NFL DFS Week One Lineup Review
A review of the NFL DFS lineup I put out for this NFL week
This is brand new territory for me, and I’m excited about it. I took a bunch of time to write up the week one slate preview last week, so it only makes sense to review how the lineup performed.
Luckily, the lineup did extremely well - so I am starting off here as a winner and slightly raising my credibility.
The Lineup
The Review
Quarterback
As you read in the preview, there were four options for me.
Anthony Richardson
Jayden Daniels
Josh Allen
Trevor Lawrence
And then Justin Fields became interesting Sunday morning when he was announced as the starter in place of Russell Wilson.
My lineup had Richardson in it from the start. I loved the floor and ceiling he brought with his legs and that great game environment, and the price felt too low. I had a thought Sunday morning of switching to Fields, but didn’t consider it too much - I was sticking with Richardson.
That played worked out well as Richardson went for 26 points. The best play turned out to be Daniels, who scored 28.2 points at a cheaper tag.
Running Back
I came in focusing on getting two running backs that projected for a bunch of touches, goal-line carries, and some pass-game work. Neither RB smashed, but both put up solid scores. Rachaad White averaged an embarrassing two yards per carry but caught six balls for 75 yards to get to where we needed him to be.
As for Kenneth Walker, he ran the ball 20 times, achieving the yardage bonus with 103 ground yards, and he added a score to get to 21.9 points.
So, the RBs were a success.
Wide Receivers / Tight End
Most weeks, I’ll be playing four wide receivers. The Tyreek Hill pay-up was one of the big keys to the lineup. It is huge to bring down 3.3x value at that high of a price tag.
I wasn’t absolutely locked on to Drake London or Chris Godwin, but ended up with both of them. London was a bust, but Godwin was the second-best play on the lineup as he went for a big 22.3 points at just $5,800. I liked his floor, and loved that matchup with Washington’s bad defense. The Bucs scored 37 points, which made it pretty impossible for Godwin to not succeed - but luckily we were able to grab a touchdown for him.
I thought London was too cheap, and he probably still was - but maybe it wasn’t great to play two Falcons against a really tough Steelers defense.
The Andre Iosivas value popped up on Friday as it was announced that Tee Higgins would not play. He was a lock at that point. He projected for a bunch of work at $3,000 - and I’m never going to pass that up. It was not a good result (3-26-0), but he was targeted six times, so there’s no question that was the right play given what I was trying to do here (play a high-floor lineup and just reach all of the cash lines).
Kyle Pitts saw only three targets, so that could have been a disaster, but he grabbed a touchdown to get near a dozen fantasy points. Only two tight ends out-scored him on this slate (Foster Moreau and Brock Bowers), so Pitts ended up being a pretty good play all things considered.
The Results
Contests:
$10 Hundo: I played three of these and finished third twice and fourth once. All of those results were a 7:1 payout.
$5 Double Up: I just did this for the purposes of tracking where my lineup was finishing against a huge field. It finished 328th out of 11,100, so that’s in the top 3%.
$5 Friends Contest: My buddies and I run a little DFS league. Amusingly, this was my worst result as I finished 3rd out of 12 for just a $5.80 profit.
Head to Heads: I ended up getting 58 head-to-head matchups, and I won all of them.
When the dust settled, it was a 215% ROI. Fantastic start to the season. So I am absolutely going to write up the week two slate and do this all over again. But I will remain disciplined and not invest any more money into week two than week one - we will surely have losing weeks this year.