We’re now halfway through the 2021 NFL Season and have a legit sample size to analyze Seasonal trends through 9 weeks of the Milli Maker Contest on Draft King’s.
2020 was the season of key players missing games due to positive covid tests, and stadiums at minimum capacity due to covid restrictions.
So naturally bringing fans back and star players being available on game day would bring more fireworks to games and thus fantasy football scoring, right?
Uh... not exactly.
In a league riddled with injuries, in-completions, and turnovers, many of the stars aren't producing on a consistent basis and that has brought down scoring in games. How would that Affect DFS as far as stacks, roster %, and ceiling goes? We'll take a look at seasonal trends to find out.
Stacking
If you aren’t stacking, your chances of winning a large field GPP are much lower than the already slim odds. With stacks, you have slim odds. Without them, you’ll fall in the range of slim to none.
Week 1 - 2 stacks for a total of 5 players. (QB+RB+WR) (WR+TE) all team stacks.
Week 2 - 3 stacks for a total of 7 players. (QB+RB+TE) (RB+Opp.WR)(WR+DST)
Week 3 - 2 stacks for a total of 7 players. (QB+WR+WR+Opp.TE)(RB+WR+Opp.WR)
Week 4 - 1 stack for a total of 3 players. (QB+TE+Opp.WR)
Week 5 - 2 stacks for a total of 5 players. (QB+WR+WR) (RB+DST) All team stacks.
Week 6 - 2 stacks for a total of 4 players.(QB+WR) (RB+DST) All team stacks.
Week 7 - 2 stacks for a total of 6 players (QB+WR+WR+Opp.RB) (WR+DST)
Week 8 - 1 stack for a total of 3 players. (QB+WR+Opp.WR)
Week 9 - 3 stacks for a total of 6 players. (QB+WR)(WR+TE)(RB+DST) All team stacks.
Total Avg. of Stacks per week: 2 stacks & 5 players.
Thus far in 2021, we’ve seen a QB stacked with at least one pass catcher in 100% of the winning Milli Maker Lineups which is similar to what we saw in the first half of the 2020 season. The two exceptions being Taysom Hill and Jalen Hurts led lineups in 2020 - two running QB’s who have a high enough rushing floor to be ran naked without a pass catcher.
In 2 out of the 9 weeks, we have seen a WR stacked with the DST which correlates well when you have an offense that can play with big leads and have the pass rushers to rush the QB like with Arizona and Tampa Bay.
In 3 out of the 9 weeks, we’ve seen a RB stacked with the DST. 66% of the time this was not necessary. However, RB’s still correlate with their DST as teams run out the clock when they’re playing with a lead and those DST’S have more chances to score when the opposing offenses are trailing and forced to throw.
In a year of lots of lopsided games, stacks have still been heavily represented in winning lineups. While there are fewer thick stacks in one game, we've certainly seen a combination of stacks from several games, and also more team stacks with no bring back player. In lopsided games, team stacks are superior to game stacks. 4 out of 9 weeks we had a winning lineup of only team stacks. Additionally, we've had 2 or more stacks used in 7 out of 9 weeks.
Total Roster %:
Week 1 - 78%
Week 2 - 77%
Week 3 - 87%
Week 4 - 88%
Week 5 - 115%
Week 6 - 93%
Week 7 - 91%
Week 8 - 114%
Week 9 - 103%
Total - 94%
The average Roster % was 108% in 16 weeks of the 2020 NFL Season. Down 14% from the 2020 season, are we really surprised? When chalkier players and stacks like Mahomes/Hill, Rodgers/Adams are hitting almost every week, naturally the winning lineups are going to be chalkier than more contrarian builds. With the Chiefs having a down year thus far, and even the Bills not being able to score more than 6 points vs the lowly Jaguars, these chalkier lineups are not winning as often. Thus we can explain more contrarian lineups being even more contrarian than the contrarian winners in the past. That's accurate, I think.
time will tell if this will hold steady or climb back to what we saw in 2020.
Flex on EM
Week 1: WR in the Flex
Week 2: WR in the Flex
Week 3: WR in the Flex
Week 4: RB in the Flex
Week 5: WR in the Flex
Week 6: TE in the Flex
Week 7: WR in the Flex
Week 8: WR in the Flex
Week 9: RB in the Flex
WR in the Flex - 66.6% of the time
RB in the Flex - 22.2% of the time
TE in the Flex - 11.1% of the time
If you have a feeling that it’s a RB or TE week, the numbers show that it’s not impossible to win the Milli Maker with these positions in the flex. However, the numbers show with almost a year and a half of data that the WR position is far more likely going to win you the Milli’s if you flex one in your lineup. The WR in the flex is up 10% from last year when it was in 56% of the winning lineups. You want that AJ Brown or DK Metcalf like flex and not surprisingly, they’ve each made an appearance.
Pricing by Position
In a salary cap game, if you aren’t looking at pricing trends, you are missing something. For example, through 9 games we don’t have a winning lineup with a QB priced over $7400. So if you’re trying to decide between a 7K QB and a 7800-8200 QB, I’d follow the numbers.
QB
Week 1: 5700
Week 2: 6900
Week 3: 7000
Week 4: 6700
Week 5: 7400
Week 6: 5900
Week 7: 7100
Week 8: 5700
Week 9: 7000
Total Avg: $6600
The overall QB price has slightly risen from Weeks 1-4 when it was $6575 but it’s been consistent as the average is only $25 higher through 9 total weeks of football.
RB
Week 1: 5750
Week 2: 6700
Week 3: 5900
Week 4: 5800
Week 5: 5750
Week 6: 6500
Week 7: 5850
Week 8: 5150
Week 9: 5766
Total Avg: $5907
If you look back at the 2020 season, the average RB pricing was $6946 in Milli Maker winning lineups. Should we be surprised that this continues to fall and is now at $5907 on the season after being at $6037 for the first month of the season?
Not really. With Cook, CMC, Barkley, Chubb battling injuries throughout the season,, and Henry now lost for what might be the year, some of the highest priced studs have been MIA. I wouldn’t be surprised to see RB pricing continue to fall by season’s end.
With the league missing so many stud RB's every week due to injury, this might be another explanation as to why scoring is down. When you are missing guys who can score over 40+ fantasy points on any given slate, it's going to impact a lot of games. Not being able to sustain drives is a killer for game environments that produce scoring.
WR
Week 1: 5600
Week 2: 5475
Week 3: 5875
Week 4: 6033
Week 5: 6050
Week 6: 5266
Week 7: 6175
Week 8: 6900
Week 9: 6100
Total Avg: $5941
As we saw when evaluating 2020 trends, when there’s a spend down trend at one position, that means a spend up elsewhere as DFS players will wisely use the full $50,000 of salary cap or 99% of it. Weeks 1-4 the average WR price was $5745 and now is up to $5941. With Kupp being in the winning lineup in back to back weeks, this should be no surprise.
TE
Week 1: 8300
Week 2: 4700
Week 3: 4700
Week 4: 3400
Week 5: 3700
Week 6: 5900
Week 7: 2500
Week 8: 3600
Week 9: 4900
Total Avg: $4633
Winning Tight end pricing continues to fall. In a year of the studs continuing to disappoint on a weekly basis, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
I wrote this after week 4:
“What we're seeing so far with the Average price of TE is inline with what we saw for the first 8 weeks of the 2020 season when it was $5100. After the first 8 weeks of the 2020 season, it dropped to $3900. Will history repeat itself? Probably. Tight end is a very volatile position so it makes sense to punt the position as the week 4 winner did with Schultz.”
$5275 was the average pricing from weeks 1-4 and now it’s at $4633. Will it continue to drop, level out, or climb back up? I’m guessing probably not the latter.
DST
Week 1: 2100
Week 2: 2900
Week 3: 3000
Week 4: 4300
Week 5: 3000
Week 6: 3500
Week 7: 4000
Week 8: 2800
Week 9: 2500
Total Avg: $3122
DST pricing more or less stays the same from what we saw from weeks 1-4 of this season when it was $3075. In large field GPP’s, DST’s are worth paying up for because you need the ceiling to score enough points to bink the contest.
Ceiling
The last thing I want to take a look at is the ceiling of the Milli Maker winners - or total points needed to win. I’m not going to break down every player’s ceiling in the winning lineup as I do that on a weekly basis, but I will take a look at the overall ceiling this season compared to last year’s.
Total Points
Week 1: 222.54
Week 2: 233.34
Week 3: 223.92
Week 4: 255.32
Week 5: 260.84
Week 6: 231.86
Week 7: 237.06
Week 8: 226.24
Week 9: 205.34
Total Avg: 232.94
This average currently sits at about 10 points less than it did in 2020 when the average was 243. So far the low in 2021 is 12 points lower than the lowest score in 2020 and the high in 2021 is 19 points less than the highest point in 2020 when it was 279.
An average positional score of 25.88 is currently needed to take down the Milli Maker in 2021 despite the 27.7 average positional score needed to hit a 250 point target. 250 points is generally the target you need to hit to bink a large field GPP like the Milli Maker. Will the rest of the season be a reflection of what we've seen in 2021 or will offenses adjust to produce more fantasy points & swing scores back to the 2020 averages?
Join us for ‘Makin a Milli’ live this Friday night when we review Week 8 of the Milli Maker winning lineup and preview Week 9!
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