DFS Payline Analysis: NFL Week 16 Review

It’s hard to believe that there’s just one week left of regular season football, which means one more chance for you to finally take down that GPP you’ve been mass entering for the past four months. Week 17 is undoubtedly one of the hardest weeks to predict what will happen due to the fact that players are likely going to get rested on some playoff teams and other teams have nothing left to play for. With that being said, Week 16 ended up being one of the wildest weeks in terms of fantasy output that we’ve seen this season as there were a great deal of under-the-radar players that had breakout performances.

If you want proof for how whacky Week 16 ended up being, look no further than Adam Thielen and Sam Bradford. Prior to Saturday’s game, Thielen had gone over the 100 yard milestone just twice this season, and had been targeted double-digit times just once in 2016. On Saturday he ended up being the highest scoring player on the slate after catching 12 passes for 202 yards and two touchdowns. Sam Bradford also had his best game of the season in a loss to the Packers, completing 34 passes for 382 yards and three touchdowns.

When all the scores went final this week, the top scoring lineups on FanDuel and Draftkings rose around ten percent from where they were last week, and the GPP paylines on both sites rose about nine percent. This isn’t totally unexpected seeing that top scorers and paylines on both sites were down about four percent after Week 15.

FanDuel

As always, we’ll kick things off for this week by taking a look at the small buy-in portion of the FanDuel slate, which contains the $1 Dive, $2 Snap, and the $5 Sling TV Rush. Two out of the three tournament winners in this buy-in range ended up utilizing a two-man Packers stack of Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson, which paid off handsomely as the Green Bay duo combined for over 69 FanDuel points on Sunday. The winner of the Snap went in a slightly different direction as they utilized a sneaky three-man Seahawks stack that contained Russell Wilson, Doug Baldwin, and Jimmy Graham. All three Seahawks players were under six percent owned in this particular contest, and the trio combined for 75.1 points. All three winners had Jordy Nelson in their lineups but one lineup in particular is worth noting, as user sheepdog223 won $10,000 in the Dive despite getting a 4.8 point performance from Tyler Lockett. They were able to hit it big with almost all their other picks and ended up with 213.98 points, which is outstanding considering one of their players put up a total dud.

Moving onto the medium buy-in selection of contests, which includes the $12 Kickoff and the $25 Saturday Million. User petteytheft89 was able to make $30,000 dollars by winning the Kickoff contest thanks to a two-man stack of Rodgers and Nelson as well as solid performances by David Johnson, LeSean McCoy, and Adam Thielen. They were able to get first place despite utilizing Dontrelle Inman and Vernon Davis, who combined for 7.7 points, which is pretty incredible when you consider the fact that there were over 14,000 entries in the tournament. In the Saturday Million, user dannygold77 was a huge winner as won first and second place in the tournament, taking home over $300,000. Dannygold77’s main lineup contained five players that made it over the 30 point mark on Saturday, which includes Aaron Rodgers, David Johnson, Jordy Nelson, Adam Thielen, and Doug Baldwin. Only two players that they utilized had ownership percentages over 15 percent, and when you get multiple 30 point performances out of players with low ownership, you have a great shot at making some serious cash.

For the high buy-in selection of tournaments, we’ll look at the $100 Blitz, $300 Monster, and the $1,000 Gunslinger offerings from Saturday. In the Blitz tournament, user dlaake put up the second highest top score in the contest that we’ve had since Week 7 by using a two-man Colts stack which included Andrew Luck and T.Y. Hilton. That particular stack wasn’t overly successful but they were able to hit it big on their two running backs as David Johnson and Jay Ajayi combined for 59 points. When it was all said and done dlaake put up a score of 192.32, which was more than eight points higher than the second-place finisher. In the Monster contest, user coachs111 put up a score of 199.8, which is the highest top score that’s been seen in this tournament since this column started. Coachs111 utilized a Seahawks stack of Wilson and Baldwin and was able to vault up the leaderboards by being one of the 37 people in the entire tournament that selected Adam Thielen. In the notoriously shark infested Gunslinger contest, DFS heavyweight saahilsud was able to win the $50,000 top prize by putting up a score of 168.6. Much like coachs111, saahilsud utilized a two man Seahawks stack and selected David Johnson as his running back and those three players went on to score more than half of his lineup’s total points.

Switching gears quickly, we’ll take a look at the paylines for the GPP tournaments offered on FanDuel. Between Week 14 and Week 15, paylines decreased around four percent on FanDuel, and on the heels of that decline, the payline rose nine percent on average in Week 16. If you wanted to cash with your entries this week on FanDuel you needed to make it over the 133 mark, and surprisingly enough one of the hardest to cash was the $1 Dive. In the medium and high buy-in slates, you needed to score at least 136 points in order to cash, and in some cases you needed to put up over 137.5 points to find yourself in the money. The spread between the easiest and hardest tournaments to cash was just five points, so contests were certainly tough on FanDuel this week, unsurprisingly.

In order to figure out what happened in cash games this week on FanDuel, we’ll examine the Big $25 Double Up, which had 4,957 total entries on Saturday. The payline this week settled at 129.66, which is an increase of over 16 points from where the payline was for Week 15. This week was particularly tough for some of the higher owned players as names like Drew Brees, Jordan Howard, T.Y. Hilton, Michael Crabtree, and Cameron Brate all saw ownership percentages upwards of 60 percent. None of these players ended up scoring more than 16 FanDuel points, which means if you had the foresight to fade them this week you were already way above most other players. David Johnson remained one of the chalkier options this week but he rewarded players who utilized him in their lineups by putting up a 31.6 point performance against the Seahawks. As always in cash game style tournaments, it is paramount to figure out which players to fade and which highly owned options to use, as these decisions often times determine whether or not you double your buy-in.

Draft Kings

Leading off for the Draftkings breakdown, we’ll take a look at the lower buy-in portion of the slate, which contains the $3 Play Action and the $9 Slant. User rm0303 took down the top prize of $5,000 by assembling a lineup that ended up scoring 262.18 points, which is 19 points higher than the previous high score put up in this tournament since we began tracking scores back in Week 7. Rm030 deployed a two-man Packers stack with Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson, and was able to crush the field by selecting David Johnson, Cameron, Meredith, Allen Robinson, and Adam Thielen who were all less than 14 percent owned and they all scored more than 26.5 Draftkings points. In the Slant, user ending took down first place on the back of a Wilson and Baldwin stack with big performances from Mark Ingram, Sammy Watkins, and Cameron Meredith peppered in.

For the medium buy-in section of the tournament, we’ll be looking at the $50 Chop Block, as the tournament that gave $1,000,000 to the winner in Week 16 was the Main Event Championship. There was a grand total of 28,409 entries made in the Chop Block, and user blue3jay was able to snag the $100,000 first prize by piecing together a lineup that ended up with 251.28 points. Their roster construction was similar to other lineup’s we’ve seen this week as they utilized a stack of Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson, and hit it big with selections of David Johnson, Allen Robinson, and Adam Thielen. Every player in their lineup put up at least 11 points, and just three selections (Todd Gurley, Delanie Walker, and the Jaguars defense) that they made scored less than 20 Draftkings points, which is quite impressive.

For the high buy-in tournaments, we’ll look at the $333 Wildcat and the $1,500 Main Event Championship. User underjones was able to place first in both tournaments and ended up winning $1,100,000 dollars by scoring 236.2 points. What’s interesting about their lineup is that they decided not to stack Russell Wilson and Doug Baldwin, as they selected Jimmy Graham as the second man in the stack. Despite that pitfall, they were able to walk away as a huge winner by hitting on their selections of Jay Ajayi, Mark Ingram, Jordy Nelson, Adam Thielen, and David Johnson, who all put up more than 25 points on Saturday. Assembling a lineup that gets to 236 points despite getting performances of 2.5 (Kenny Britt), 12.3 (Jimmy Graham), and 6 (Saints defense) points is an amazing feat, and underjones was certainly a worthy winner this week.

All in all, paylines for the GPP tournaments on Draftkings rose about nine percent on average from where they were back in Week 15. If you wanted to cash in the multiple entry tournaments, you needed to put up at least 143.3 points in the lowest level of buy-ins, and this number rose to 150 in the medium buy-in portion and topped out at 161.16 in the Main Event Championship. Much like on FanDuel, players who were able to avoid highly-touted plays like Jordan Howard, T.Y. Hilton, and DeAndre Hopkins found themselves at an immediate advantage, as there were plenty of lesser-owned options available who put up fantastic performances.

Switching gears quickly in order to figure out how cash games went, we’ll take a gander at the Massive $25 Double Up, which featured 13,793 entries. The payline ended up finishing at 134.8, which is slightly less points than it normally takes to cash. With that being said, it was still seven points higher than last week’s payline, for a point of comparison. Given the sheer number of players that had monster performances, if you were able to look past the chalk and find the diamonds in the rough, you almost certainly cashed.

In Review

Week 16 was a pretty wild week where most of the high scoring players seemingly came out of nowhere. On weeks like this it can be very tough to finish in the money if you didn’t have the foresight to make a lineup that had under-the-radar plays on it. Moving forward into Week 17, I implore you to do plenty of research, as this upcoming week is sure to be tricky with players resting and some teams having absolutely nothing to play for. That’ll do it for this week! Good luck in Week 17, and let’s cash some tournaments in the last week of the regular season!