Week 5 of the DFS Main Slate was one where the chalk smashed. When my Cash lineups were hitting 180, it was a sure sign that 250+ was going to take down the Milli Maker, and it would take the chalkiest GPP lineup of the season to do it. I remember thinking that Mattison was going to be in the winning lineup as soon as Cook was ruled inactive. Having already built a Vikings stack of Cousins/Jefferson/Swift on ‘Makin A Milli’, I felt I had direct leverage off of Mattison if the field crammed him into their lineups and he ended up being a dud. Mattison finished as one of the studs last week and the rest is history. The chalk smashed.
Stacking
QB + WR + WR
Brady - 40.74
Brown - 34.40
Evans - 32.30
The Brady double WR Stack is something we haven’t seen in the MIlli Maker this year despite it being Brady’s second appearance. There was no gronk this time as he was out for his 2nd straight game.
Going against a mismatched Brissett led Miami team, Brady went to work and brought Evans and Brown in this stack with him to combine for 107.44 points - an average of 35.81 points each.
What’s great about this stack is that a bring back option wasn’t forced. Many people, myself included, thought Waddle or Gesicki would be a great bring back option if the Dolphins were playing catch up and forced to throw. What we didn’t foresee was the only two touchdowns of Miami going through the RB as you cannot run on TB. Gaskin scored through the air and some exposure to him in stacks would have smashed but it wasn’t in this stack nor was it necessary to make the stack work.
Roster %
Brady - 6.39%
Hubbard - 6.37%
Mattison - 35.41%
Adams - 23.55%
Evans - 5.44%
Brown - 14.67%
H Henry - 4.46%
Toney - 11.36%
Vikings - 8.08%
Total - 115.73%
This is by far the highest percentage we’ve seen this year as the average in the prior 4 weeks was at 82%. It’s funny because my roster % projection when I was constructing my lineup was about 99% and I wasn’t worried about it being too high as I felt like the milli maker roster % was due for a higher week than what we had seen. Remember in 14 out of 16 weeks in 2020 it was 130% or below. However, the seasonal average was 108% so one would assume that the 82% average that we had weeks 1-4 is set to rise a bit. What’s great about this lineup construction is he has two of the chalkiest players on the slate at 23% and 35% and yet was able to get different elsewhere without being ridiculous.
Pricing
Adams - $8200 - 4.95X
Brady - $7400 - 5.5X
Evans - $6800 - 4.75X
Hubbard - $6000 - 3.56X
Mattison - $5500 - 5.50X
Brown - $5200 - 6.61X
Toney - $4000 - 8.15X
Henry - $3700 - 5.27X
VIkings - $3000 - 3X
Total: $49,800 - 5.25X
This week was a breakaway from prior weeks when we saw no WR’s priced above $7300. Adding a stud like $8200 Adams into a GPP lineup is a risky play but his ceiling is high enough that he’s worth the risk. Even at $8200, he was just shy of 5X and brought the 40 point punch that you need to beat out the rest of the field. This just felt like an Adams Week and once there was serious value on the slate with Mattison entrenched as the starter at $5500, Adams was a lock for many - despite his price tag and chalkiness. Adams in the Milli Maker certainly raised the average Price for WR’s this week to $6700; Which is the highest we’ve seen all season. Certainly we can’t ignore that Toney absolutely smashed for 8.15X - a 2021 Milli Maker record. When you have a 4K guy who produces over 8X, you can afford Adams at even higher than his $8200 tag.
Brady raises the Average QB price of Milli Maker winners in 2021 ($6575) a bit by his $7400 price tag. 2 backs priced here in the $5500-6000 range are what we’ve seen in similar weeks of the Milli Maker as the average on the season has been $6,000. Simply put, it’s not been a good year for the stud Running Backs to be in large field GPP’s with the exception of Henry. For the 2nd week in a row, we saw a punt tight end in the Milli Maker winning lineup and this continues the trend of a decline in TE pricing from 2021. It’s currently at $4960 after being at $5275 through the first month of the season.
Finally, we also saw the average price of Defense stay at $3,000. We have 5 weeks of data with it never being higher than $4300. 2 weeks with pricing being at $3,000, one week at $2100, and one week at $2900. Paying up for good defenses in good matchups is part of the winning formula for taking down the Milli Maker but it’s usually diminishing returns when considering paying all the way up. Side note, only $49,800 was spent on this lineup which is not what we saw in the 2020 season when no lineup was less than $49,900. Imagine rolling the dice on a lineup while leaving salary on the table and then cashing in that ticket for A Milli.
Ceiling
When you score 260 points, you obviously have a lot of players in your lineup with a high ceiling. What was special about this lineup is that it only had 1 stack but each player in that stack has a high ceiling on their own, so this wasn’t a stack of 2 players carrying another to the 27.7+ point average target. They could all get there alone, so were the perfect stack to go off in this great game environment. As we know with a big GPP like the Milli Maker, you need to shoot for 250 points and even that wouldn’t have been enough this week. The 27.7+ point player average needs to be the goal across the entire lineup. When you have a stack of Brady/Evans/Brown that combines for over 107 points, and Adams adds 40 to bring the 4 player total to 148 - a 37.7 average - it’s not a tall order for the rest of the lineup to have the average needed to win the tournament. This is why we stack and play studs.
Let’s take a look at the historical ceilings of each player:
Brady: 40+
Adams: 40+
Evans: 30-40
Brown: 30-40
Henry: 15-25
Mattison: 20-30
Hubbard has a small sample size but his ceiling thus far is about 21 points. As far as Toney, he has been raved about by the college football guys. He looks very talented but we have no clue as to what his true ceiling will be. Right now, the 32 points from a 4K player is way more than enough of a ceiling to take down a large field GPP like the MIlli Maker. When you have players like Brady, Adams, Evans, Brown, Mattison, and Toney, you have all the scoring you need to get away with lower point totals from Hubbard, Henry, and the DST position to keep the average higher than the 27.7 needed to take down a GPP of this size.
This was a proper mix of chalk/contrarian plays as we saw this roster % hit a new season high but still find ways to get different from the chalky field in this week 5 milli maker.
Tune in to Makin A Milli as we preview the Week 6 Milli Maker. Your Friday Night Fling!
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