The Difference between simply cashing and taking down a tournament is often a decision on one player. You choose the incorrect higher priced one off, and that alters your 2v2 that tilts the lineup between winning or simply cashing. It’s a very fine line once you get into the 200 point range.
Apart from recapping the large field GPP’s such as the Play Action and MIlli Maker, I also want to take a look at smaller tournaments like single entry and 3 max’s because these tournaments are very winnable. You’ll see below the Triple Option in which there were 1,800 entrants and only 3 entries were allowed per account. (3 Max)
In this contest, Chris and I had almost identical lineups but he got different in a couple of spots and it made all the difference. Let’s take a look at his winning lineup:
Stacking
QB + WR + Opposing WR
Burrow - 20.34
Chase - 30.90
Adams - 40.60
This stack combined for 91.84 points. We knew Adams was in a smash spot to go off and experts thought the Bengals could hang with the Packers so Burrow/Chase was the ideal team stack to have Adams as the bring back in this game. This stack combined for 4.54 X and a 30+ point average. It was much more efficient than using a $7200 Rodgers who scored less than a point more than Burrows despite being $900 more in salary.
Roster %
Burrow - 9.54%
Henry - 34.58%
Mattison - 48.71%
Adams - 31.09%
Toney - 15.7%
Chase 15.85%
Ricky S.J. - 11.21%
Robinson - 11.46%
AZ DST - 9.39%
Total - 187.53%
This is obviously an extremely chalky lineup to win a contest but we know that Week 5 was a week when the chalk smashed, so it’s not that surprising. For comparison, my cash lineup that cashed was at 228% total roster %. Secondly, when you only have to beat out about 1,800 other line-ups, you don’t need to differentiate your lineup that much like you would in a large field GPP.
Pricing
$9000 Henry - 3.77X
$8200 Adams - 4.95X
$6100 Burrow - 3.33X
$6000 Robinson - 4.11X
$5800 Chase - 5.32X
$5500 Mattison - 5.50X
$4000 Toney - 8.15X
$2900 AZ DST - 2.75X
$2500 Ricky S.J. - 3.64X
Total - $50,000 - 4.61X
The chalk smashed this week and we had chalky studs crammed into a lot of lineups as Mattison was an incredible value at $5500 when Cook was ruled out. Sadly I was slinging drinks Sunday morning and unable to hand build enough lineups with Mattison in them in between mixing cocktails, but I had him in this lineup and he smashed as well as the high priced chalk of Henry & Adams. If you look at my lineup and Chris’s, we both had Burrow, Adams, Chase, Mattison. He chose Henry and I had Ekeler at almost identical production but at $1400 less and 30% less ownership, so I was in great shape from this 5V5 to take down the tournament. However, where I differed is my decision to pay up for Mclaurin instead of pay down for Toney, and that led to me missing out on being able to afford James Robinson. In hindsight, I wanted exposure to Mclaurin, had Robinson in 90% of my lineups, and nobody saw Toney’s 30+ point performance coming.. so I have no regrets. However, the Toney/Robinson combo was only 10K and way more productive than my $12,100 Mclaurin/Patrick one off combo. The decision for Mclaurin or Toney was really the difference between cashing and winning.
This lineup overall Fantasy Points Per Dollar output was really good at 4.61X for a small tournament of this size.
Ceiling
Generally 200 points will not take down a tournament of this size but it’s enough to place in maybe the top 20. With Week 5 being a high scoring chalk week, 230 was enough to win the triple option. Some weeks that score would take down the Milli Maker, but not this week. In general, you want about 215-230 to take down a smaller tournament of this size. That’s about an average of 23-25.5 points per player.
Let’s look at the historical ceiling of each player:
Burrows: 25-35
Henry: 40+
Mattison: 20-30+
Adams: 40+
Toney: 30+ (Small Sample Size)
Chase: 20-30+
Ricky Seals Jones: 10-15
Robinson: 20-30+
AZ DST: 15-20
Variance certainly factors into both the floor and ceiling of players which is why some players are strictly tournament plays based on their salary and their high variance in output from week to week. However, when that player does smash, can their ceiling be enough to carry your lineup to first place? We know Adams, Henry, Robinson, and Burrow can get you there. What we’ve seen from Mattison and Chase in small sample sizes is they both have that 20-30+ point ceilings to keep the average high enough to win a tournament. When the rest of their lineup hits the ceiling through the right stack and one offs, (Like Toney) that can make up for lower ceilings from Ricky Seals-Jones and Arizona DST.
Overall what was great about this winning lineup is you had 1 game stack with 2 studs involved, 3 optimal plays at RB with one in the flex, and really the one player needed to vastly outperform their price was Toney and that wasn’t asking much at 4K. If you ran this lineup out every week for your season long or dynasty league, you’d win a lot of games and it was the perfect lineup to play in the Triple Option of the week 5 DFS Main Slate.
Comments