Fantasy Football Daily - 2021 Week 6 DFS Recap Podcast

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) and Jordan Tohline (@JMToWin) of One Week Season (@oneweekseason) recap Week 6 DFS lineups, finishes, and action. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time for the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoint.com. Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. What is going on? OWS fam, Fantasy Points fam. Welcome to the week seven edition of the DFS Recap Pod. Scott Barrett and I will be breaking down, but week six, Slate,

talking about DFS plays and strategy, talking about teams and coaches, talking about week seven a little bit. Scott, my man, how are you doing? I'm doing good. In my headphones, you're sounding a little fuzzy, so you might want to take a quick look at your microphone,

but I'm excited for today's show. I missed you last week. I know a lot of our followers missed you last week, so let me just take some time and explain what happened. You were traveling. I was aware you were traveling, so we kicked it back a day. And then the next day, a down telephone wire at my apartment really threw me off. I missed half of the day jumping from coffee shop to coffee shop.

One, didn't have a place to plug in your charger. The other one was too crowded. And, you know, you lose a half a day during the, fantasy season and Tuesday's always my busiest day data collection because I hate doing that on Monday missing one game so I try and do it all at once. So I was scrambling the entire week, always felt like I was in catch up mode just losing that half day. And the most disappointing thing about not having the show last week was I didn't get to Victory Lab because I absolutely smashed last week and then this week was interesting. We'll get to your results in a second.

we've started doing this thing. Maybe we're becoming real life friends, J.M. I don't know. But before it was just, we were like Opie and Anthony right before the break where we both secretly hated each other. And we only talked on the podcast and you could tell the tension was palpable. But this year, we made a point to call each other on Saturdays and talk process, talk plays. Wait, way, way, wait. By call each other, you mean you call me without texting first, which you're the only person I know who just calls people. I think Evan Silva just calls people too. You and Evan should be best bud.

You guys should just call each other without warning all the time. We do that. That is my favorite thing about becoming a fantasy expert is now I get drunk in 3 a.m. phone calls from Silva. And it's hilarious. It's just, it's just hilarious. I have a saved voicemail on my phone from years ago that I will never play for anyone publicly, but it's a pretty funny one. He just

trashes me for like 45 minutes straight, and I just sit there giggling, and it's the most amazing thing ever. Big Evan Silva fan. Really grateful for that friendship. But yeah, so we started calling you, or I started randomly calling you without a heads up,

and then you'll either take that or you'll call me back. And so two weeks ago, we had a great talk, and you kind of just, Yeah, man, sounds like you're on the right things. I'd go even harder with that. It gave me some confidence. And so I set 15 lineups.

And I usually am a big tinker where I'll tinkle that night. I'll tinker that night and the next morning. And so that didn't happen. I just felt so rock solid good about these lineups I made after our phone call. Didn't touch it at night. And then the next morning didn't touch it. And then the Alexander Madison news dropped. And I could have very easily swapped to Madison on a ton of those lineups.

And even if I didn't, every single one of those lineups would smash. But instead, you know, Sunday morning is always a mad panic, scramble. So I ended up just deleting a bunch of those lineups. But I still smashed. If I swapped to Madison, I would have smashed. If I didn't even swap to Madison, I still would have smashed. So it was a huge week for me. And then this past weekend was a little different.

And maybe it was just because I was playing catch up all week due to that down telephone wire. And it just seemed to me like you landed on the nuts. Like your process was solid the entire week. I'm like, yeah, so what's your strategy? And you're like, yeah, I'm going to have some Washington, Kansas City game stacks, which I was already heavily on. And then you're like, and then my favorite play is Cup onslaught lineups with Stafford onslaught lineups with Cup and Darrell Henderson.

And then Tony is the bringback. And then I'll let you speak to your analysis on Tony. Tony, by the way, had three targets on four routes, poised to smash, bad luck with the injury. And just the way you broke down Tony, I thought, was really sharp, really on point. The only thing I added was with Ramsey playing more in the slot, Tony, I think, was going to see more work outside. and the Rams inexplicably this year after ranking best for a number of years,

ranked bottom six and fantasy points per game allowed to outside wide receivers. So you can talk to your results, probably not great with Tony in there, but I really thought your process was just about perfect and better than mine. So I really took a step aside this week. And I was like, well, J.M's on all the best plays. So I'll just live vicariously through him this week. Yeah, the – and by the way, I mean, I told you this in person, but I thoroughly enjoy those Saturday calls when we have the opportunity to do them.

You got my son in the background. He's playing in my office right now. And he's very excited about our discussion about the Rams and Giants and Cadarious, Tony. So this last week was interesting. So for me, one of the things I'm always looking for is what are the game environments that can help you win a tournament? Because if you get that right, you get three or four spots right at once. So I talked like two weeks ago I had Derek Henry, Devante Adams, Cadarious, Tony, and Alexander Madison on pretty much every roster, but I didn't get the game environment right. And so getting like four one-offs right is really difficult to do.

But if you just get the one right game environment, you get four spots correct at once. If you stack Tom Brady plus two pass catchers, you know, didn't even need a bring back against the dolphins. But like right there, you've got three spots right. If you identified the Chargers-Browns game and stacked it well, you get further spots right. And so the value of getting those game stacks right is so much greater than getting a bunch of one-offs, right? So this last year is pretty evident. I apologize. OWS listeners have gotten used to Williams' contributions, but Fantasy Points listeners probably not so much yet.

So he is absolutely adorable. let me just say that. And since we somehow sneak in a neutral milk hotel reference seemingly every show, they have a famous live album where fans are split over whether the noisy baby is disrupting the show and is a bad thing, or if it's like the perfect edition and is basically playing his own unique instrument that adds to the jovial nature of the show or what have you. So I feel like that's what we're really.

dealing with right now. So I don't think I told you this on for on last last Friday. I think it was last Friday my wife had to go to the ER. She had some heart and blood issues that ended up. I mean, everyone was all clear after they did all these scams and stuff. But Friday was the day that I record the Angles podcast and write the player grid. And so I was trying to write the Angles podcast while watching two kids. And one of them, one of them, was my nine-month-old daughter who was, like, I had a hold, and she was talking into the mic and whatnot. And there were a bunch of, like, dads who were like, oh, no, this week's was great.

But I'm like, yeah, but for the non-dad, this week was probably overkill of the kids in the background. So, yeah, this last week, for me, for my game environment standpoint, and I think that that's one of the most important places to start is saying what games could produce huge outputs. and it was pretty clear, right? So there were some interesting games, Detroit and Cincinnati. So what I was looking at was what games could go for 70 to 80 combined points. And I really liked Detroit and Cincinnati as a game that could go for 60 combined points.

I liked Minnesota and Carolina as a game that could go for 60 combined points. That game actually got there. The Detroit and Cincinnati one didn't. But I didn't end up focusing on those games because it was like, yeah, but what games could just like go off? And I think it was Zandamir brought up a good point about last year when the chiefs played the Jets. I don't know if you remember that one, Scott. I think you were actually on that game and I wasn't, but Mahomes threw for like five or six

touchdown passes. And my thought had been to that point in the season, the chiefs had skewed run heavy once they had a big lead. But that game, they were just like, pour it on, keep throwing touchdown passes. And so sometimes you get those games where you get these four or five, I mean, Stafford threw four touchdown passes and just an absolute smash. Didn't get over 300 yards. but you're looking for those spots where you can just get all the points.

And so because of that, like I didn't have any Devante Adams this last week because what was the chances of that game shooting out? Bulting going to play slow pace is going to be lower scoring. He's going to put up most times, he's going to put up 20 points or something, but you need like 40 from him. So, yeah, I was very much focused on Williams Giants and Chiefs, Washington, and then a little bit of a little bit of, you know, Lions exposure, Bingles Exposure and then one Wence stack.

And it was a Wince on slot line. It was like Wins, Pittman and Jonathan Taylor. So it didn't work out. But yeah, it was initially a week. It would have been, it was a fine week for me. Three of my nine rosters ended up cashing. One of my rosters had a shot at the top 10 finish if Kareem Hunt had had a, you know, 25 point game.

But also he was super chalky. So, like, technically him failing is better from a strategy perspective. We should actually get to that play here in a little bit, too. And some of the thought processes and strategies behind that one. But the Cadarius Tony one, and we've talked about this a little bit before, but one of the things, Scott, that I like about you is you have so much knowledge, but you're also willing to ask questions and gain new perspectives, right? You're like, okay, I know these things and these things,

and then we're on our call, and I said the thing about, about the Giants designing place for Cadarious Tony, and you said, what do you mean specifically? And so then I dove into what I'd seen studying those games. And you're like, okay, thanks, that's really helpful, right? Can you say exactly what you said on our phone call? Sure. So it's, the thought for me is Tony wasn't playing at the start of the season as what, the number 21 overall pick, wasn't playing at the start of the season because he was considered from the point when they drafted him too raw. And the thought was, and reading Beat writers throughout the summer, they were even saying, like, the idea, the giant's idea with Tony is

he'll probably be playing very little the first half of the season. They'll get some, some trick plays designed for him, right? And then as the season moves along, they'll hopefully integrate him more and more. So all of a sudden, he's thrown into the fire, but one of the things I said to you was everybody laughs at Jason Garrett. Jason Garrett's really bad at in-game adjustments. He was really bad at game management as a head coach. He's not that creative with pre-snap movement and whatnot. But one thing that he's really good at is using his best players and maximizing their talents. And so with Tony, a lot of coaches would just be like, well, let's have him go run some slants and some outs and maybe

he gets open. But Jason Garrett's like, well, we're saying this guy's too raw, so let's just get him open. Let's design screenplays for him. Let's give him jet sweeps. Let's give him jet sweeps to where he drops back to pass. Let's line him up at quarterback in a wildcat set up and have him run up the gut. Let's design pick plays to get him open. Let's design zone beaters to get him open. So it's like they're out of weapons, so they were just giving him the ball. Again, 6.6 fantasy points in the first four minutes of that game and then got injured. So that hurt, that kind of sunk five of my nine lineups because you're probably not getting a first place finish with 6.6 points over 5K in salary. But yeah, and so, and that's one of the places where

understanding the strategy of DFS and how to put together great rosters is more important than understanding any of this stuff. But understanding this stuff can give you an edge if you're good at building good fantasy rosters. And so I like looking for those little places where it's like players who are just undervalued. You and I had a lot of conversations about Deonté Johnson last year when he was super cheap and just finding places where you can watch the games and say, oh, this guy's actually priced lower than he should be. Or to say that it differently, in four or five weeks this guy's going to be priced a lot higher than where he's priced right now. And Cadarious Tony was still sort of in that bucket.

So, yeah, things didn't totally come together for me this last week, but I really loved more processes last week and felt like I was kind of on top of things. Yeah, and I like the Tony analysis, especially because it's super counter to the narrative that Jason Garrett's a donkey when, no, we have been seeing the Giants offense legitimately featured. I'm sure Cadarius Tony when he's been on the field. And you brought that up before with Ron Dale Moore and maybe Cordarell Patterson, where it's like, okay, they're not playing a full workload, but when they are on the field, they're getting designed screen. So you really need to factor that in.

Like the ball is going to them when they are on the field. Cadarious Tony, three targets on four routes last week, was poised to smash before that injury. 37% targets per route the last three weeks. So that was just good process, bad results. I'm looking at maybe not the winning Millie Maker, but one of the winning lineups on a super large field tournament. And this is sharp.

So if you look at the top 10 in the Millie, it's a mess. It's just like a bunch of uncorrelated plays that make no sense. like a naked baker lineup, a naked Darnold lineup, and those guys didn't even do well. Donovan People's Jones absolutely smashed. Thielen was on a lot of these top lineups, both at below 5% ownership. Shout out to Wes Huber, who's like, right now the king of nailing guys under 5% exposure on winning Millie Maker lineups loved DPJ last week. So I'm looking at this winning lineup, and it's a Prescott Lambstack.

And then what it did from the Kansas City Washington game, it only played Henderson and McKissick. You were very high on McKissick. Maybe he got helped out a little bit by the Gibson injury, but you were very high on him. It had Darrell Henderson and Cup. So you were also on heavily targeting those two pieces of the Rams offense and what should be a high-scoring blowout. It had Thielen, it had RSJ, and then it had Coles-D. And I thought that was a pretty sharp, pretty good lineup that's super sharp. That's super sharp.

And, you know, one of the things to look for too are what I call invisible players. It's like players who, let's say, like a lot of people spend a lot of time with pricing, right? Like they mess around with their rosters. They could tell you by Saturday what most players were priced at. You know, if you're like, hey, what is Kareem Hunt's price this week? People would be able to tell you off the top of their heads. most people wouldn't have been able to tell you last week what Adam Thielen's price was off the top of their head.

And there were a lot of these 5K, he was, I think he was 5,500. And there were a lot of these guys in the 5K range. Alan Robinson was one. Odell Beckham was one where it was like, man, if this guy hits, you know, like if things open up this week and this guy hits, nobody's going to be on them. And with those guys, you had direct leverage. It's like if OBJ hit Cream Hunt was the highest own player on the slate,

so you're taking away points from Kareem. hunts from all these cream hunt rosters and getting those points super sharp play whether it works out or not same thing with alan robinson or darnel mooney calil herbert was super highly owned so if you get points there you're taking points away from the calil herbert rosters but i didn't even spot thielan until saturday night and then it was like oh my god he's this cheap you know and i couldn't like bring myself around to it i said that i'd already kind of considered that game earlier in the week and then decided, well, I can't go for 70 to 80, so I'm going to keep looking for the games that can do that.

But Theon was just an incredibly sharp play because I even clicked through his game logs and was like, man, he's getting such short area looks this week. Like, what would it take for him to get to 30 points? And instead of answering that question for myself, I just used that as like a rhetorical question. I want to take for him to get to 30 points, he can't get there. But all it would take is a super high-volume game

because we know he's going to be efficient on those catches. he's going to catch a lot of them. And if he has a high volume game, he has a shot at touchdowns. So I thought that was a super sharp play. And one that I felt, it was really the only play from this last week, and then I felt like I overlooked from a process standpoint. Like if we played out this last week, Slate 100 times, DAC plus CD-LAM probably isn't the play that's going to win people tournaments

more often than not, right? But something like Phelan, you can point to, or I'll say, I'm going to dig into this deeper in today's inner circle, but basically the way that the Cowboys offense runs, it could put up 35 points and that could happen from so many different players. Whereas the Vikings, if you say they're going to put up 35 points, now you already have, you know who to look to. It's one of three guys. Whereas the Cowboys, it could be Schultz, it could be Amari, it could be Citi, it could be Zeke, it could be Pollard. It could be Cedric Wilson because you know that Belichick's going to try to force the Cowboys to go.

We saw Wilson get what seven targets or whatever it was. And so with the Vikings, though, you can say with a high degree of certainty that if they're putting up 30 plus points, those points are run through one of three players, possibly two of those three players. And so I thought the only was super sharp and one, again, that I didn't really even think about until Saturday and was kind of one of my regrets from this last week. Not that I would have ended up on him, but just from a process standpoint, it was an incredibly sharp, incredibly sharp play. Another one you and I talked about that I thought was sharp and ended up being, way higher-owned than anybody's projections. And I think certainly higher-on than either you or I were thinking about, but that was Joe Mixon.

And Joe Nixon against the Bengals, one of the best running backs in football, full workload, playing against what I said against the Bengals, against the Lions, one of the worst run defenses in the Lions. I think the only real hang-up there was the ankle injury and the lack of past game work so far. But you and I agreed on Saturday that that was just a super sharp play, We expected it to be under 5% owned, under 7% owned maybe,

but that's where all projections on all sites kind of had him. And he ended up about 18 to 20% owned, I think, in most tournaments. But another super sharp one that I think the process was sharp on for both of us as well. You have any thoughts on that or any other spots from this last week? Yeah, I just want to bring up the point that there's been like a one to two Vikings players on the winning Millie Maker almost every single week now, whether it's KJ Osborne, Tyler Conklin, Justin Jefferson, Adam Thieland, Kirk Cousins, Dalvin Cook, or Alexander Madison.

It feels like there's two per week, which is pretty crazy. And, you know, they're not coming in super. And it shows us the value of concentrated offenses. It's one of the best things we can look for. And that's like last year, Zandimir and I both had a one Vikings player per roster rule all season. It was like if you're building any roster, any roster, you have to put a Vikings player on there or at least strongly consider it because 30 points is hard to get. And probably one of these three guys is going for 30 points.

It's been diluted a little bit with Osborne and Conklin being involved. But yeah, that's a super sharp observation on that one. Yeah, and just Joe Mixon, yeah, we were super high on Joe Mixon. We thought he would be very underowned and he clearly wasn't. But he was a great play. even though Chris Evans did get like four targets, three carries, 22% of the snaps, but, you know, the matchup and he, you smashed anyway. Yeah, and also, like, there's so few guys at this point who get more than 75% of the snaps

at running back that basically if you're getting 75%, I'd call you a, what are your category, Scott? You got a bell cow and a workhorse and a... Bell cow, workhorse, scat-back, handcuff. whatever the hell Quidderell Patterson is. I think everybody calls him the goat now, so there you go. He calls himself, I'm a player. Don't call me a running back. Call me a wide receiver.

Call me a player. Yeah, he's finally a player after 10 years after being a first year on pick. But yeah, it was an interesting week. There was one other thing I was going to hit on from this last week. Oh, the Kareem Hunt thing. That was the one place where I was disappointed in my process. So on Saturday night, I was kind of figuring out my pairings. And what I did was I wanted to bet kind of not all in, but largely all in at running back,

and then have these stacks revolved around them. So I wanted one went stack, two Mahomes, two Heineke, two Stafford, two Daniel Jones. And I had the idea to go nine rosters. I was doing nine rosters, but all. nine swift and mixing. And I literally, like, I was working through this all in my phone, and I put, like, nine little blocks that said mix and swift. And then I had my, like, Wentz, Taylor, Pittman. I had my Heineke, McKissick, RSJ. I had my Heineke, McKissick, McLaurin, right? Like, I had all my little stacks, and then I was just going to mix and match all those

and then see what spots were left. And then, and then I was like, I guess I haven't looked at ownership projections yet. I was thinking Hunt was going to be like 18, 20% owned. And then I was like, man, you know, Hunt is just safer than Mixin. And so I switched over to Hunt. And I had like seven Hunt plus Swift. And then I mixed in some, you know, Mixin and Taylor and Henderson from there. But then I looked at ownership projections and Hunt was like projected at 40 to 60% on different sites.

And I was like, well, he's not, we know that he's not going to get like 30 touches. That's just not what they're going to do. They didn't do it in his four starts last year. And so I thought, yeah, I should switch off of this. And then I was like, well, he's still a sharp play. And I'm doing enough different things elsewhere on my roster that I just left it at that. And even like as soon as games kicked off, I was disappointed in that. And, you know, Hunt was in the late game.

He was my only guy in the late game. So I didn't really have flexibility there. And then it was like, well, hopefully he gets 30 points, you know. But really the sharper way to go when there's a bunch of good plays is to say, let's fade the guy who's 40 to 60% owned or build around him more intelligently in ways that kind of bail on this game. So I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on Hunt

and different ways? Because he was a very sharp play, but 40 to 60% owned, like we know he's not, it's not like he's getting 30 touches. He's going to get 18 to 23 touches. And there's a lot of other backs we're going to get 18 to 23 touches.

Do you have any thoughts on that one? Yeah, I was shocked you specifically. played him just because it feels like JM process is, okay, this guy is mega chalk. He's hurt. Reports Sunday morning that he could be limited to some degree. The Browns were down, what, two, two or three, starting offensive linemen. And so I was just surprised you specifically landed on him when we also talked about liking Chubb and Henderson and, sorry, Mixon and Henderson and Swift and some of the other guys in that range. Well, I appreciate that.

That makes me feel better. Now it's confirmed that I made a non-JM move. And even when the little report came out, where Stofansky's like, we're not going to give him a full workload. Like, you're not playing the whole game, right? We're going to recap his touches. I was thinking, oh, well, I already knew that.

I was already accounting for that. I'd already written that up. And so hopefully the field, overreacts to this. It was like maybe his ownership will drop now and I'll get him at 20% when I was already betting on him getting 18 to 22 touches. Yeah, that was a disappointing move on my part. It wouldn't have made a material difference in payouts. You know, I might have made a few hundred dollars extra, but I wasn't getting a first place finish this last week. It just didn't come together. And that's where most of the money is, right? Like I had my roster that was live

for a top 10 finish in the power sweep. First place was, it was the middle size. power. So first place was 50 grand. And if I'd gotten 10th place, it would have been like 1,500. So, you know, if you're not getting first place, it's not like, I don't know, I'm not beating myself up over decisions beyond just examining my process and saying, what can I learn from this last week? But yeah, that was like, and I'd even done my Tuesday in Air Circle segment last week was about like being fearless in your builds. And then I was like a total fear-based move to be like, I'll go ahead and play Hunt at this super high ownership. Instead of saying, look, Hunt's going to smash sometimes.

If I don't have a bunch of him, that's okay. I lose this week. But on the week's when he misses, I'm better positioned for first place. One of the problems for me is it's better to fade those guys when you're not just fading them in a vacuum. And I think it's important for listeners to understand. If you're fading a popular guy and you just fade him, that's fine, but then we're just like guessing.

You're saying, oh, I hope this guy misses. The better way to do that is to fade him. and take O'Dell Beckham, right? Fade him and say, okay, I'm fading the chub points and saying somebody else gets those points. But in that offense, it's hard to take somebody else because they split it out so much. They're running different formations onto the field,

every other play. And so it's not like you can just do that sort of swap and say, oh, well, if the points aren't, like the Packers, if everybody's on Devante Adams, you can be like, well, if Devante Adams isn't scoring points, Aaron Jones probably is. You know, you can't do that with the Browns. So that was kind of where I got my hang up was

there was no way to gain leverage off of Hunt, no clear way. You know, maybe Donovan People's Jones, maybe Odell Beckham, but still taking on a lot of guesswork. So, yeah, that was kind of a disappointing part of my process. Again, didn't affect my bottom line. So it is what it is. Just keep learning. But that's one of the things that I kind of picked up this last week. I like it.

Do you want to move on to our questions? We took questions this week. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's move on the questions. And then if we have a little time at the end, we'll try to look forward to this next week, which is a pretty interesting week as well. All right. Let me go ahead and pull this bad boy up.

So we got two questions on Elijah Moore. I'll take this one, J.M. I haven't heard your thoughts on Elijah the Goat Moore. So this is a player I was enamored. Oh, just specifically on Cadarius, Tony. You might find this interesting or funny. I'm not really a gut call guy. I've never been.

I try and rely on the numbers of what the numbers tell me. But I spanned this out to multiple people. I was talking to Danny Kelly about this, everyone on our staff. I said this multiple times across multiple months of the season where I just have this insane gut feeling. Kaderius Tony is going to have a rookie season, Odell Beckham, rookie season Tyree Kill type rookie year,

where he just absolutely smashes and everyone is forgetting about this, you know, highly drafted round one pick that the Jaguars were crying. Green Bay was beside themselves, that he did not land this player. And, you know, his basketball ADP was egregious, even a rookie drafts. He was going super low. And just like he got better every single week last year, former quarterback, hyper athletic, made wow plays that no one else made. And now he's looking like, you know, peak Golden Tate Plus. But yeah, so the rookie I really pounded the table for, like I love Jamar Chase, said to draft Jamar Chase, said he'd break the rookie season wide

receiver yardage record. But the guy I stayed to my reputation on last year, it might have been Hollywood Brown, which wasn't great. This year it was Elijah Moore, who I just love, my model loved, special player. And so he's disappointing for everyone. One encouraging sign I'll say is like I gravitate towards separators, elite separators, and that's Hollywood Brown to a degree. And my buddy over at PFF, John Costco, is in charge of charting and grading wide receivers based on how often they gain separation. And so next gen stats has that, but it's not really great because it's not adjusted by

route type, depth of route, whether they're in the slot where it's easier to gain separation or they're outside. But Costco does all that. So he looked at routes five or 10 yards down the field and how often they're getting, you know, three to five yards of separation. And Elijah Moore is number one. Devante Adams is like number two.

Odell Beckham Jr. was like three or four. And it's basically just a list of all the best wide receivers. It's not happening for Elijah Moore, who's the number one XFP regression candidate. A concern there is I thought, I thought he would be the immediately immediate slot starting wide receiver, which is what he should be, in my opinion. Lane Kiffin said, who had Omari Cooper, had him in the slot at Alabama, but didn't say this about Cooper, but he said it about Elijah. He said, this guy's a stud. He's a round one

slot wide receiver. That doesn't happen a lot, but this is a round one elite slot wide receiver who reminds me of Steve Smith. I really believe the talent's there, but the issue. It's issue is, you know, that offensive line is garbage. Zach Wilson's going to be a stud, but it might be a year or two away. And just the whole offense is a mess. And it's not happening. Can you drop them? Yeah, you can probably drop them. I might give it just one more week. But yeah, tough scene. It was encouraging that Jets Brass did come out and say, you know, maybe it's a mistake that we have them full time outside. Someone's at my door, so I'm going to take that. But what are your thoughts on Elijah Moore?

Yeah, I think that one of the most important things you can do and that you can apply from DFS thinking over to season long, right? There's a lot that we pull from season long over to DFS. One of the things that you can apply from DFS thinking into season long is thinking about things not in terms of a player, but the everything around that player. So that includes game environment, that includes a team's pace of play, that includes how a coach likes to win games. And then that includes things like the offensive line. And I think that it's easy to underrate how difficult it is to play quarterback when the pocket's constantly collapsing around you, especially if you're a young quarterback who has been used to that not happening. And so we look at guys like Baker and DAC and like, oh, their numbers look so. good. Well, they always have a clean pocket.

When you have a clean pocket all the time, that just helps so much. And so, yeah, I think that with Zach Wilson, that's been, it's like the games where they're playing a team with a bad pass rush, everybody in that offense has a shot to have big games, including Elijah Moore. But that's going to be so few and far between. The one thing I'll say is that teams get better throughout the year, rookies get better throughout the year. Good teams with good coaches progress every single week. and you could watch them week in and week out and see them getting better. So there's a chance that Elijah Moore comes alive at the end of the season,

but I would say that just from like the macro of that team, you're also having to bet on that offensive line holding up in order for Elijah Moore to hold up. And so if you're talking season long, I have a hard time seeing a lot of weeks where you would feel comfortable starting him. Maybe after the fact he has a nice score, but how many weeks do you go into the week saying like, oh, yeah, this is one of my starters is kind of how I would look at it.

Yeah, so just some slight regrets. I didn't trust my gut there. And it looks like I'm probably a year away on Elijah breakout. But you were right on Cadarious Tony. The gut was right. I can't take credit for that. That's, you know, pure animal instinct. Not my not my brain power. All right. Next question is how to overcome early week take lock. And so I kind of have the. opposite problem because so Tuesday I spent all day working on the XFP report. Wednesday, I fix a bunch of my models and I work on start sit. Thursday, I help Jake Tribby with DFS values and I work on the slate breakdown. Friday, I spend all week on that. And so Tuesday is very simplistic. Just looking at XFP, looking at volume, looking at the top volume related values, just occurred. look at matchups, not advanced look at matchups. And so often, it's just like, hey, if you just read the XFP report and played all these guys, you would have smashed. And so I write all those guys up and then I kind of forget about them when I'm trying to find guys. I didn't already write

about four starts it, for whatever. And so I tend to have the opposite problem. J.M., how do you overcome early week take lock? The, and I'm with you, I'm likelyer to change things too much by the end of the week, especially when I was at rotor grinder. I would go back and read the NFL Edge the next week and be like, oh, man, like, I literally highlighted these guys in the NFL Edge for which if you're, if you're a fantasy point subscriber and you're not familiar with the NFL Edge as a game-by-game breakdown.

And I would highlight these guys while breaking around the game environments and the matchups and whatnot and then end up not playing them. and I'd be getting these tweets on Sunday thanking me for highlighting this guy. And it was like, I didn't even consider this guy on Saturday, but on Wednesday and Thursday while writing up that article. And so I found that I would kind of start from scratch on Friday. The reverse of that is if you are getting your mind set on a guy early in the week, everything should be part of a process.

And so everything should be like, okay, here's my foundational thoughts that I have at the beginning of the week. and here's this basically you need a process for how those thoughts are still tracked so you don't forget about them so like for scott it would be easy enough to be like okay well like let me start reading the xfp report on friday or for me it's like let me take notes while reading the NFL edge but if you don't have content that you're putting out and that you can go back and look at you have to have some sort of process a notebook uh for me it's my phone notes on oWS we have a note taking function, but like literally every, almost every successful DFS player, I'll say, tracks their thoughts throughout the week in some way. Like Al Smizzle uses a notepad. I think he uses

a legal notepad and tracks his thoughts throughout the week. There's a lot of guys who use notepads or notebooks. And so we have to have something to where your thoughts don't kind of start from scratch at the end of the week and also don't get too deeply rooted at the start of the week. But instead you can say, let me go through everything and kind of build my thoughts. know where my thoughts have been throughout the week. The other thing I'll say here is don't overrate your ability to guess everything right. Don't overrate your ability to get everything right. Watch games with an objective eye and recognize how many little things, go back and watch CD Lam's big game. Oh, he scored 38 fantasy points. How did I not see that coming?

Watch that game and see how many things had to go right for him to get to 38 fantasy points. You know, like the game flow, the game environment, little third down conversions or fourth down conversions that could have totally changed the way that each team was attacking. Totally changed the way that that game was playing out. Mac Jones getting picked sixth and then having to come back and throw that double move route to Kendrick Bourne that he just barely fit into that window that ends up, you know, setting this game up to go to overtime. The game just barely goes to overtime and then CD Lamb gets this extra catch. And it's easy to, you know, in the aftermath of the week, like, oh, how do they not see C.D. Lamb? But it would have been just as easy for C.D. Lamb to end up with 14 points in that game. And so also recognize that you never get things right and you never get things wrong.

What you should be putting yourself in position for is before games kick off on Sunday. You know if you had a good week or not. based on your process, based on the way you're positioning yourself against the field and against what's likely as to happen. And so I think that a lot of times people get scared like, oh man, I was on this guy on Tuesday and then I moved off of me at a big game. Or I'm going to be on Tuesday. If I move off of me as a big game, I'll be so upset. But that's not really like that's results-based thinking. That's like acting like we can predict exactly what's going to happen in the chaos of a game. What we're trying to get to me is what's going to make us the most money over time. So if you can kind of assess things through that lens throughout the week and say, okay, how sharp will play is this? How much money is this probably going to make me over time?

Two weeks ago, I was on Mike Williams on Tuesday. And then once I got into the research portion, it was like, oh, well, this Chargers-Brown's game isn't the best game environment. I totally moved off of him. Whereas what I should have done has been like, okay, what's his ownership? Nobody's on Mike Williams this week. Okay, what can Mike Williams do? Can he put up a separator type of score? Scott was talking about guys who separate on the field, right? Think about that in DFS, not just guys you can put 25 points. Who can put up 40? Who can put up a separator type of score and then say, okay, what needs to go right?

If he's under 5% on, could he do this once out of every 20 games? Could he put up a 40 point game in the spot once out of every 20 games? And if you answer yes, then that means that's a profitable player to put onto your roster. You have to understand how to fit them in, right? You don't need a bunch of 5% guys. I'm sure how to put them in and then say, look, this was a profitable roster. You can say that Sunday morning, 20 minutes before kickoff. This is a profitable roster because, you know, I expect Mike Williams to be,

to be able to hit this spot once every 10 times. And he's going to be only 5% owned, right? And so that kind of allows you to now have these crippling moves where, like, oh, God, if I move off this player or if I don't move off this player, but instead to recognize, like, we're thinking big picture. We only get one, one sample size of this slate playing out, but you want to think about what would happen if we played out this slate over and over again, and that's where you can kind of make those sharper decisions

and not beat yourself up as much after the fact. Like, I don't even watch games on Sunday more often than not. I don't even check my rosters until toward the end of the day because I'm just thinking big picture. I'm thinking like as long as I positioned myself well, then I will make money over time, and then I can assess things after the fact. So, yeah, that's where I would look at it is not just process,

but also like the mindset has to be, you can't be fully right or fully wrong. You're just trying to figure out what's the most profitable plays over time. Makes sense to me. Trying to pull up our next question. How do you decipher when to play a mostly correlated lineup, game stack plus secondary stack plus one to two floats versus a lineup of game stack plus the rest floaters? Last week, Tampa Bay stack plus Favoters worked great. But we hear a lot about correlation making it so less things have to go right.

And yeah, like I said, the millie maker, the top 10, a bunch of like super uncorrelated plays. And you've talked before about how that can work. That worked for, I guess, Big T that one week. He had a bunch of high upside guys who weren't correlated and he won the week one millie maker. But to me, I guess it was the Cubs fan analogy of it's like trying to pick a lock where, you know, Instead of trying to get nine single things right, you know, you make it so you only have to get two or three things right. And so I do think that is the optimal way to play. Another thing we should talk about is contest selection. But I mean, that is my preferred route. And it's, yeah,

you know, you're going to have these weeks where a bunch of the winners have a lineup that kind of doesn't make any sense, but that's typically outlierish where the top players, I think, have a really strong grasp on game theory and played it more optimally. Yeah, and I think that every week is different. So this person asking this, I'm guessing, is an OWS member because I broke down this Tampa Plus floating plays roster on Inner Circle last week. but there are weeks where you look at it and it's like, okay, well, where is, it's basically trying to find the most certainty, right? Where you can get the most things right at once.

Two weeks ago, if you remember that slate, there weren't a lot of great game environments to stack up. And so you could say, well, let me stack up this Tampa offense. And there was a lot of certainty on Devante Adams. There was a lot of certainty on Alexander Madison. There was a lot of certainty on Derek Henry. For me, there was a lot of certainty on Cadarius Tony. So then you can say, okay, let's put these into this Tampa stack, right? And now you're going a different direction than stacking two games.

This last week, it was like there were some clear top game environments. So basically, I even said this about value plays. Like rather than trying to guess on value plays from other games, take the guys who are on the field all the time in these games. And these plays didn't all necessarily hit, but like whether it's McColl Hardman or, Van Jefferson or you know, Ricky Seals Jones, obviously, Jady McKissick, if you want to bet on this game flow

going the way you expect it to and say guys who are on the field a lot and can save you salary instead of trying to find the one-off plays that are cheap in other games. And so every week's a little bit different. So this last week, there were some clear game environments that were better than other spots. And so for me, it was like, let me just basically all my rosters bet almost fully on two games.

And then I just had like a few pieces from other games mixed in throughout nine builds. And then other weeks, it might be like, okay, I'm betting on one game or one game here, one game here, but I might not be mixing and matching them together. So, yeah, and like Scott said, you know, Cubs fan has this analogy of if you're trying to pick like a nine combo lock, that's a lot harder than trying to pick a four or five combo lock. So if you bet on a game environment and you get that game environment right or bet on a team and you get that team right, now you, you, you're getting three, you know, three spots right at once, four spots right at once on this combination lock. And so you've given yourself, you know, a much higher mathematical probability of getting all nine spots correct because you've wiped out four of them at once. And if you can stack multiple games, you can, you know, wipe out six or seven of them at once. And that's kind of the way

to look at that is every week's different. Not every week is going to be optimal to kind of just stack it up. But more often than not, that's going to be optimal. It's going to make you more money over time. I guess unless you're playing MMEs, right? You're going to MME route or you're entering a ton of lineups then you can kind of, or even then I guess, right? You should still kind of, you know, build stacks around everything, right? Yeah, I mean, optimally, because it's, you know, what you're trying to do is say what makes me the most money over time? And if that's the case on one roster, that's the case on 150 rosters. And so you've got to be able to identify what the week looks like, which is kind of something that obviously we try to help with throughout the week

talking strategy for that specific week and like how things set up for that week. But the every week's different. But yeah, more often than not like correlating heavily because NFL scoring is correlated. So correlating heavily is going to help you. But that also like people can like let's look at this last week's scores, right? Like this last week we had 34 to 11. we had 31 to 3. We had 38 to 11.

We had 31 to 13. We had 34 to 6. We had 37 to 14. That's all on one week. So, like, I think that people also get just in this auto thing of, like, all right, I got my stack and my bring back. Like, think about each game. Think about the story you're telling on each roster. The first person I ever heard say that was Chris Jamino when I was at Roto Grinders,

and we were doing a Roto Academy course. And I thought that was so sharp. I've heard other people say that since then, but the story that your roster is telling has to make sense. And so rather than just like automatically bringing in a bringback, like get down to that level two, level three of thinking and say, okay, what story is this tell?

And is it necessarily to have a bring back? Or do I want to just bet on this team smashing, you know, and you could play things that way. So, yeah, everything's a little bit different, but more often than not you want to be looking to correlate first or as Larejo says, you know, correlate more, guess less, because the less you're guessing, the more money you're going to make. Right.

So we could think about it like last week. Kareem Hunt was chalk. And so you need to like really poke holes in the chalk and think about it as if, okay, what if Kareem Hunt is really limited? What does that mean? And do the Browns just absolutely suck and get trucked because they lost their run-first identity? And then who hits in that scenario? Could it be Beckham?

Could it be DPJ? Could it be, you know, the opposing running back on the other side? You really have to look at every game like that. And think of the different scenarios. You know, look at game totals where it's like, okay, everyone is. game stacking these two teams playing each other. But what if it goes this way? What if it goes that way?

Who flops, who succeeds? And so a lot of times, specifically with like injured players, like maybe like Kareem Hunt, where it's like, what do you do with this guy who, like, it's the perfect spot? So if he's healthy, he absolutely smashes. Do you just like nibble? Do you have like, you know, you're even to the feel? in terms of exposure, I think that's a mistake. I think it's better to build lineups, like have a lineup where, okay, he's healthy and

smashes and then build around that. What does that mean to the opposition, the opposing team, if he does smash? Or what if he is hurt? What does that mean? What does that mean to the opposition team? And so in tournament specifically, you really have to think all these different scenarios out where if you're right, you're really right. And it pays off in a big way.

Yep, yep, I love that. And also, like you said, thinking through games. And I think that most people, you don't have to do that as much in season long. And so I think a lot of people come to DFS and don't think that way. And that's the most value, I've been saying that since 2014, is the most valuable thing you can do is think through each game. Because games are what produce fantasy scoring. Going back to the CD-LAM example, right?

He ended up with all those points because of the way that that game was playing out down the stretch. So if you can find games that are going to shoot out or like one of the clearest ways to get upside in DFS is touchdowns. So if a team is only scoring three touchdowns, your chances of getting two of those touchdowns on one player are so much lower than if a team scores five touchdowns. So thinking about game environments, how games are going to play out and how each team is going to try to attack each other. And like Scott said, thinking about if I put this player on a roster one, thing I always say is if you, as soon as you put a player onto a roster, you're saying that player is going to smash. It doesn't think you could be building 20 rosters and you only have that player on one roster, right? So on more than 19 rosters, you're not telling a story where

that player smashes. But on the one roster where you put that player, you're not saying this guy has a huge gate. So if this guy has a huge game, what does that mean? How does this guy have a huge game? Think about the stats. Like, what are the stats that this guy got? What, 10 catches for 130 yards and two touchdowns. Okay, how did that happen in this game and who else benefits in a game environment where this guy could get 10 catches for 130 yards and two touchdowns? And I think people have a tendency to be like, okay, I like this player from this game and this player from this game, this player from this game, and they might get two or three things right. They feel great about that. But then they're like, oh, if I've gotten more things

right, I would have had a huge weekend. But instead, they could have gotten more things, right, just by saying, like being more willing to be all wrong or all right. And so, because, again, like I said earlier, if I got in 10th place, I would have won 1,500 if I got in first place 50,000. That's a huge gap. 1500 is nice, right? But that's not what you're playing for. And so give yourself a chance to be all right by saying,

all right, if I'm going to say this guy has this huge game, let me then think about how that happens and what that means elsewhere in this game environment. And who else might have a huge game or who else might have to have a huge game in order to force this guy to have a huge game. The more you think about games, the more three-dimensional you can make a game before it kicks off, the better off you're going to be. Yeah, man, if I could just trade my hundreds of top 1% finishes for like one top

0.001% finish, I would have so much more money. Yeah, so that's a crucial point. Another question, how to decide what is good chalk. And I will just say this. Like, I've always, I always thought of it as like, well, I like this guy less than everyone else. But maybe specifically for cash, Johnny Proctor and I were working on our cash lineup and we're not colluding. We were just both talking optimal cash lineups for the week. And Julio Jones was the megachalk. And Johnny and I both agreed that was an egregious mistake because the matchup was

really bad and there was something else. But Johnny said, no, no, no, no, I'm just playing him no matter what. And why, you don't like him, I don't like him. The field loves him. And so because he has bury me upside. And you just can't fade those guys in cash, even if you think it's the wrong play. And then what happened, the opposing CB1 got hurt on the third play and Julio drops like 40 points. And so I've kind of thought about that differently. But I don't know. specifically for GPP, how do you decide what is good chalk, what is bad chalk? I almost think of it as like there almost is no such thing as bad chalk. There's bad ownership, but like we're at a point in DFS where chalk isn't driven by a bunch

of organic minds thinking individually at all ending up on the same play. Chalk is driven by some really smart industry voices, liking a play for really sharp reasons. And then it gets over-owned. Like, Chuck can be over-bought. So a guy who maybe should be 15 or 20-per-owned ends up 35 or 40-per-owned. Khalil Herbert's a good example of this last week. And, like, he caught 34 passes his college career. He's not going to catch passes, and we're talking PPR scoring.

But I went on and on this last week about how amazing Khalil Herbert looked on film in his, you know, time of the field so far. So he's a good play. but he shouldn't be, I don't even know what his ownership ended up at like 30 something percent. And so there can be like over-bought chalk. Same thing with Darrell Williams. Like, Darrell Williams was 4,900. Nobody was chomping at the bit to play Clyde Edwards Hillera at 5,600. But then everybody's like 30% ownership or 25% ownership, whatever Darrell Williams was.

Fine play, totally fine play in a vacuum, actually a good play in a vacuum. But there can be over-bought chalk. So then you have to think about for me, if there's overbought chalk, I basically have to determine, like, do I want to expose myself to some of it? Because it's still a good play. And then if I expose myself to it, I'm going to, like, if I'm playing Daryl Williams, I'm going to play Daryl Williams plus Mahomes plus a pass catcher, right? Like, I'm going to do it in a way that other people are doing it. So I'm not just doing the same thing as everyone else. Or one of the things I said about Kahl Herbert, the game environment in which, you know,

Khalil Herbert would have a big game is the exact game environment in which Devante Adams would be disappointing. So like a bet on Khalil Herbert was technically a bet against Devante Adams. And so process it that way. Don't play them together. Like just find little ways to do things differently if you're going to play overbought chalk. And if you fade them, realize that it's still a good play. It's just not as good as everybody thinks. It's not as good as ownership is saying. And so you have to be willing to like miss out on a guy who puts up points. And the question I then ask is, can this guy put up, like you were just saying, Scott, can this guy put up a bearing me score?

I think of that in tournaments too. Because if a guy, like Khalil Herbert, his big game was going to be like 18 to 24 points. And it's like, that's pretty nice at his price tag. But like, I can still win a tournament without him. And if he fails, he might get eight points. And so guys like that, I'm not as worried about not playing. Whereas like if Derek Henry is chalk and he can get 50 or Devante Adams is chalk, then you have to think about, well, what happens if this guy goes off and let me account for it a little bit,

or at least know that that's a possibility and know that you could have a weekend where they have those points. It doesn't mean you were wrong. They might have still been over-bought. They might have still been over-owned. But I think that once you can get out big out of that box of thinking where you think that you're trying to get things right or wrong and instead realize that you're trying to out-maneuver the field toward a first-place finish, then you can worry less about what the results are and you can know beforehand, like, okay, I'm failing. this guy, he's not as good of chalk as everybody is saying, but he could still have a good

game, and if he does, I'll get hurt. I have to acknowledge that and be okay with that before the fact. So thinking through all those things, like, I always say, like, think about how you'll feel on Sunday night if such and such happens. So in other words, think about how you'll feel on Sunday night if you miss out on a monster game from this guy, and then realize that that could happen. And if you play him, think about how you're going to feel if he bombs at 40% ownership and, you know, you got sucked in by fear and played them because you just didn't want to miss out. Like, think about that as well, and that'll help a lot. Yeah.

I think there's two ways to think about it. So, like, let's say, you know, Cooper Cup is $6,000 this week, right? Is he the best play? Absolutely. Like, far and away, the best play. Everyone's on it. His ownership is going to be 50%. football is just such a random chaotic game that like how often does he flop despite being

you know as beastly as he is and as mispriced as he is and it's going to be more than 50% just the inherent nature of the game and then add onto that the fact that okay you you fade him and he flops you've now just cut the field size of your tournament in half and there's just so much more of an edge to fading him despite unanimously yes guaranteed these single best play, quote unquote play, ignoring ownership on the entire slate. And so I think that's how you have to think about it. We had maybe two more questions. One person was asked.

I want to say something about that. That's incredibly sharp to take a concrete example of that. And to be able to say, is he the best play if we take away ownership? Yes. And like the best price considered play. And is it the smartest thing to play him? Maybe not. And then on top of that, a guy like cup, he's on an offense that's going to put up points.

And so you can also get leverage by saying, okay, instead of just fading cup, let me also play Henderson, or let me play Wood, or let me play Higby, which gives you an additional bonus because you've cut the field in half and you're getting the points that Cup isn't getting. And you recognize like, okay, he's 6K, well, he could still only get 12, 13 points. And if he gets 20 points, everybody's happy with that, but you can still win a tournament without him. So, like, thinking through things like that, using that exact example is a perfect way to look at it

because there's so many more strategy elements than just, do I play this guy or fade him? Or do I think this guy's good chalk or bad chalk? And that's what we should be thinking about. So we had two more questions left. I'll answer this one quickly. How do you choose how to fade yourself when making both cash lineups and GPPs? Or do you choose to play one style or the other to avoid this conundrum?

I'll just be honest. I'm really lazy with cash, so I don't play cash a lot. I usually just make one lineup, throw it in a double up, just to see how my analysis did. But I'm kind of just too lazy. And, you know, the allure of a big score in GPPs is more exciting to me. But my analysis this week was to be underowned Kansas City, Washington, and cash and overowned in tournaments. The thinking there was just there was some uncertainty around Tyreek and McLaurin due to injury. But I'm going to embrace that uncertainty, embrace that upside in tournaments.

And that's typically what I do. You know, go very chalky in cash and then fade that chalk in tournaments for more upside. So really it's the best of both worlds. Like if the chalk hits, great. My cash team did great. If the chalk flaps, all right. My tournament lineups did great. So you have any quick notes there before we try and squeeze in one more question?

No, yeah. Like you said, you have to think differently for each contest type. and your example from Johnny of saying, well, this guy has bearing me upside. It doesn't matter that I don't like him. I'm talking about cash games, 50% of the field is going to have him. I'll play him.

There's a different strategy to each one, and you have to kind of separate your thinking from one to the other is pretty important to do. Right, right. All right. Last question is always looking for the contrarian game stack. What is it this week? we can answer that or we can talk about bank role management and contest selection just because

that's like the most important thing. And you and I like never talk about on this show, I never bring it up in my analysis. I just take it for granted that everyone already knows this. But I tweeted out a link to a video John Proctor did on that exact subject. And I spammed it in Discord. And I'm like, hey, listen, if you guys, if there's some of you who are not making steady profits or losing or hemorrhaging money, make sure you watch this because this is so important. And I had like five messages where it's like, I smashed this week. I had my best week. And yeah, I think this was just the entire mistake I've been making all along is, you know, the, you know, the millie maker is like a lottery ticket, basically.

And, you know, your chance of getting first place is next to nil. And then everything after that, there's a steep payoff drop. And so they just switched to different more optimal contests. And, you know, they made, you know, 800 on 300, let's say. You know, like that's not a sexy 5,000% ROI. But, I mean, that's steady profits and tournaments, which is tough. Yeah, I always saw, I call them the bankroll building tournaments. is like tournaments that don't have tens of thousands of entries, tournaments that don't have a super top heavy payout structure, tournaments that don't allow 150 lineups to be entered.

Optimally tournaments with like 500 or fewer entries. And you can find those at basically any buy-on level. You just have to scroll down the draft king's lobby. The draft king is like the millie maker is their advertising contest. That's what gets people in. People get excited about that. If you've been playing DFS for two or three years and you're still stuck in the millemaker, that's like you haven't progressed past the entryway that Draft Kings have set up for you.

And you got to scroll down. And the farther down the lobby you scroll, the more you find these contests that aren't as sexy, that you can't advertise on TV, put in $12 and win a thousand. You know, like, that's cool. But like, that's not what's going to get people to come to Draft Kings. But if you can, like, if you play those types of contests, and it's typically the types of contests, again, where maybe you finish eighth place instead of first place,

but the drop-off isn't as dramatic as it is in these, you know, more top-heavy tournament. So maybe you can't get 50 grand in first place. Maybe it's more like two grand to first place, but also maybe it's like 800 bucks in eighth place. And so those types of contests, you find them by scrolling down, you can take the things that we're talking about here, like the strategy things,

and apply them in those contests, and what you'll find is a lot of people playing these single entry smaller field contests, their mindset is, okay, I can just play these super safely. And so they kind of play almost cash game style. And so high-owned players are even higher-owned in these contests. And so you can go in there and just kind of like push people around over time by applying good DFS strategy and just out-maneuvering the field. Again, it doesn't mean this is something we'll need to talk about in like a later episode,

but it doesn't mean that you need to be anti-chalk across the board. Like cumulative ownership, what the ownership is of all your players combined, typically like 125% cumulative ownership is like kind of the sweet spot. That doesn't mean that's a rule. That just means that like that's what we've seen win tournaments most often over time is, you know, rosters in that range. But you start realizing like what that actually means,

that means a lot of chalky guys, right? But doing one or two things differently, or even this last week, I was building around Washington and Kansas City. Well, everybody was building around Washington, Kansas City. But how many people had rosters that started Taylor Hineke, J.D. McKissick, Ricky Seals Jones? And so as soon as I've done that, I can say, okay, I've got this stack that in any time when I'm playing, like, let's say this stack hits for a huge score, I'm pretty much

competing against very few other rosters because hardly any other rosters have this stack. And so, you know, once you've done that, then you can go as chalky as you want. want in the rest of your roster. And so thinking about things like that is important as well in those tournaments is like applying these strategy elements, but not just going anti-chalk across the board. And you can start targeting those first place finishes. And also what I like about those bankroll building contests is you can also take on plenty of floor in those contests.

So again, you need to do something differently to get to first place. But you can take on plenty of floor so that even if you miss, you're getting a nice payout. You're getting a nice 2x or 2.5x. but you're only trying to beat 300 people, 400 people, 500 people. So yeah, I mean, that's an unbelievably valuable thing to do. And also, like, afternoon, you know, short slates, the afternoon-only slates or late games only, whatever that is, things like that are also valuable to kind of look into.

So get out of the millie maker and into some of these other contests can be super valuable for learning and for growing your bankroll. Well said, Jan. Do you want to take a super quick look at the week ahead? We got one question about that. I don't really have any good takes. It's still a little early in my process. Yeah, so the question that you read was, like, what might be the stack for this next week that's overlooked, right?

So let me frame this next week's slate like this. the bucks are 12.5 point favorites against the bears and are projected to score about 30 points. The Cardinals are 17 and a half point favorites against the Texans and are predicted to score about 30 points. The Rams are 15 point favorites against the lions and predicted to score about 30 points. All those teams are at home. So the chances of like wonky game flow are lower. And when the Titans and Chiefs are playing each other. So as you go to build in other spots,

recognize that people are going to be building around those three teams and then this one game. And you have to beat rosters that are building around those spots. So when there's like one really popular spot, my thought is always if I build in another spot and that popular spot fails, I can sore past them. But if there's like four obvious and popular spots, you need all four of them to fail if you're building in other spots. Or you need your spot to just go way past those. So I would think in the kind of like how I said, everybody was building around Kansas City, Washington, and so I looked for ways to build around it uniquely. That's probably going to be my first point this week as far as like how I'm approaching

rosters is how do I build more uniquely around these clear and obvious top spots as opposed to how do I outthink these clear and obvious top spots and try to get something different. There's some interesting things, right? Like Tula has a much deeper average intended area. yards than Jacoby percent. So, like, people are going to look at the dolphins' numbers throughout the season and be like, oh, they only throw the ball short. And Jalen Waddle catches everything within five yards in the line of scrimmage,

whereas with Tua, it's more like eight, nine, ten yards running the line of scrimmage. There's still isn't super deep, but that's like T. Higgins A dot is basically Jalen Wattel's current A dot. The dolphins are playing the Falcons. Like, there's spots that are interesting this week like that. But generally speaking, it's important this week to also recognize that everything has to be built against the backdrop of like three of the highest, five of the highest scoring teams in the NFL, either having super, super, super soft matchups or playing against each other because you got

to beat those spots if you go elsewhere. Scott, any final thoughts on that? Yeah, I would just love to take this week off because it seems so difficult. You also neglected to mention Green Bay, fourth highest and implied point total, or one of the highest, fifth highest. And then they're favored by 10 points. And so it's just like, yeah, pick between all right, all these teams with a 30 plus point point total favored by easy double digits. And it's like Stafford stacks, sure. Kyler stacks, sure. Mahom stack, sure. Brady stacks. Why not? And that just seems really difficult to me to pick between those guys, maybe just make four lineups and be smart about

game theory. And then if you wanted to get super weird, which I know J.M. loves to love, like, could you sell yourself on, you know, you fade Arizona by playing James Connor, who's clearly locked into 18 plus carries plus two opportunities inside the five every time they win by 10 or more points? And then run it back with some Brandon Cook's garbage time. You could do the same thing with L.A. Could Sony Michelle be a thing? You know, they take it easy on Henderson in a blowout and then run it back with, you know, D'Andre Swift or T.J. Hawkinson, you know, Tampa Bay, you know, Fade Brady play for net. And then Mooney is the deep threat. He'll get some looks as they play catch up. Green Bay is A.J. Dillon vaguely in play?

Could that be a thing? Who knows? And it's just, it's just tough. There's just too many avenues towards a first place finish, let's say, from these juggernaut offenses in eight plus spots. And then the gross running back is also in play just due to the spread. Yeah, I actually really like all those thoughts from a roster construction standpoint of like, yeah, just ways to approach these games differently. But I think the starting point this week is, you know, if you look at jets and patriots and you want to spend some time there and be like, oh, maybe this could happen, and maybe Mac Jones has a big game because of this, that, and the other thing, it's like, well, pump the brakes and recognize that,

recognize what you have to beat this week in, in order to get to first place. Like, recognize other people are going to be building around these top spots and don't get too cute. And again, that's not to say that, like, a cheap, two-o-wattled Gaseki stack couldn't win a tournament, or Matt Ryan, Calvin Ridley, Kyle Pitts stack coming off their buy, or adjusting fields where you can't run, against the bucks. And so Justin Fields chasing points and maybe things come together for him. There's different ways you could approach it, but you have to think about these games first and foremost, Scott, I will assume that by the time Saturday rolls around and you and I hopefully have to hop on a call, you will have some rosters put together and you will be expecting to play.

Yeah, hopefully. This is kind of an intimidating slate right now. Not looking forward to my slate breakdown right up, which is really just like, yeah, you know, Kyler could smash. Stafford could smash, should smash. It's just like, ugh. Stafford Revenge game. It's going to be awesome. I'm excited to watch that one. All right, Jam.

I thought this is great. We went a little bit longer, a very intensive show to make up for last week. Hope you guys enjoyed this. If you have any comments or questions you want to answer for next week, reach out to either of us on Twitter. J.M. Reach out to Scott, because I won't see it, honestly. All right, reach out to me.

Tag J.M. anyway. I'm bad at Twitter. I'm bad at Twitter, and Scott's very good at it. But, yeah, that was fun to do the questions. Anything else, are we good to get out? No, we're good to get out. Don't you have, those and remarks? Thanks for hanging out with us this week.

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