DFS Payline Analysis: NFL Week 8 Review

After a frustrating Week 7 for many DFS players, the daily fantasy slate of Week 8 offered plenty of interesting challenges and options for lineups. As a result, it took significantly fewer points to cash in most of the big tournaments on both Draft Kings and FanDuel.

Last week, the most viable roster construction was a lineup that featured multiple cheap running backs and three top wide receivers. With big performances by A.J. Green, Mike Evans, Jacquizz Rodgers, and Spencer Ware, if you didn’t construct your roster in this fashion you had no chance at making significant money. Further illustrating this point, in Fanduel’s Monster tournament last week, the winner of the tournament played a roster that had five players who were over 33 percent owned but this week the winning roster featured only three players who were over 25 percent owned. As a result of there being less obvious “must plays”, the payline in the major GPP tournaments on FanDuel was, on average, 17 percent fewer points than it was last week, which favors players who were able to extract value from lesser-owned players.

 Without further ado, let’s get into the results from Week 8.

FanDuel

For the lower buy-in portion of the FanDuel Guaranteed Prize Pool tournaments, there was one big winner, beastmeister, who was able to net over $130,000 by taking first place in the $2 entry NFL Snap and the $5 entry Sling TV Rush. Unlike last week where many of the winners used high-owned players, beastmeister was able to win with a lineup where not one of their players was more than 19 percent owned. A two-man stack of Amari Cooper and Derek Carr did most of the heavy lifting, while Matt Forte, Devonta Freeman, Terrelle Pryor, Mohamed Sanu, and Rob Gronkowski all tallied over 18 points, which took beastmeister’s best lineup total to 190.12. This is the second week in a row that someone was able to take the top spot in multiple large-field GPPs on FanDuel, seeing that tossboss was able to win the Dive, Snap, and Sunday Million in Week 7.

For the medium buy-in portion of the slate, which ranges from $12-25 in buy-ins, it took between 183 and 185 points in order to come out on top. In the NFL Kickoff, antwon5 was able to win $100,000 by using a lineup which was very similar to beastmeister’s. Antwon5 played Carr, Freeman, Forte, and Cooper, but was able to deviate from the rest of the field by playing Dez Bryant, who was less than one percent owned and finished the night with 19.3 points. In the Sunday Million, user albyb777 was able to win $300,000 with a lineup that was able to put up 183.52 points with a Carr-Crabtree two-man stack. The winning score in the NFL Kickoff was similar to what it was last week, as it took 188.68 points to win it in Week 7. This week’s Sunday Million’s top scorer scored 11 percent fewer points than Week 7’s winner, which signifies players successfully diverting their plays away from the rest of the field.

In the large buy-in GPP tournaments, DFS heavyweight saahilsud was able to win the $100 buy-in Blitz, finished in 2^nd and 3^rd in the Monster, and cashed four of his entries in the Gunslinger. His Blitz winning lineup contained a three-man Raiders stack of Carr-Crabtree-Cooper and he was able to get solid performances out of Devonta Freeman, Devontae Booker, and Rob Gronkowski which put his point total at 175.02. In the $300 Monster, user crandy5 was able to edge out saahilsud by playing Wil Lutz at the kicker position, which is interesting seeing that besides the kicker they had the exact same lineup. In the $1000 entry Gunslinger tournament, csuram88 took first place for $50,000 by using the same three-man Raiders stack that won in the Blitz. Csuram88’s entry had two players that were over 54 percent owned, two players that were over 26 percent owned, and three players that were over 10 percent owned. In these high-entry tournaments, it makes sense that so many people are playing similar lineups seeing how sharp the average player is at this buy-in level.

In terms of what it took to cash in the FanDuel GPP’s for this week, in the lower buy-in portion of the slate, you needed to get at least 112 points to have a shot at cashing. This number rose up to 121 in the highest buy-in tournaments. Altogether, the payline in the big tournaments on FanDuel was 17 percent less than it was last week. Week 8’s payline numbers are much more representative on what it will take to cash on a week-to-week basis.

In order to get some clues about how Week 8 went down for cash games, let’s dissect the Big $25 Double Up, which featured 9195 lineups this week. The highest score was 159.50, which was put up by yogibear859, who was the top scorer due to the fact that he played 7 players who had ownership percentages of less than six percent. Devontae Booker and Mike Evans were among two of the most popular plays this week, with Booker fetching 88.7 percent ownership and Evans ending up at 92.4. Jimmy Graham was also an incredibly popular option in his matchup against his old team, where he garnered 39.7 percent ownership at the tight end position. Unlike last week, where high-ownership players dominated, Mike Evans and Jimmy Graham both put up single-digit point efforts in Week 8, so if you had the foresight to fade them you already had a big leg up on the field.

Draft Kings

On Draft Kings, the slate was dominated by an impressive performance from well-known DFS player Eric Crain, whose username is jakz101. Crain was able to win the $3 Play Action and the $20 Millionaire Maker with a final score of 231.32. In the Millionaire Maker, he had entries place in first, third, and fourth. His main lineup consisted of a Carr and Cooper stack, much like the other winners earlier discussed, but he was able to make his money with his plays of Mohamed Sanu and Theo Riddick, who produced a combined 50.7 points while neither of them was more than six percent owned.

In the two higher buy-in tournaments, the Wildcat and Luxury Box, both winners used a Raiders stack, with the Wildcat’s winning lineup using Carr-Crabtree-Cooper, and the Luxury Box using just Carr-Cooper. Both lineups also featured one highly-owned dud- Gary Barnidge (34.1 percent owned) posted just 7.2 points and Mike Evans (42.9 percent owned) ended up with just 11 points. This goes to show that in higher buy-in tournaments, you don’t have to always knock it out of the park with every player in order to win like you do in the lower buy-in portion of the slate.

In order to cash for the minimum amount in the GPPs on Draft Kings, you needed to put up at least 137 points in the lower buy-ins and at least 142 in the higher buy-ins. This number is significantly down from last week where if you didn’t put up 160 points you were essentially dead in the water. This represents a 17 percent deduction in the payline in just one week.

Switching gears to the cash games on Draft Kings, the Massive $25 double-up had over 26,000 entries and the high scorer posted a score of 206.72. In order to double your buy-in, you needed to come up with a score of 124.2 or higher, which is very manageable for most daily fantasy players. In this particular contest, Devonta Freeman (39.8 percent), Spencer Ware (53.3 percent), and Devontae Booker (92.9 percent) all saw significant ownership due to injuries to the other members of their team’s backfield. The three of them combined for 46.9 points, which is a decent total but players were able to replicate that value with lesser-owned options. At the end of the day, it took 47 Draftkings points less to cash in the Big $25 this week, which represents a very significant downswing.

In Review

All-in-all Week 8 ended up being much more representative of a normal week for daily fantasy football than Week 7 turned out to be. There was one clear roster construction if you wanted to win a tournament, which was a Raiders stack, but if you were looking to cash in GPPs or make money in a double-up, there were plenty of different ways to construct your roster that would have fared well. Moving forward, it’s important to examine each of the players that will go highly-owned, due to the fact that the obvious plays aren’t always the best plays as we saw with Spencer Ware and Mike Evans. That’ll do it for Week 8, and I look forward to recapping Week 9 for you next week. Good luck this week!