Looking back at Week 13
I often get the question of why, when I live in Wisconsin, I am not a Packers fan. I won't bore everyone with the shift of me being born a Packers fan and then becoming a Saints fan at the turn of the century, but I need to report I've added a reason to the list.
I was riding the border on the green side in cash last week until the Packers gave up a late punt return touchdown to a terrible team, thus costing me a profit for the week.
Fire Ron Zook.
My GPP lineups
I went back to the well with 20 lineups, and looking back at my construction concepts, I think I spread myself too thin with access to too many games, not taking enough stands in my stacks. I played 11 different team stacks. That's got to narrow down if I'm going to effectively make any money. That being said, I did have a lineup go 5x, which I'll discuss below.
As a side note, Mikey had a lineup on FanDuel that hit 20x using a combination of his confidence heat map and some of my notes from last week's article, so congrats to him!
Let's go over my top-performing lineup:
QB: Derek Carr ($5800 - 4.81% owned - 35.74 points)
RB: Jonathan Taylor ($5700 - 8.61% owned - 22.5 points)
RB: David Montgomery ($5500 - 27.14% owned - 27.1 points)
WR: Justin Jefferson ($6900 - 17.43% owned - 30.3 points)
WR: Nelson Agholor ($5200 - 6.17% owned - 7.8 points)
WR: Denzel Mims ($4100 - 9.04% owned - 8 points)
WR - Flex: Calvin Ridley ($7200 - 3.27% owned - 18.8 points)
TE: Darren Waller ($6100 - 9% owned - 48 points)
DEF: Seattle ($3300 - 13.73% owned - 9 points)
This is a classic example of getting the stack almost right. The play, obviously, would've been to run this as a skinny stack, removing Agholor from the lineup and playing a different one-off wide receiver instead. Perhaps Corey Davis, who I had in my player pool, who scored 29.4 more points than Agholor. That's the difference between this lineup hitting 5x and this lineup hitting 150x and me instantly mega profiting.
Total points: 207.24
Cashing line: 156.8
Number of lineups that cashed: 3 (15%).
My Cash lineup
QB: Aaron Rodgers ($6800 - 40.85% owned - 23.5 points)
RB: David Montgomery (46.31% owned)
RB: Devontae Booker ($5500 - 24.23% owned - 6.1 points)
RB - Flex: Myles Gaskin ($5900 - 21.5% owned - 15.1 points)
WR: Adam Thielen ($7300 - 12.59% owned - 21.5 points)
WR: Robert Woods ($5900 - 28.5% owned - 18.5 points)
WR: Brandin Cooks ($5600 - 43.46% owned - 11.5 points)
TE: Robert Tonyan ($3700 - 17.67% owned - 13.9 points)
DEF: Green Bay ($3800 - 4.25% owned - 10 points)
Fire Ron Zook.
Construction wise, I'm okay with this still. My debate going in was whether to play two cheap running backs with a more expensive running back or just play all three cheap running backs. I ultimately played all three, thinking they couldn't necessarily burn me if all three were high enough owned. I am a bit shocked that Woods was as high owned as he was too, but that's obviously not of concern for his output.
Total points: 147.2
Cashing line: 147.88
I literally lost this on that punt return giving the Packers defense one less point. I was not joking. Again, fire Ron Zook.
Players from last week's picks that didn't end up in my lineups
TE: Mike Gesicki. I wrote in the article the caveat that I would probably prefer him if Fitzpatrick remained at QB, and Tua came back. I had no Dolphins stacks, and I felt there were other tight ends that were already in my pool naturally that I could play just as easily. 60% of my GPP lineups landed on either Tonyan or Trey Burton.
With 20 lineups in GPPs, everyone else saw a spot in at least one of my lineups.
Beer to help me forget this tough week
It's stout season, so I'm going to one of the better stouts to come out of the state of Wisconsin, the Central Waters Brewer's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout.
Be sure to follow along by subscribing below, joining us on Facebook and enjoying some shenanigans with us on Twitter: Derek Devereaux (DFS), Mikey Henninger (season-long, dynasty, best ball), and JJ Gosh (season-long).