Week 6 DFS DraftKings Milly Maker Breakdown
The dynamic game of Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) requires much more than simply knowing the sport for which we’re entering contests to be successful. We must be adaptable, precise, and open to learning from previous endeavors, the latter of which will be the primary focus of this weekly written piece. Game Theoretic methodologies will allow us to analyze and dissect the previous week’s winner of the largest and most prestigious Guaranteed Prize Pool (GPP) tournament on DraftKings – the Millionaire Maker. These same tenets of Game Theory, which can most simply be explained as the development of decision-making processes given our own skill and knowledge, assumptions of the field based on the cumulative skill and knowledge of others playing the same game, and the rules and structure of the game itself, will allow us to further train our minds to see beyond the antiquated techniques of roster building being employed by a large portion of the field. Approaching improvement through these methods will give us insight into the anatomy of successful rosters and will help us develop repeatably profitable habit patterns for the coming weeks. We’ll start by looking at the previous week’s winning roster, extract any pertinent lessons for future utilization, and finish with a look ahead towards the coming main slate.
Winning Roster
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Lessons Learned
Out with the Old, In with the New
It seems as if the field has yet to fully move away from a standard roster construction that has been beaten into our skulls during the previous five or so seasons. From my observations, the field seems fixed on the “standard DFS core” stack of a quarterback, one of their pass-catchers, and a correlated bring-back. And yet, none of the optimal rosters nor winning rosters through six weeks of the 2023 have contained that roster construction core. Put most succinctly, that habit pattern was developed in a different macro state of the league, one where scoring was higher. Scoring was on a consistent incline for six years, peaking at a value of 2.88 touchdowns per team per game in 2020. That value dropped gradually since then to 2.43 in 2022, while teams are currently averaging under 2.30 touchdowns per game in 2023.
The theoretics behind this realization would contend that the “standard DFS core” roster construction is no longer optimal due to the changing dynamics of scoring in the league. That begs the question – if that is the case, what would be theoretical optimal moving forward? If teams are going to have a harder time scoring, they are also going to have a harder time contributing to a game environment that erupts. If fewer games are vastly overperforming their Vegas game totals on a given week, that theoretically increases the importance of attacking individual teams and, to a lesser degree, individual players that are set up well to outperform their median projections (remember, projections systems and Vegas game totals and lines are built to capture the median, with exactly half of the eventual outcomes present on either side of the line, or projection).
We touched on this aspect last week in the discussion revolving around projections at the running back position, a position that is widely regarded as the most accurate to project due to the heavy correlation between volume and fantasy scoring at the position.
Optimal theory would then dictate that our “DFS roster construction cores” moving forward would be a team stack (quarterback plus to members of his team – notice the term “members” instead of “pass-catchers”) or a skinny stack (quarterback plus one member of his team) until scoring picks back up throughout the league.
Variance Is Your Friend, Kind Of
Variance is your friend… at volatile positions. For a while, we were able to generate meaningful leverage at the running back position, which is quickly drying up to the increased projecting power of optimizers and projections systems around the industry. If we think about variance as it pertains to a position’s range of outcomes on a sliding scale, running backs would be tightly distributed about the mean whereas defense/special teams would be the most spread out with the highest standard deviation. Along that scale, quarterbacks would be closest to running backs, followed by tight ends, and then wide receivers closest to defense/special teams.
Team stacking accomplishes a couple main goals in constructing rosters. First, it reduces the variables by tying highly volatile positions (wide receiver and tight end) to a more stable position (quarterback). Second, it allows for bulk scoring through highly variant acts such as chunk yardage, broken plays, and touchdowns. The correlated nature of those variant acts allows us to reduce the overall variance on a given roster.
The final piece of that theoretical puzzle has to do with over-stacking, as one team (or game environment) vastly outperforming the rest of the slate is exponentially meaningful the more subdued scoring is on the slate. Look at the Miami Dolphins in Week 3 against the Broncos. This makes the theoretics of stacking reside on the extremes – most weeks, skinny stacks and team stacks will be optimal, but in those rare instances where a team or game vastly outperforms the rest of the teams and games on a slate, the more important those instances become due to the relatively lower chances of other teams coming close due to the changing nature of the NFL game.
On this Week 6 slate, DraftKings user ddry was able to capture fantasy gold through an under-owned team stack consisting of Desmond Ridder, Drake London, and Kyle Pitts.
Looking Ahead
Jordan Love + Aaron Jones + Christian Watson
The Packers have played at a moderate pace (13th-ranked 28.1 seconds per play) and have had difficulty attacking downfield to this point in the season, but quarterback Jordan Love leads the league in intended air yards per pass attempt (9.8) and the team will play its first game all season with both Jones and Watson healthy. Watson jumped up to a standard-for-him 84 percent snap rate in Week 6 and appears fully healthy, seeing three targets on passes 20+ yards down the field. The Broncos rank 32nd in the league in net yards allowed per pass attempt at 7.7. Aaron Jones has missed three of the previous four games and only played 35 percent of the team’s offensive snaps in Week 4 but is coming off a bye week and should have a clean bill of health. We saw his upside on full display in Week 1 when he returned 26.7 DraftKings points on just 47 percent of the offensive plays before leaving with a hamstring injury. A robust pass-catching role also ties in nicely with his quarterback here, making this three-man stack a high upside play at likely modest ownership.
The Ravens are down their top running back and face an opponent allowing the fewest rush yards per game (64.7). The Lions are one of the most zone-heavy teams in the league this season after playing some of the highest rates of man coverage in the league a season ago. Mark Andrews holds a solid 24 percent targets per route run rate against zone coverage this year and the Lions’ zone-heavy scheme naturally filters pass volume to the middle of the field, behind the linebackers and in front of the deep safeties. This is the area of the field that Andrews thrives in, leaving him set up for the potential to put up a “had to have it” score at a variant position in Week 7.
The Chargers rank 32nd in the league in yards allowed before contact at a startling 1.98 while the Chiefs’ offensive line has blocked to an above average 1.40 yards before contact this season (12th). Pacheco’s 4.37 speed can result in the opportunity for splash run plays if he gets into the second level, something he could have a chance to do at an increased rate in this matchup. He has seen at least 16 carries in each of the previous three games and is coming off a career-high six targets in Week 6. Furthermore, he has returned at least 7.3 DraftKings points through the air in two of his previous three outings, effectively reducing the need to score multiple touchdowns to return a GPP-viable score. If there were a spot where he can rip off 100+ yards and find the end zone on the ground while adding six or more PPR points through the air, this would be it. As we talked about above, ownership at running make matters less now than it did in the past, meaning we can play Pacheco confidently regardless of his ownership draw this weekend.
