Welcome back to the Shark Autopsy Report, NFL Edition Week 6! 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 in contests where the dark waters of Guaranteed Prize Pool (GPP) contests that are ripe with sharks. Navigating these waters where the sharks smell blood in the water is not easy, but the DFSArmy has 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, specifically the Milly Maker contest.
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In this edition of the Shark Autopsy Report, we look at the illustrious Milly Maker contest, a massive GPP tournament that pays out $1 million to first place. A true tale of the tape contest that everyone in the industry knows about, discusses and writes 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, sometimes that is the case, but most of the times that is not the case.
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Synopsis of the Shark Autopsy Report
Lineup deconstruction is what all of the DFS analysis sites are pushing these days. Every site 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 FanDuel’s Sunday Million contests. TJ Hernandez produces his “TJs Take: Weekly NFL DFS Recap”. I have read this article each week this season and other lineup deconstruction articles (RotoGrinders Brit Devine has his Milly Maker Trends article series) and their analyses are good.
The Shark Autopsy Report is different from those other lineup breakdown reports that you can read online, there’s a multitude of these types of articles. The Shark Autopsy Report dives deeper than those other lineup deconstruction articles showcasing: 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.
DraftKings $3.75M Milly Maker Contest
As DFS players, Fish and Sharks alike, we are so attracted to the light shining down from the DFS Universe of the $1M dollar first place prize in the DraftKings Milly Maker and FanDuel Sunday Million contests, and we pump a multitude of our bankrolls into these contests annually. Because of this, I understand why DFS sites are analyzing these winning lineups. It should be part of your repertoire as a DFS player to revisit the prior week’s winning lineups, not just for the Milly Maker and Sunday Million contests, but for all of the contests you entered to see how the winning lineups were constructed. Additionally, you should be looking at your own lineups to determine WHY certain plays in your lineups went off and WHY other plays did not. This will ultimately make you a better player, but it will help you determine trends that you may not have otherwise noticed if you were not reviewing over past week’s lineups.
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.
Now here’s a trend for you, for the sixth week in a row, the winner of the Milly Maker DID NOT MAX ENTER the tourney. The Milly Maker winner in week 6, Davematt123 entered 34 lineups. Gone are the days of Max Multi Entry to take down the colossal tourney. There was 1 DFS player who max entered the week 6 Milly Maker contest.
Top 10
Winning Lineup
Davematt123’s winning lineup utilized a massive contrarian stack of Brock Osweiler and Albert Wilson with an average ownership for the stack of 0.6%. My question for you is, were you on Brock Osweiler and Albert Wilson stack? If you were, congratulations to you on pin-pointing a stack that was about as contrarian as you could get against a top-ranked defense for the first five weeks of the season. If you weren’t on the Osweiler and Wilson stack, don’t worry, it was an outlier stack that went off. Davematt123 rostered two of the top 3 scoring RBs in his lineup, as you will see later in the Shark Autopsy Report, the top 10 lineups were overweight on Melvin Gordon versus the field of 90% to 15.9%. The top 10 lineups were also overweight on James Conner versus the field of 60% to 15%. Julio Jones was highly owned across the industry on all sites, and the Milly Maker contest was no different. It was the third time Julio was one of the top 10 owned NFL players in the Milly Maker contest across the first six weeks of the season. Julio’s field ownership of 39.5%, was the highest ownership of any one WR across the first six weeks by 9.16% to the next highest owned WR (Tyler Boyd next highest owned WR in week 4 of 30.33%). Julio was in a primo matchup versus the Bucs in week 6. The Bucs secondary is in the bottom third of all defensive categories versus the pass, leading to Julio’s near 40% field ownership. Outside of Melvin Gordon and James Conner being in 90% and 60% of the top 10 lineups respectively, possibly the play of the week in the top 10 lineups that set the top 10 apart from the field was Albert Wilson, who was owned by 60% of the top 10 lineups including Davematt123’s lineup.
Trends
So why was 60% of the top 10 on Albert Wilson, well looking at his weekly targets and touches trends. Through the first five weeks of the season, Wilson’s targets have fluctuated but as of week 4 and 5 he had 6 targets each week and 5 touches each week as well. Wilson out targeted Kenny Stills 6 to 5 in week 5 and out touched Stills 5 to 3 in week 4 and 5 to 2 in week 5. Looking at the Chicago Bears defensive secondary and they are 20th against the left side of the field and against deep balls the Bears are ranked 20th. 60% of the top 10 lineups saw something and they were proved right in their analysis of the Bears defense and Albert Wilson.
Top 10 Lineups at a Glance
The winning lineup incorporated 2 RBs and 4 WRs at an average salary spend of $7,950 for RBs and $6,333 for WRs. As you can see below, 7 of the top 10 lineups utilized the RB in the Flex position and 3 of the top 10 lineups utilized the WR in the Flex position.
Weekly Salary Distribution
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.
For the weeks 1 to 5 of Milly Maker top 10 lineups, we can see some trends for each allocable position. The top 10 lineups allocated on average 11.66% of their salary towards the QB position, 16.37% on average to the RB 1 position, 12.16% on average to the RB 2 position, 13.48% on average to the WR 1 position, 10.84% on average to the WR 2 position, 8.32% on average to the WR 3 position, 11.63% on average to the FLEX position, 9.59% on average to the TE position and 5.74% on average to the DEF position. Over the course of the first 5 weeks of the season, the positional percentage of spend was relatively flat across the QB, RB 2, WR 1, WR 2, and FLEX positions ranging in percentage spent of 10.84% to 13.48%. The outliers of where the most amount of the top 10 lineups salary was allocated was towards the RB 1 position, which saw 16.37% on average spent towards the position, this percentage equates to an average monetary spend of $8,184 towards the position. Over the first five weeks of the season, the top 10 lineups on average spent a total of $49,890 of the $50,000 ceiling.
In week 6, there was a $1K+ increase in salary spend at the RB 1 position from the first 5 weeks, which is attributed to the 60% ownership share of Todd Gurley at $10K in salary. To afford the $10K salary for Gurley, the top 10 decreased the amount spent on the WR 2 and 3 and TE positions by $958, $518 and $1,334 respectively.
Weekly Highest Owned Plays (Top 10 vs. Field)
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. In week 6, the top 10 lineup’s field were bullish on four plays, Julio Jones, Todd Gurley, Matt Ryan and Austin Hooper as compared to the field in the Milly Maker.
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.
Hmm…. GAME THEORY IS THE NAME OF THE GAME TO SCORING IN THE TOP 10 OF THE MILLY MAKER!
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