I saw a tweet from @BrettKollman that perfectly summed up week 7: " If my math is correct, the average margin of victory across the NFL today is 20.8 points. Never seen this many blowouts in one Sunday before."
In DFS terms, this undoubtedly meant that it was a great day for the right team stacks, but not so much game stacks. The Week 7 DFS graveyard was full of KC/TEN stacks that were dead before the afternoon games even started. That 57 point game total never had a chance as KC struggled to move the ball & were quickly buried.
The Milli Maker would clearly have a winner with only team stacks then, right? Well, the Milli maker is a different beast. Let's examine the winning lineup.
Stacking
QB + WR + WR + Opposing RB
Stafford - 30.16
Kupp - 40.60
Van Jefferson JR - 14.30
Swift - 28.40
Total - 113.46
AVG - 28.36
FPTS$ - 4.47X
(Fantasy Points Per Dollar)
This is the thickest stack we’ve seen all year in the winning Milli Maker lineup as it was the first time this year that we’ve seen a WR double stack that was brought back with a RB.
The Rams/Lions game had one of the higher totals on the slate and Stafford going against his old team was attractive in stacks - despite most questioning if the Lions could actually do enough for this game to be stack worthy. Swift’s usage of 13 rushes and 10 targets was enough for 8 receptions, 144 all purpose yards, and a touchdown. Even in a negative gamescript, Swift has high upside most weeks because of his receiving ability.
Tough day for the stacking is overrated crowd as we saw 2 stacks with a total of 6 players in this winning lineup. These stacks combined for 162.56 points which averages about 27 points per player. If you’re keeping score from past write-ups, 27.7 points is the average needed per player to hit the 250 point target for a large field GPP.
WR + DST
Godwin - 28.10
Bucs - 21
Total - 49.10
AVG - 24.55
FPTS$ - 5X
(Fantasy Points Per Dollar)
The Bears are a bad team and Brady’s Bucs are the defending champs so the outcome in this one was to be expected. The game stack wasn’t forced here as it was easy to predict this mismatch being one sided so the team stack was the preferred route. Godwin was chalky but in a smash spot with Antonio Brown and Gronk out, so stacking Godwin with the 2.84% rostered Bucs Defense was a great stack for that game environment and got some leverage on the field with the chalky Cardinals DST. (37% rostered in the Milli Maker.)
Roster %
Stafford - 13.43%
Swift - 7.04%
Harris - 12.57%
Kupp - 19.27%
Godwin - 25.95%
Mclaurin - 4.13%
Moreau - 2.04%
Van Jefferson - 4.29%
Bucs - 2.84%
Total - 91.56%
One of the trickiest parts of building a large field GPP lineup is the overall roster % projections. Late friday night I had a construction that was about 99% in total ownership projections and by sunday morning the projected total was up all the way to 150% so that lineup was scrapped.. Meagonjoy had no such issues with too much roster % this week as her lineup was 91%. We now have 6 out of 7 weeks of the Mill Maker with total roster % being under 95%
Leverage
I alluded to it in the last section but the Bucs D were a great pivot off of the chalky Cardinals D. Some of the other leverage plays were Mclaurin, Moreau, & Van Jefferson. Mclaurin was direct leverage off of a chalky Adams at 19%, Van Jefferson was only $100 more than Bateman, outscored him, and came in at 12% less ownership. Last Moreau was a last minute lineup decision for many - but few in the milli maker - and provided salary relief and a way to get different from the field coming in at 2% ownership.
Pricing
$8400 Kupp - 4.83X
$7100 Stafford - 4.24X
$6900 Mclaurin - 4.08X
$6000 Swift - 4.73X
$5900 Godwin - 4.76X
$5700 Harris - 4.96X
$4000 Bucs DST - 5.25X
$3500 Van Jefferson - 4.08X
$2500 Moreau - 7.2X
$50,000 - 4.90X
If you’re keeping track, through 7 weeks of the Milli Maker in the 2021 season, we have not had a winning lineup without at least one position that produced 6X on their salary. An average total of 4.90X in player salary is what we’ve seen most weeks in regards to pricing as the winning lineup has been no less than 4.58X over the past month of the season. It had been a couple of weeks since an 8K WR made his way into the winning lineup but with Moreau being stone minimum pricing at $2500, you could afford to pay up for Kupp at $8400.
We continue to see higher priced Defenses winning the Milli Maker with this week being the highest at $4000. Weeks 1-6 we’ve seen average DST pricing of $3,000.
The rest of the lineup has been more or less what we’ve seen in winning milli maker lineups with most players falling into the 5-6k range.
Ceiling
If your lineup doesn’t have the ceiling to get there, nothing else really matters so it’s something that we evaluate every week so that you have the sharp eye to scan your lineup construction from top to bottom and see if it has the potential to be ‘the nuts’
At first glance I would worry that you could get to a total of 250 points with Moreau and Van Jefferson’s ceiling but at 6K combined total, they don’t have to do much. In fact, they combined for 5.64X, which is more than enough average between these two players to keep pace with average fantasy points per dollar totals in winning lineups.
However if Moreau was 4K, Kupp isn’t able to fit into the lineup without other concessions and the total ceiling of this lineup might be changed. 2.5K was definitely the sweet spot for Moreau.
Furthermore, 250 points isn’t needed each and every week of the Milli Maker as we’ve seen several weeks with winning lineups being between 230 and 250 points.
Historical Ceiling
Stafford: 30-35 pts
Stafford has always been super talented and had weapons like Megatron and Golladay but this is the first time he’s been on a great team with an offensive coordinator that is really creative to utilize weapons like Kupp. I think we can see 35-40 point games from Stafford in the right game environment.
Swift: 25-30 pts
It’s safe to question what Swift’s real ceiling is if he’s not splitting carries because we could certainly see a lot more production from him if Williams would go down in a game and he got a full load.
Harris: 20-28 points.
In 1 and a half years, this is Harris’s ceiling. Fortunately for Meaganjoy it came this week, but we probably should’ve expected that against the Jets. Great one off in a plus matchup.
Kupp: 40+
I’ve seen several comparisons between Kupp and Michael Thomas in 2019 and Kupp with many saying Kupp is even better because he can run all the routes compared to ‘slant boy’ and I don’t disagree.
Godwin: 30-40
Godwin has always been really good, and the only problem with him hitting his ceiling is that Brady has so many options to spread the ball around to. Even this week, 3 of the Touchdowns went to Evans. We still haven’t seen a Godwin ceiling week this year but he did enough this week to be in the nuts lineup.
Mclaurin: 25-35 pts
Scary Terry found his way into a large GPP winning lineup during spooky season. He’s easily one of the best WR’s in the game and we might not see his true ceiling until WFT finds a quarterback or terry finds a new team.
Moreau:
18 points might be his ceiling as he played a lot in 2019. With Waller out, Moreau delivered.
Van Jefferson: 15-20
With Kupp, Woods, and Higbee on the roster, Van Jefferson appears to be the perfect boom or bust option which keeps his salary down and makes him a stackable option. I.e. can get there in a stack but isn’t a stand alone player in GPP’s.
Bucs: 20-25 pts
Even with poor DB play, the Bucs defense has a lot of potential from week to week with a great pass rush that gets after opposing quarterbacks as they’re forced to throw while playing from behind.
This lineup featured several elite players despite less than elite salaries and had the proper mix of lottery tickets like Moreau and Van Jefferson to provide a winning combination of salary relief and fantasy points per dollar for the entire lineup to get there.
Catch ‘Makin A Milli’ this weekend as we briefly recap week 7 of the Milli Maker and look ahead to Week 8!
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