Shark Autopsy Report – Analyzing DraftKings Milly Maker Lineups to Make You a Better Player

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Welcome back to the Shark Autopsy Report, NFL Edition Week 10! 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.

The Shark Autopsy Report is different from the 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 $3.25M 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.

The trend continues for the winner of the Milly Maker for the tenth week in a row, the winner of the Milly Maker DID NOT MAX ENTER the tourney. The Milly Maker winner in week 10, BearDown247 entered one lineup into the Milly Maker and came out a MILLIONAIRE! Gone are the days of Max Multi Entry to take down the colossal tourney

Top 10

Winning Lineup

BearDown247’s lineup featured a chalkier RBs in Aaron Jones, but in relation to the higher priced RBs of Kareem Hunt, Todd Gurley and Melvin Gordon, he was owned at half or a third of the ownership as the highest owned RBs on the slate. BearDown247’s lineup utilized 3 RBs that didn’t surpass the $6K salary threshold and this enabled the lineup to employ Julio Jones in a great spot vs. the Browns and Tyreek Hill who was a great GPP pivot off of the 33.48% field owned Kareem Hunt. BearDown247 utilized a 5-man Bears onslaught stack of Mitchell Trubisky, Tarik Cohen, Allen Robinson, Trey Burton and the Bears Defense. A stack of this nature hasn’t hit and won the Milly Maker since the 2016 season when the winner of a particular week’s slate won with a 5-man onslaught stack of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The total average field ownership of the 5-man Bears stack was 8.48%, but when you break out each player separately the players weren’t highly owned outside of Burton and Bears Defense. Will we see another 5-man stack win this season, maybe, but more than likely not. The 5-man Bears stack accounted for 111.7 DK Pts, which at a total salary amount of $23,600, BearDown247 got 4.73 Pt./$ value.

The winning lineup incorporated 3 RBs and 3 WRs at an average salary spend of $5,500 for RBs and $6,867 for WRs. As you can see below, 9 of the top 10 lineups utilized the RB in the Flex position, 1 of the top 10 lineups utilized the WR in the Flex 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.

For the weeks 1 to 9 of Milly Maker top 10 lineups, we can see some trends for each allocable position. The top 10 lineups allocated on average 11.90% of their salary towards the QB position, 15.45% on average to the RB 1 position, 11.38% on average to the RB 2 position, 13.76% on average to the WR 1 position, 10.73% on average to the WR 2 position, 8.38% on average to the WR 3 position, 12.32% on average to the FLEX position, 9.5% on average to the TE position and 6.39% on average to the DEF position. The outliers of where the most amount of the top 10 lineups salary was allocated was towards the RB 1 position, which saw 15.45% on average spent towards the position, this percentage equates to an average monetary spend of $7,725 towards the position. Over the first nine weeks of the season, the top 10 lineups on average spent a total of $49,901 of the $50,000 ceiling.

In week 10, there was a $615 decrease in salary spend at the RB 1 position from the first 9 weeks, which is attributed to 70% of the top 10 lineups did not employ the top salaried RBs in the RB 1 slot.

Field Ownership

The field ownership 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 graphic is that of those top 10 scoring lineups in the weekly Milly Maker contest are either over-weight or under-weight on the week’s highest drafted NFL players as compared to the tourney’s overall field ownership. In week 10, the top 10 lineup’s field were bullish on Michael Thomas exceeding field ownership in the Milly Maker by 7.58%. Otherwise, the top 10 lineup’s field was bearish as compared to the field.

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!

Which Player Salaries Encompass Top 10 Milly Maker LUs

We now have a good amount of data from the first ten weeks of the season and those top 10 scoring lineups across all ten weeks. As a result, what trends can we see week in and week out. 4 out of the first 10 weeks, the winner of the Milly Maker spent in excess of $3,500 on a defense. 5 out of the first 10 weeks, the winner of the Milly Maker spent in excess of $8,000 on the RB 1 position, and of those 5 weeks, on two separate weeks the Milly Maker winning lineup employed an RB 1 whose salary was greater than $9,000. 7 out of the first 10 weeks, the winner of the Milly Maker spent between $4,300 to under $6,000, and the outlier of the $4,300 was Brock Osweiler in week 6. Over weeks 1 to 10, the winning Milly Maker lineups have not spent more than $8,300 at the WR 1 position and the sweet spot range of salary spend on WR 1 was $7,300 to $8,000, as 60% of the winning Milly Maker lineups employed a WR 1 in this range. At the WR 2 position, 7 out of the first 10 weeks the winning Milly Maker lineup employed a WR 2 with a salary of between $6,400 to $7,600, where 4 of those weeks the salary trend was between $7,100 to $7,600. At the FLEX position, there’s a 50/50 split amongst the winning Milly Maker lineups employing a RB or WR over the course of the first 10 weeks. Over the first 10 weeks, no winning Milly Maker lineup has employed a TE in excess of $5,900, where the sweet spot salary range is between $3,500 to $4,300.

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