Hello everyone and welcome to the Week 14 NFL DFS payline breakdown column! The season is rapidly winding down, as evidenced by the fact that the Draft Kings World Championship Live Final was on Sunday, but there’s still work to be done in order to help us build better lineups for the next few weeks.

After a Week 13 slate that saw paylines rise astronomically, the scores that it took to cash in Week 14 regressed back towards the mean as it took six percent less points to cash on FanDuel and three percent less points to cash on Draft Kings. The amount of points that it took to win a major GPP tournament this week wasn’t too far off from where it was last week, as top scores were one percent less on FanDuel this week and three percent less on Draft Kings. The drop in the paylines this week can be partly contributed to the fact that there plenty of highly-owned options that failed to pay off for their owners, like David Johnson, Tyrell Williams, Mike Evans, and Ladarius Green.

Week 14 was a week where if you were able to think outside the box, you were able to really vault up the tournament leaderboards as there were multiple extremely low-owned players that had big days like Bilal Powell, Tevin Coleman, Demaryius Thomas, Zach Ertz, and J.J. Nelson. If you were able to fade David Johnson (who scored just 18.1 Draft Kings points) and pivot onto Le’Veon Bell (who ended up with 54.8 Draft Kings points) you were certainly on your way to cashing if you were able to piece together a few other players who had solid performances.

FanDuel

As usual, we’ll start things off by looking at the slate of games offered on FanDuel for Week 14. In the small buy-in portion of the FanDuel slate, user blakel34 was able to win both the $2 Snap and $5 Sling TV Rush for a total of over $125,000. What’s particularly interesting about this is that they used two different lineups, albeit with much of the same core, and were able to put up 201.74 points in the Snap and 198.44 points in the Sling TV Rush. The main core of their roster contained a two-man stack of Andrew Luck and T.Y. Hilton, and they were able to outscore the rest of the field by hitting big on Le'Veon Bell, Emmanuel Sanders, Tyler Eifert, and the Falcons defense. Blakel34’s lineup utilized just two players that had over 20 percent ownership (Bell and Hilton), and they were able to find two of the better high-owned plays on the slate. When you are able to identify which popular players will do the best, it allows you to pivot off some of the other popular plays and experience huge results.   

For the medium buy-in portion of the slate, we’ll look at the $25 Sunday Million, which was won by user gulfofmexicans727 with a score of 200.5. Their score was more than six points higher than the second-place finisher, which is interesting seeing that they utilized six players that had over ten percent ownership. Gulfofmexicans727 utilized a three-man Bengals stack of Andy Dalton, Jeremy Hill, and Tyler Eifert, and the three of them combined to put up 57.9 points. They were also aboard the Le'Veon Bell train and hit it big on their picks of Taylor Gabriel, Jordy Nelson, T.Y. Hilton, and the Falcons defense. This lineup was truly stellar and it was the second highest score posted in the Sunday Million since Week 7, so kudos to gulfofmexicans727.

For the high buy-in portion of the slate, which includes the $100 Blitz, $300 Monster, and $1,000 Gunslinger, it took between 171.76 and 182.14 points in order to win. The three winning rosters in this price range all featured Le'Veon Bell, which is unsurprising seeing that his ownership was around 40 percent in these contests. Bell’s spectacular performance made up for almost 30 percent of the winning team’s total points, so tournament winners just had to fill the rest of their roster with players that could put up at least 10 FanDuel points. The Pittsburgh running back’s record-breaking day was enough to propel two players at this buy-in level to win despite playing David Johnson, and that is truly something worth paying attention to. Often times in daily fantasy sports, if you don’t roster the one guy that goes bonkers, you have no shot to win a tournament, and that’s exactly what happened in most spots in Week 14.

Shifting gears quickly, we’ll take a look at the payline data from this week’s FanDuel slate, which I found to be particularly interesting. There was a gigantic spread between the point total that it took to cash in the small buy-in tournaments when compared to the large buy-in tournaments, as it took just 114.2 points to cash in the Dive and 141.2 points to cash in the Gunslinger. Last week’s spread on FanDuel was between 136.26 and 145.16, which represents a range of just under nine points. This week’s spread was over 27 points between the highest and lowest paylines, which means that the lowest buy-in tournaments were unsurprisingly the softest tournaments on the slate.

CONTESTENTRYWINNERPAYLINE# OF ENTRIESSINGLE/MULTI
NFL DIVE$1197.1114.2235294MULTI
NFL SNAP$2201.74126.56176470MULTI
SLING TV RUSH$5198.44124.9176470MULTI
SUNDAY MILLION$25200.5126.4256470MULTI
NFL BLITZ$100182.14136.52824MULTI
MONSTER$300179.6140.61862MULTI
GUNSLINGER$1,000171.76141.2277MULTI
NFL SPIKE$5191.76124.722941SINGLE
NFL HOT ROUTE$50180.14132.063182SINGLE

We’ll finish off the FanDuel slate by examining the Big $25 Double Up, which will give us some insight into how cash games went this week. The Big $25 Double Up had 6,436 entries and it paid out the top 2,800 lineups. The payline settled at 141.14, which is the highest that the payline has been in this tournament since Week 7. Le'Veon Bell was 79.4 percent owned in this particular tournament, and his high ownership made it so that it was tough to cash if you didn’t play him. David Johnson was on over 84 percent of rosters as well but his fantasy performance was one to forget, and if you ended up using Johnson over Bell you were surely kicking yourself. Other popular options this week were Andrew Luck, Taylor Gabriel, Ted Ginn Jr., Emmanuel Sanders, and Golden Tate. Moving forward, it would be surprising if we saw the payline settle around 140 on a regular basis seeing that four out of five players in contests this week got 50 points from one single player. Results like that are far from the norm, and you shouldn’t expect the payline to be up around 140 in Week 15.

CONTESTENTRYWINNERPAYLINE# OF ENTRIESSINGLE/MULTI
NFL BIG $25 DOUBLE UP$25179.44141.146436MULTI

Draft Kings

In the lower buy-in slate on Draft Kings, there was one big winner, reltuc789, who was able to capture first place in the $3 Snap and $9 Slant for a total of $70,000. They, like every other tournament winner this week, got a huge performance from Le'Veon Bell but they also constructed their roster in a manner that deserves some discussion. Reltuc789 used two wide receivers from the same team, Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders, and reaped the benefits in a big way as they combined for a total of 55.6 points. They were also able to hit pay dirt with two players that were way off the radar, Bilal Powell (0.2 percent ownership) and J.J. Nelson (0.2 percent ownership) who combined for a point total of 57.3 points while their salaries were just $8,600 in total. When it was all said and done, reltuc789 was able to utilize a lineup that had one huge salaried player (Bell) and supplemented Bell’s point total by hitting it big on a number of players who seemed to be underpriced for their perspective value.

For the medium stakes portion of the GPP slate on Draft Kings, we’ll take a look at the Millionaire Maker, which was won by user amorris525 who posted a total of 233.86 points. This is the fourth week in a row that the winner of the Millionaire Maker has posted a point total of 233.5 or more. They were able to put together a winning lineup by utilizing a few of the more popular plays that other winners had such as Le'Veon Bell, Jeremy Hill, Taylor Gabriel, and Emmanuel Sanders. They also employed a two-man Redskins stack of Kirk Cousins and DeSean Jackson which gave them a decent fantasy output of 39.1 points. Even though they utilized three players that had point totals of 17 points or less, they were able to win on the backs of three big players, which can sometimes happen in daily fantasy if you don’t pick one player that tanks your chances by putting up a zero.

As far as the high buy-in section of tournaments offered on Draft Kings went, user ilikepie123 was able to win $150,000 in the Wildcat with a team that scored 216.94, while clayton24 took fourth in the Wildcat and won the Luxury Box for a total of $80,000. Ilikepie123 was able to come out on top by utilizing a two-man Colts stack of Andrew Luck and T.Y. Hilton, and supplemented their Le'Veon Bell selection by using Anquan Boldin, Carlos Hyde, and Adam Thielen who were all less than $5,000 on the site. Clayton24 constructed their lineup a bit differently, opting to go with a three-man Broncos stack that was made up of Trevor Siemian, Emmanuel Sanders, and Demaryius Thomas. They won despite using five players that had more than 12 percent ownership (including David Johnson) and this just goes to show you that you can win high buy-in tournaments without going too far off the reservation.

As far as the paylines are concerned on Draft Kings, they went down by an average of three percent from where they were last week. In the lower buy-in portion of the slate you needed at least 131.4 points to cash, and this number ballooned to 159.5 if you wanted to cash in the Luxury Box. Week 14’s paylines in the Luxury Box and Wildcat tournaments were the highest that they’ve been since Week 7. This demonstrates to us that the lower and medium buy-in slates were slightly softer than normal this week, seeing that the paylines in these tournaments dropped while the paylines in the high buy-in slate did not.

CONTESTENTRYWINNERPAYLINE# OF ENTRIESSINGLE/MULTI
PLAY ACTION$3243.24134.6450980MULTI
FLEA FLICKER$5225.74131.574117MULTI
SLANT$9243.24143.2448169MULTI
MILLIONAIRE MAKER$20233.86138.4149765MULTI
WILDCAT$333216.94156.484637MULTI
LUXURY BOX$1,500209.86159.56218MULTI

Lastly, we’ll take a look at the Massive $25 Double Up in order to give us an idea of how cash games were this week on Draft Kings. The Massive $25 Double Up had 18,390 entries with the top 8,000 of those entries receiving $50. The payline ultimately settled at 158.16, which is significantly higher than the 146.36 water mark that the payline was at last week. Altogether, this was the second highest payline in this tournament since Week 7, for reasons that we covered in the FanDuel cash section. Le'Veon Bell and David Johnson were popular options in Draft Kings cash games but their ownership percentages were significantly less than they were on FanDuel, and I think that mostly has to do with their salaries and the way you have to construct a roster on Draft Kings as you don’t utilize a kicker. Other popular options such as Jeremy Hill, Taylor Gabriel, Todd Gurley, Cameron Meredith, and Robby Anderson all rewarded cash game players that chose them but I fully expect the payline in cash games to go down next week due to the fact that most weeks have at least a few highly-owned busts.

CONTESTENTRYWINNERPAYLINE# OF ENTRIESSINGLE/MULTI
MASSIVE $25 DOUBLE UP$25243.24158.1618390MULTI

In Review

Week 14 was a week that saw paylines continue to jump in the higher buy-in tournaments but the low buy-in portion of the slate on both sites were relatively soft. Unfortunately for you if you didn’t play Le’Veon Bell there was no way you were winning a GPP tournament but if you were able to make a few smart calls and utilize underpriced players such as Emmanuel Sanders, you had a shot at cashing. That’ll do it for Week 14 and I will be back next Tuesday as always. Good luck, and let’s cash some tournaments!