Welcome back to the Shark Autopsy Report, NFL Edition Week 4! If this is your first time reading the Shark Autopsy Report, Welcome! Over the course of the remainder of the NFL season this article will deconstruct winning DraftKings lineups of contests where the dark waters of GPP contests are ripe with sharks. Navigating these waters where the sharks smell blood in the water is not easy, but the DFSArmy have you covered, providing you with the essential daily tools to help our VIPs turn into sharks!

The article will be released weekly, with each day’s article looking at multi-entry GPP contests.

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In this edition of the Shark Autopsy Report, we look at the illustrious Milly Maker, a massive GPP tourney that pays out $1 million to first place. A true tale of the tape contest that everyone knows about and is discussed and written about extensively throughout the course of the week. Many think that lineup construction to win this tourney is all about the most contrarian construction possible, and sometimes that is the case, but most of the times that is not the case.

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DraftKings $4.0M Milly Maker Contest

Lineup deconstruction is what all of the sites are pushing these days, as everyone is wanting to get in on the action of making sure their DFS site is breaking down the winning lineups of these massive payout contests that are the DraftKings Milly Maker and the FanDuel Sunday Million. Brit Devine of RotoGrinders produced his “DraftKings Millionaire Maker Trends through Week 4” article, a good article with some nice tidbits in there. TJ Hernandez also produced his “TJs Take: Week 4 NFL DFS Recap”. I have read these articles and other lineup deconstruction articles and their analysis are good, but they don’t provide the distinct factors of the Shark Autopsy Report (as shown throughout this article) that sets this article apart from those other articles written.

The Shark Autopsy Report is different from those other lineup breakdown reports that you can read online (there’s a multitude of them besides Brit and TJ’s). The Shark Autopsy Report shows you the top ten winning lineups (position-by-position), the number of lineups the top 10 DFS players entered into the contest, the average amount spent by position in the winning lineup, top 10 player ownership percentages, and week-to-week salary distributions of the top 10 lineups to determine if there’s salary correlation amongst the top ten lineups, to help better predict winning lineup construction in future weeks.

We are so attracted to the light shining down from the DFS Universe of winning the $1M dollar first place prize in the DraftKings and Milly Maker and FanDuel Sunday Million contests, and because of this I understand why DFS sites are analyzing these winning lineups. It should be part of you repertoire as a DFS player to revisit the prior week’s winning lineups, not just for the Milly Maker and Sunday Million but for all of your contests you entered to see how the winning lineup was constructed. Additionally, you should be looking at your own lineups to determine WHY certain plays went off in your lineups and WHY other plays did not. This will ultimately make you a better player.

The Shark Autopsy Report continues to evolve (where necessary) as the respective season progresses. As introduced in Week 3’s Shark Autopsy Report, the article now depicts the NFL players who were most drafted in that week’s Milly Maker contest, along with said player’s field ownership percentage, number fantasy points the player accumulated that week and that players ownership percentage across the top ten scoring lineups for that week’s Milly Maker contest.

Changes in the NFL rules landscape has led to greater scores amongst the top finishing lineups in all NFL DFS contests, not just the Milly Maker and other colossal entry contests, but in cash games and smaller GPPs as well.

It was the race to max enter the Milly Maker with the reduce entry cost from $20 to $10 per entry. So, let’s see if the winning lineup max entered the contest.

First I want to address the elephant in the room that RotoGrinders staff blew up twitter about and Brit Devine discussed in his “DraftKings Millionaire Maker Trends through Week 4” article, though Chad Kroeger and Avril Lavigne must be so proud, the screen name will synonymously go down as the one that made Nickelback famous again for a second.

Now here’s a trend for you, for the fourth week in a row, the winner of the Milly Maker DID NOT MAX ENTER the tourney. Milly Maker winner in week 4, Nickelback4Lyfe entered fifty lineups. Gone are the days of Max Multi Entry to take down the colossal tourney. None of the top ten scoring lineups in the week 4 Milly Maker max entered the contest, even though there was a $10 decrease in entry fees and over 200K more entries into the tourney from week 3.

Another slim margin finish separated finishing first from second of 1.4 DK Pts, and to think had AntiGamblePhobia won, we be tweeting a different tune this week.

Nickelback4Lyfe’s winning lineup saw that the Buccaneers were putrid against the pass and decided to fire up Mitchell Trubisky at 1.5% field ownership and Taylor Gabriel at 5.1% field ownership. Prior the 4 PM slate starting, Nickelback4Lyfe had a very respectable total of 167.96 DK Pts heading into the slate of games with 4 players and the defense left to play. Melvin Gordon, Sterling Shepard, Jared Cook and Raiders defense exploded for a total of 105.6 DK Pts giving Nickelback4Lyfe the win. A very risky but play paid off in a shootout, the Raiders Defense could have sunk this lineup, but 2 INTs, a defensive TD and 2 defensive fumble recoveries made up the difference of giving up 42 points to the Cleveland Browns in this late thrilling OT game.

Top 10

Winning Lineup

The winning lineup did utilize a QB + WR 2 stack, and according to DFSArmy’s correlational matrix, Taylor Gabriel had the third highest team correlation with Trubisky of 0.31. The field went with the chalkier play in this game of Allen Robinson, which was in a great spot, but Taylor Gabriel was in a better spot. Let’s take a look at why Gabriel was in a better spot than Robinson.

Look at how the targets between these two plays, one chalk (Allen Robinson) and the other a low owned breakout play (Taylor Gabriel), Robinson’s targets hit a high of 14 in week 2 and then dipped in week 3. But, Gabriel’s targets have increased each week. This is how we win the Milly Maker, trends did not lie in this situation and Gabriel capitalized with over 100 yards receiving, 2 receiving TDs on 7 targets and 8 touches. This graphic showcases the importance of the trends going into week 4 for the Chicago Bears and who Trubisky had been favoring.

Ezekiel Elliott, Melvin Gordon and Sterling Shepard were chalk plays that exploded for good games in week 4 and having them in this lineup provided NickelBack4Lyfe’s lineup the ammunition it needed to take down the tourney.

The winning lineup incorporated 2 RBs and 4 WRs at an average salary spend of $8,000 for RBs and $5,767 for WRs. As you can see below, 3 of the top 10 lineups utilized the WR in the Flex position and 7 of the top 10 lineups utilized the RB in the Flex position.

As compared to week 3, week 4 winning lineup allocated $500 less towards the QB position, $550 less towards the RB position, $1,600 more towards the WR position, $700 more towards TE positions and $1,000 less towards the DEF position.

Top 10 Lineups at a Glance

Over the course of the 2018 NFL season, we will be comparing on a weekly basis how the top 10 scoring Milly Maker lineups have distributed their salary across each position within their lineups to determine if there’s correlation week-to-week amongst the top 10 lineups.

Weekly Salary Distribution

From the four week sample of Milly Maker top 10 lineups, we can see some trends for each allocable position. For the QB position salary distribution, the top 10 lineups are allocating between 10.8% and 12.54% of their $50,000 salary cap to the QB position. For the RB 1 position salary distribution, the top 10 lineups are allocating between 14.26% and 18.94% to the RB 1 position. The RB 2 position salary distribution, the top 10 lineups are allocating between 9% and 15.44% to the RB 2 position. The WR 1 position salary distribution, the top 10 lineups are allocating between 11.88% and 14.54% to the WR 1 position. The WR 2 position salary distribution, the top 10 lineups are allocating between 7.94% and 13.24% to the WR 2 position. The WR 3 position salary distribution, the top 10 lineups are allocating between 7.4% and 9.92% to the WR 3 position. The FLEX position salary distribution, the top 10 lineups are allocating between 10.76% and 13.14% to the FLEX position. The TE position salary distribution, the top 10 lineups are allocating between 8.4% and 11.32% to the TE position. The DEF position salary distribution, the top 10 lineups are allocating between 5.4% and 6.22% to the DEF position.

The most consistent week-to-week distribution of salary comes from the DEF position. The next most consistent is the QB position, which really shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. The highest fluctuations in allocation of salary are from the RB 2 and WR 2 positions, and this is very logical as the top 10 lineups are looking to utilize a stud running back and receiver in the RB 1 and WR 1 positions. Therefore, a cost savings needs to occur within the RB 2 and WR 2 positions. Further cost savings occurs in the WR 3 position, where finding the true value of a low priced WR is vital to your lineups success.

The below graphic displays the week’s highest owned (by field ownership) NFL players and the percentage of top 10 scoring Milly Maker lineups employed the highest owned plays in the tourney. What can be gleaned from the below graphic is that of those top 10 scoring lineups in the weekly Milly Maker contest, the winning top 10 lineups are either over-weight or under-weight on the highest drafted NFL players that week as compared to the tourney’s overall field ownership. For example, in week 1, Alvin Kamara and James Conner’s field ownership was 33.51% and 25.54% respectively, whereas the top 10 scoring lineups employed Kamara and Conner at 80% and 100% respectively. This was similar in the case of Rob Gronkowski in week 1 as well. The top 10 lineups went overweight on these plays in week 1. In week 2, outside of Melvin Gordon and James Conner, the top 10 scoring lineups were under-weight the remaining top 10 field owned plays. In week 3, the top 10 scoring lineups were massively over-weight on Alvin Kamara as compared to the field by nearly 70%. The top 10 lineups were overweight on Ezekiel Elliott by 39.03% as compared to the field, Sterling Shepard by 50.12% and Alvin Kamara by 50.57%.

The top 10 scoring lineups take a stand on a play or two and either go under or over weight on those respective plays that week. Week 3 was indicative of this approach and the top 10 scoring lineups felt that Corey Clement and Julio Jones would be duds, and these lineups shifted their ownership to Calvin Ridley in Jones’ case and instead of paying down at RB for the likes of Clement, they opted to pay up for their RBs and pay down at WR.

GAME THEORY IS THE NAME OF THE GAME TO SCORING IN THE TOP 10 OF THE MILLY MAKER!

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