Looking back at Week 12
I was feeling a bit energetic this week and went back to 20-maxing a lower stakes GPP tournament, which didn't materially affect the total investment I had, but did obviously spread out my net of exposures quite a bit. I ended up losing in my cash lineup, although I think it was more unlucky than process, but I did well enough with my GPP lineups to more than make up for that loss.
My GPP lineups
As mentioned above, I ran 20 lineups this week. I had nine of my 20 stacks on the Chiefs and Buccaneers game, which you can guess helped quite a bit to inflate my place in the standings. The downside in my lineups is that I had zero exposure to Derrick Henry. With 35% exposure to Tyreek Hill (mainly paired with either Mahomes or Brady), if even one of those lineups had Henry in it, it could've been a massive, massive week.
Let's go over the top-performing lineup:
QB: Patrick Mahomes ($8000 - 14.54% owned - 35.28 points)
RB: James Robinson ($6300 - 14.03% owned - 29.9 points)
RB: Jordan Wilkins ($4000 - 3.66% owned - 8.7 points)
WR: Mike Evans ($6100 - 5.07% owned - 20 points)
WR: Tyreek Hill ($7800 - 18.25% owned - 60.9 points)
WR: Nelson Agholor ($4900 - 12.37% owned - 10.4 points)
WR - Flex: Gabriel Davis ($3000 - 7.94% owned - 16.9 points)
TE: Travis Kelce ($7000 - 21.27% owned - 16.2 points)
DEF: New England ($2500 - 1.05% owned - 5 points)
Obviously the stack smashed, but it wasn't an unpopular stack. I did mention in my preview column that I thought Brady and the Bucs as a whole were going to be overlooked, so getting over 3x from Evans as part of the stack at basically 5% ownership was fantastic (I had even exposure to Evans, Godwin and Antonio Brown in my stacks). But the one-off plays worked well, too - Gabriel Davis smashed at minimum price, James Robinson is apparently the old Leonard Fournette now, and nobody else fell off a cliff. I'm happy with how this lineup turned out, obviously.
Total points: 203.28
Cashing line: 145.58
Number of lineups that cashed: 8 (40%).
My Cash lineup
QB: Ryan Fitzpatrick ($5500 - 21.1% owned - 19.28 points)
RB: Dalvin Cook ($9500 - 59.71% owned - 11.2 points)
RB: Brian Hill ($4000 - 43.18% owned - 5.5 points)
RB - Flex: Nyheim Hines ($4600 - 45.23% owned - 17.5 points)
WR: Stefon Diggs ($7600 - 15.9% owned - 10.9 points)
WR: Justin Jefferson ($6300 - 34.44% owned - 26 points)
WR: Jamison Crowder ($5400 - 3.46% owned - 6.1 points)
TE: Hayden Hurst ($3900 - 2.16% owned - 8.8 points)
DEF: Browns ($3100 - 8.42% owned - 0 points)
This is tough. For the most part, I think my construction here makes sense still, and I understand why I made every play. Of the ones that did not work out (I marked in blue text above)...
Dalvin Cook failed a lot of people, and the price was definitely high for a back who doesn't really catch passes, but I had the salary to do it with enough cheap options below, so why not?
If I told you going into the week that a running back was guaranteed to touch the ball 13 times in a game his team would win by 37 (!) points and he was minimum priced...would you have played him 100% of the time or 110% of the time?
If I told you your high priced wide receiver, who had double digit targets in four of his previous six games, was guaranteed 9 targets and would catch 7 of them...would you have played him 100% of the time or 110% of the time?
Crowder was literally the last guy in my lineup other than a defense, and while there were other guys in that area I could've played, we had seen Crowder have chemistry with Darnold before, so I viewed it as a spot I could get at least some production from. Obviously that was a bit #narrative of me, so this is probably my only real mistake per se. Hindsight would've driven me down towards a cheap WR (maybe Isabella) and moving Hurst up to Kelce, plus dropping down on defense to make up the salary difference.
Total points: 105.28
Cashing line: 129.48
Players from last week's picks that didn't end up in my lineups
QB: Cam Newton. It's just so tough to see the upside with Newton lately. He's a shell of his former self, even if he's periodically scooting in from one yard out. I thought the matchup was okay, and he seems due to have a decent game at some point, but maybe I'm mistaken and he's not. One thing's for sure - he was really low owned this week and he will be for the rest of the year.
With 20 lineups in GPPs, everyone else saw a spot in at least one of my lineups.
Beer of the Week
I'm keeping it simple this week with a Milwaukee classic named after the historic neighborhood where they brew: Lakefront Riverwest Stein.
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