Looking back at Week 15
Late news that Ezekiel Elliott was going to be inactive really flipped the slate on its head. There was a massive shift to people playing Tony Pollard, which split off what we thought was the chalk and made everything relatively spread out. I ended up grabbing a few Pollard shares myself, but not nearly enough, clearly.
Regardless, I was able to profit on the day with my cash lineup and got some money back from my tournament lineups, but I was underweight on the cheap running back upside and overweight on expensive guys that didn't hit their ceilings.
My GPP lineups
Back to the well with 20 lineups. Unfortunately, my top lineup only was a 3x return on my money. With both Pollard and Fournette hitting and both being chalk, it just wasn't a good week for how I was constructing my lineups.
Here's my top performing lineup:
QB: Matt Ryan ($5400 - 1.61% owned - 30.84 points)
RB: Alvin Kamara ($7400 - 35.9% owned - 18.4 points)
RB: Leonard Fournette ($4500 - 21.65% owned - 21.5 points)
WR: AJ Brown ($7600 - 9.32% owned - 15.4 points)
WR: Marvin Jones Jr. ($5700 - 5.39% owned - 30.2 points)
WR: Russell Gage ($4700 - 16.05% owned - 17.8 points)
TE: Hayden Hurst ($3300 - 2.76% owned - 12.1 points)
TE - Flex: Travis Kelce ($8000 - 15.93% owned - 22.8 points)
DEF: Seattle ($3100 - 10.17% owned - 9 points)
The Falcons receivers were going to be popular, but literally nobody was going to play Matt Ryan by my estimation - people preferred to play the Bucs side and then run it back with Gage or Ridley. So why not? Getting a 30+ point performance at under 2% ownership is a recipe for success. Unfortunately, my three expensive spots all didn't get anywhere near a ceiling score for them, so it mitigated the gains that I had in those other areas. Had they hit their ceilings? Even adding ten points to each of them - well within their range of ceiling possibilities - and my 3x lineup return turns into a 50x return.
Total points: 178.04
Cashing line: 155.16
Number of lineups that cashed: 6 (30%)
My Cash lineup
QB: Jalen Hurts ($5900 - 29.82% owned - 40.82 points)
RB: Alvin Kamara (74.2% owned)
RB: Cam Akers ($6600 - 17.36% owned - 7.2 points)
WR: Brandon Aiyuk ($6300 - 60.13% owned - 22.3 points)
WR: Russell Gage (15.19% owned)
WR: Michael Gallup ($3500 - 17.08% owned - 11.6 points)
WR - Flex: Emmanuel Sanders ($4200 - 49.58% owned - 11.6 points)
TE: Travis Kelce (19.91% owned)
DEF: Seattle (22.73% owned)
I was really laying in the weeds for most of the day, with over half of my lineup coming in the late games. And then I was sweating it out literally until the last drive or two in the Saints/Chiefs game just to clear the cash line.
At first I was shocked at how low Cam Akers got, but at the same time I guess I'm not that shocked at all - the natural pivots were there, where people got off of Akers and went to Tony Pollard at the RB slot, and then in the Flex they played Leonard Fournette (rather than playing someone like Russell Gage).
There were a bunch of lineups that went with Kamara and Derrick Henry together. I thought it was a mistake then and it turns out it was a mistake in hindsight too.
Also Jalen Hurts is #good at football and Carson Wentz will be the Colts starting QB next season.
Total points: 161.52
Cashing line: 158.82
Players from last week's picks that didn't end up in my lineups
None! With 20 lineups in GPPs, everyone saw a spot in at least one of my lineups.
Profit beer!
I'm celebrating this week with a Ten FIDY Imperial Stout from Oskar Blues Brewery.
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