DFS Payline Analysis: NFL Week 12 Review

With Week 12 now in our rear view mirror, there are only five weeks left of regular season daily fantasy football, which is hard to believe! Week 12 offered a slate full of both interesting options and potential landmines, and played out unlike any other week we’ve seen. At least since I started writing this column back in Week 7, that is.

Normally when we compare the data from the current week to previous weeks, there is a clear correlation between the high scorers and rising paylines. However, this week the high scorers went up just one-percent from where they were last week while the paylines plummeted a surprising nine-percent from where they were in Week 11.

When interpreting the data from this week, there’s one clear conclusion to be drawn: the top percentage of DFS lineups were constructed just as well as they were last week, while the rest of the lineups were significantly worse than they were just one week ago. The decline in the payline can be partially attributed to the number of high-profile plays who ended up being busts. Jay Ajayi had a fantastic matchup against a terrible 49ers run defense but managed to score just over 12 Draft Kings points. Ajayi was hardly the only big name player who failed to provide value for his owners this week. Melvin Gordon, Julio Jones, DeVante Parker, Gary Barnidge, Rashad Jennings and DeMarco Murray all faltered in Sunday’s 12-game slate.

FanDuel

As always, we’ll kick things off by taking a look at the smaller and medium buy-in portion of FanDuel’s GPP slate, which includes the $2 Snap, $5 Sling TV Rush, $12 Kickoff and $25 Sunday Million. Normally, we separate these two portions of the slate but this week we’ll examine them at the same time due to the fact that hctrucker89 was able to win the Sling TV Rush and the Sunday Million. Hctrucker89 was able to make over $300,000 when it was all said and done. Interestingly enough, the scores it took to win in the lower and medium buy-in portion of FanDuel’s slate yesterday rose 4.5-percent from where they were in Week 11. Hctrucker89 utilized a three-man Saints stack that included Drew Brees, Mark Ingram, and Michael Thomas, all of whom were less than 11-percent owned and combined for a total of 89 points. There’s been a recent trend of QB-RB-WR stacks winning GPPs over the last four weeks, and it appears as though this roster construction is a great way of vaulting up the leaderboards if you pick the right team. Hctrucker89 was able to come up with 191.7 points by also hitting big on Mike Evans, David Johnson, Rishard Matthews, and Tyler Eifert. It’s pretty rare that we see someone win both the Sunday Million and the Sling TV Rush, so kudos to hctrucker89.

In the high buy-in portion of the slate, which includes the $300 Monster and the $1,000 Gunslinger, user aejones was able to make hay by coming in first in the Monster for $100,000 and 3^rd in the Gunslinger for $20,000. In Jones’ Monster winning lineup, he employed an interesting roster strategy as he did not benefit greatly from stacking players. Instead, he used Colin Kaepernick and Vance McDonald from the 49ers, though McDonald ended up netting just eight FanDuel points. Aejones was able to win on the strength of multiple solid picks which included David Johnson, LeSean McCoy, Mike Evans, Michael Crabtree and Emmanuel Sanders. Four out of his five running backs and wide receivers netted over 25 FanDuel points, and when that happens you have a recipe for success even against the strongest of player pools.

Shifting gears quickly, we’ll take a look at where the paylines ended up at for Week 12. In the lower buy-in portion of the slate, it took anywhere from 115-117 points to cash, which is surprisingly the lowest number it took to cash in these tournaments over the past six weeks. In the medium buy-in portion of contests, it took 113-117 points in order to finish in the money, which is around 10-percent fewer points than it took last week. Even the higher buy-in portion of the slate, which is normally immune to significant week-to-week swings, experienced a seven-percent decrease in the payline as you needed just 114-116 points to cash in the shark-infested waters that are the FanDuel large buy-in tournaments.

Draft Kings

Interestingly enough, on Draft Kings we had a similar result to what happened on FanDuel as one user won multiple tournaments across the lower and medium buy-in portion of the slate. User travman8 took down the $3 Play Action, $5 Flea Flicker, and the $20 Millionaire Maker, netting a combined winnings of over $1,075,000. Travman8 was able to construct a contrarian roster which featured just one player, David Johnson, whose ownership was over 14-percent. He was able to get huge days from Colin Kaepernick, Mike Evans, Terrelle Pryor, Emmanuel Sanders and Mark Ingram, despite none of those players having more than nine-percent ownership. This goes to show that, if you have one huge lineup you enter in a bunch of contests, you could potentially win a truckload of cash if it ends up going off. Travman8’s differentiated lineup was a huge difference-maker and the reason why he won the tournament and finished 17 points higher than the second-place finisher in the Millionaire Maker, something almost unheard of in these contests.

In the high buy-in portion of the Draft Kings slate, which includes the $333 Wildcat and $1,500 Luxury Box, user cubasugar1 took third place and had three other top-10 finishing lineups in both contests. He was able to score 15 points more than the No. 2 finisher in the Luxury Box on the back of impressive performances by Drew Brees, Carlos Hyde, Mike Evans and David Johnson. In the high-end tournaments, often times a few great performances is enough to win and this was certainly the case on Sunday as cubasugar1 whiffed on Tevin Coleman, Mike Wallace and Cameron Brate but still came out on top.

As far as the payline is concerned, it took at least 127 points to cash in the lower and medium buy-in portion of the slate. The Millionaire Maker was the easiest tournament to cash, which makes sense given how large a player pool it normally features. In the Play Action, Flea Flicker and Slant contests, you needed between 128.5 and 129.25 points to cash. For the highest buy-in portion of the tournament, you needed more than 131 points to finish in the money, which represents a nine-percent decrease from where the payline was in Week 11. With that being said, I would certainly expect the paylines for Week 13 to be higher than they were Sunday.

As we always do, we’ll quickly take a gander at the Massive $25 Double Up on Draft Kings, which gives us some valuable insights into how cash games played out for Week 12. This week’s payline for the Double Up was at 119.7, which is 16-percent less than it took to cash in the tournament last week. Week 12 was a tough week for consensus good plays such as Rashad Jennings, Tyler Boyd, DeVante Parker, Larry Fitzgerald and Thomas Rawls. If you were able to pivot off of some of these players, you were more likely to cash in your double ups. In the recent past, there were weeks where the chalky options all hit their value which elevated the payline but this week’s less-than-stellar performances from highly-owned players was enough to make the payline drop significantly. Barring a repeat of what happened this week, the payline should be between 130-140 points, which is the score you should strive to beat in Week 13.

In Review

Week 12 was an interesting, if not atypical, week for daily fantasy purposes as we saw the top scores in GPP tournaments stay around the same level that they were at in Week 11 while the payline decreased in some cases up to nine percent. This can be mostly chalked up to the fact that there were many popular options that failed to impress, as there are most weeks, and it is always paramount to consider fading popular plays as that can be the difference between min cashing and winning a big tournament. One thing to consider moving forward is that QB-RB-WR stacks have won a large-field GPP tournament in four straight weeks, so if you are making multiple lineups for Week 13, be sure to try to assemble a lineup with such a stack. You may just end up at the top of the leaderboard! Good luck in Week 13, and let’s cash some tournaments!