful fantasy efforts from the Bengals and Buccaneers, most of the winning lineups in GPPs in this range contained some mix of players from both teams. This is particularly interesting because players like A.J. Green, Mike Evans, and Jacquizz Rodgers all had higher than 25 percent ownership. With the success of the aforementioned players, the lower buy-in tournaments reminded us that we only need to fade chalky players if there are better options available.

To win the Millionaire Maker this week, it took a score of 238.64 by jtortona, who used a lineup which included four players who had ownerships of 35 percent or more. Their roster included the popular plays of DeMarco Murray, Jacquizz Rodgers, A.J. Green, and Julio Jones but they were able to pull away from the rest of the pack by hitting big on Michael Thomas, Kirk Cousins, and Jay Ajayi, each of whom had less than 10-percent ownership. In the Wildcat tournament, which had a $333 dollar buy-in, the top score was 235.62, which is impressive for a tournament where the buy-in is so large. In large buy-in tournaments, players can tend to go with safer options due to the fact that the cost to play is so high. The $1,500 Luxury Box tournament had one player who had entries that finished in first, second, and fourth for a total of $95,000. User porkdinner was able to win with a score of 211.28, where he used just three players who had ownership percentages larger than 12.5 percent.

For the paylines in the GPP tournaments on DraftKings, you needed to put up at least 154 points to cash in the lower buy-in contests. As the buy-in scale moves higher, you needed to get over 160 points to cash in the $5-$20 range and in the $1500 Luxury Box you needed to get over the 173 mark to cash, which is very high. As previously mentioned the amount of points needed to cash this week was higher than usual due to the success of highly owned players.

DraftKings cash games required you to score over 170 points in order to cash in Week 7. In the Massive $5 Double Up we saw huge ownership for the same batch of players that went highly owned in FanDuel cash games, which included a whopping 78.7 percent of the over 40,000 lineups using Jacquizz Rodgers. I was able to squeak by and cash in my double-ups using a lineup that was a bit unconventional and had Marqise Lee in my flex spot. My final point tally was 178.78, and I ended up losing in a head-to-head matchup where my opponent was able to put up 197 points.

If you failed to cash in most of your lineups, don’t fret! Week 7 was a tough week for those of us that like to be a contrarian due to the fact that highly owned players put up a large number of points. This week was a perfect storm for cash games due to the fact that there were a couple of incredibly cheap running back options, which allowed most players to load up on three high-priced wide receivers. In upcoming weeks where the chalky options aren’t as obvious, it should be a bit trickier for lesser skilled players to do well in tournaments as there will be more potential ways to construct your roster and put up big numbers.

That’ll do it for the payline breakdown this week! Hopefully you digest all of the information available from analyzing Week 7 and use it to shape your plays moving forward.