Beer Money Bets | NFL DFS Week 9

I had nothing to tilt about this last week as I did not play any serious lineups, but there are still plenty of results to dive into. Last week I looked into what a captain brings to your team and laid down some ideas about what type of players you want to select as your captain to be most successful. I entered into two free contests on DraftKings with these two different lineups to be able to easily track the difference between the two. I had split the idea into two different types of players you might want to captain. First, there is the argument for captaining a stud, which I defined as a player that is a top 3 projected points, and most likely top 3 salary too. Second, there’s the idea of captaining an overachiever. I defined this as a player that is a medium salary player that has a serious chance to overachieve, or score more than their projected points and salary. 

Last week, the Baltimore vs Steelers game provided a great test environment for this idea, as we had an obvious stud player in Lamar Jackson and an obvious overachiever in J.K. Dobbins. Here is how these to lineups faired:

Lamar lived up to his stud price and J.K Dobbins overperformed, so it worked out exactly as I had hoped. Although the captain overachiever team scored more points, I think the captain a stud argument won here. This is because Dobbins wasn’t cheap enough that including him did not allow another top player to be included in the lineup. All I was able to do was add Justin Tucker, who admittedly I thought was a decent play, but still not a big addition to my lineup. There were also players like Devin Duvernay and Miles Boykin, that when sorted by projected points per salary, were obvious plays. Miles Boykin was only $200(!!!) and Duvernay was only $800, and these players could easily get 5+ points. Boykin got a touchdown and had a massive return on his $200. 

The lesson I learned here is to look at value plays first. When I mean value plays, I mean players that are like Boykin and Duvernay that are $1,500 or less. If there are players that you can count on for 5+ points, then it’s advantageous to play a stud at Captain. If these types of value players are not available, then captaining an overachiever might be more advantageous. 

New Process for Showdown Double Ups:

I am still cautiously proceeding with my showdown strategy, but now that I have a slightly better feel about the captain position, I believe I am ready to tackle the whole lineup. I have some crazy math ideas I am going to throw in and see if anything sticks, so follow along with this completely new process:

1. To select a captain, look at players below $1,500. If there is a player that is easily projected 5+ points, captain a stud. If there is not, look for a player in the $4,000-$6,000 range that has a serious chance to outperform their projected points and select that player as captain.
2. ***Crazy Math Warning*** Take all projected points and put them to the 1.1 power (This will add a little weight to the higher projected players). Divide these values by the player’s salary (I’d suggest multiplying it by 1000 to make it a readable number). Sort these values from highest to lowest and use this to select players. 
3. Move down the list for these values and place them in order in your lineup. If a player cannot be afforded, skip it and move down until you can find the next player that fits. 

The Process in Action:

Admittedly, this process sounds kind of crazy and too straight forward to work, but hey, it’s worth trying. It is set up on the foundation of projected points, which do a good job of incorporating a lot of variables. This process also weighs players with projected points more heavily, so there is some method behind the madness. Here is the process in action for the Seattle vs Buffalo game:

1. No player below $1,500 has a projection above 5 points so I look to find an mid-priced overachiever as captain. I see John Brown sitting there at $5,400 and he looks ideal to score more than the 10 points I have him projected for. It is also worth noting that John Brown is still coming off an injury so there is a slight discount to be had because of that too.
2. After doing my crazy math and putting all projected points to the 1.1 power, I come up with a list of values that has Stefon Diggs, DeeJay Dallas, Josh Allen, Russell Wilson, John Brown, and Tyler Lockett at the top. 
3. As I put these players in, I do not run out of salary until I get to Lockett as my last player. I have $1,900 left and have to go deep down the list all the way to Will Dissly to find a player that fits my salary restraints. 

I am not entirely sure how well this process will work, so to test it I am placing it in a 10 cent tournament. I know this goes against the cash games process in this series, but I want to see a cheap but competitive way to test this process. Don’t forget to check back at the Week 7 article to see my first finished process, and good luck this week! If you have any questions, you can always find me on twitter @bpofsu. Also, for all of your DFS needs, check out Paulie’s DFS Sleepers and Michael Reedy’s Money Makers and Heart Breakers here at the Undroppables.