BigMarley’s Tiers Breakdown – DraftKings
Last year I won a trip out to the Live Final for DraftKings to compete in the PickEm’ (Tiers) Championship. I won my ticket to that with a $2 entry and I ended up winning $5,000 at the Live Final. This year, I am going to share all my Tiers secrets with the DFS ARMY members and hopefully some of you guys can get an awesome experience like that this year.
The first thing I want to say about Tiers is that you don’t necessarily want to make a lineup going for the most points you can score. Instead, think of what the popular plays will be and try to be different by still making good picks. With Tiers, there is no salary, so people flock to the “best” plays. That makes it easier to know which players will be chalky. If you look at projections for each tier, the highest projected player will usually be the most owned guy in that tier. However, they don’t always score the most. Fading the chalk players is the way to go in GPPs and this format makes it easier for you to figure out who those chalk players will be.
With that said, let’s dig into the week 4 Tiers slate:
T1- All QBs in tier 1 are solid. If you have a preference then go with your gut in this range. I think Drew Brees and Matt Ryan will be the top two owned guys from this tier, and they helped us out a lot last week. But, I am going to go with Deshaun Watson as my guy from this tier. I am not sure if I am willing to go 100%, so maybe I will do 50% Watson, then 25% Brees and Ryan. Those are my top 3 guys in this tier though and if I can get Watson at a lower ownership than those two guys, I love going to him instead. I think Watson is going to have a great game against the Colts and I like stacking him with Deandre Hopkins and/or Will Fuller V from their tiers. If you are using another one of these QBs, I would look to stack them with their top guy(s) as well.
T2- This tier is tougher to judge where the ownership will go. I would imagine the top 3 guys are where most of the ownership will go, but those are also my favorite 3 guys from this tier. My favorite play from this tier is going to be Ben Roethlisberger. He seems to dominate with Bell off the field and I don’t hate that he is in the Sunday night game either, so it would give us a chance to come back late and climb the leaderboards. This may be an all-in spot for me, but not positive about that. I would go with Andy Dalton as my 2nd choice from this group. I like that CIN/ATL game a lot and the Bengals should do a lot of passing with Joe Mixon missing this game. If you like Dalton more than Big Ben, I have no issue with going all-in on him either, but I like Ben more, personally.
T3- This is a spot where you can stack with whatever QB(s) you used in T1 and T2. I am going to pass on the stack here though and I will go 100% on Alvin Kamara. He is my favorite play this week and it is the last week Mark Ingram is suspended. Kamara had 20 targets and 16 rushes last week. That is what I like to invest my money in. Brees loves this kid and he is incredibly talented. He has the speed and explosiveness to break a TD any time he touches the ball, and he touches the ball a lot. On the main slate he is $9.6k, so he will be the chalk here since there are no prices. But I am fine with eating that chalk and I will still have leverage here by going 100%. If you want to fade the chalk and stack one of the other guys with your QB, then I am totally fine with that and it makes a ton of sense.
T4- This one is easy for me. I am team Julio every week, so Julio Jones will make some of my LUs from this tier. However, since I am rolling out Watson in T1, I like stacking him with Deandre Hopkins here as well. I will probably go 50/50 on those two from this group. I am not sure where the ownership will go in this group, but I imagine it will be pretty evenly spread out. I don’t hate using more than 2 guys from this group if you are making 20 LUs like me, but I will be sticking with Julio and Hopkins, personally. There isn’t a single guy in this group that I don’t like this week so I would try to correlate your LUs using this group if you can, or just go with the guy(s) you like the most.
T5- This is the easiest one for me since Watson is my QB for T1. I am going all-in on Will Fuller V here. Even if I use Brees or Ryan in T1, Fuller will still be my T5 guy. He is one of my favorite plays this week in general and this is my favorite all-in spot this week for tiers. Fuller has 9 TDs in 6 full games with Watson, and I think these two torch the Colts defense this week. The other guys in this tier are very solid as well, and if you are not using Watson then I have no issue going away from Fuller here. My second favorite play from this group is Giovani Bernand. The Falcons defense has seen opposing RBs get 35 targets through the air the last two weeks and that is the best thing about Gio’s game. I think he has a big week with Mixon out and I expect Fuller to be the chalk from this group, so Gio could be a sneaky play to separate yourself from the field a bit. My 3rd choice here would be Rob Gronkowski. The Dolphins are not great against opposing TEs and Gronk is the best TE in the league. He also has that red Q next to his name which will keep his ownership very low in this tier. I won’t have Gronk myself, but he does make a lot of sense for GPPs, especially if you are using Brady in T1.
T6- This is the toughest tier on the slate IMO. I don’t have a clear play here and I will probably just mix a few guys into my LUs. Nobody really stands out in this tier, so this is where I will guide you over to the Domination Station. Here is what the DS is liking this week for T6:
T7- This is another tough one where I will sprinkle a few different guys into LUs. My top 3 plays from T7 are Allen Robinson II, Kenny Stills, and Marshawn Lynch. I don’t have a lot of exposure to anybody from this tier in the main slate, but those 3 guys were all close to making my player pool. I will just get my exposure to them in Tiers this week instead. I don’t think anybody is way above the group here, so maybe even use this tier as a hedge to your own LUs. If there is somebody you didn’t get exposure to on the main slate that you wanted, just use them here instead. Robinson is clearly Trubisky’s favorite target and he should see a lot of work again this week. That is why I like him the most, because I think he has one of the higher floors. Still I think has one of the highest ceilings on this tier and he is going against the 31st ranked defense opposing WRs. Then Lynch is another guy I wanted to use in the main slate and he just didn’t make my list. Those are probably the 3 guys I will sprinkle into my LUs. If you think somebody stands apart from the rest here then I would go heavy on them and get your leverage there. Nobody from this tier will be super highly owned, so if you have a strong lean on any guy, then go with them.
T8- This is another easy one for me. I love Sterling Shepard this week and I will likely go 100% on him in this tier. I think the Saints/Giants game will be one of the highest scoring games on the weekend and without Engram, Shepard should see extra targets against the worst passing defense in the league through 3 weeks. If I use anybody else from this group it would be Lamar Miller in a LU I don’t use Watson. I will have a lot of exposure to Watson/Fuller/Hopkins this week, so Miller is more of a hedge to those LUs if I do use him at all. However, I think Shepard has a big game and it is just easier to throw him into 100% of my LUs, and the DS likes him a lot as well.
Good luck to everyone in the DFS ARMY for week 3! I hope to see some more huge winning screenshots this week and if I don’t win the big Tiers GPP, I hope one of you do.
If you have any questions you can hit me up in my Slack channel at #Big-Marley-NFL-MMA
