Are you ready for DraftKings NFL Showdown slates this year?

My name is Josh Thomas, and I am the resident NFL Showdown Expert here at DFS Army! Last season was the first foray into these Showdown/Single Game slates on both Draftkings and Fanduel and while the learning curve was high at the beginning of the season (like with any new game style), we found some edges and exploited them.  While we had an extremely successful season last year with major GPP wins on both sites, we want more! Lots of those wins were split with tens or hundreds of other lineups, meaning that we were able to build ‘chalk’ lineups that could split with others, but on the slates where someone won the top prize by themselves, we weren’t as successful. Was it just variance that these players built such a unique lineup that they were able to win them by themselves? Or was there actually a strategy and an edge in doing so?

To find out, I dove in and analyzed the top three lineups from every single primetime slate (Thursday, Sunday Night, Monday Night) along with others (Thanksgiving, Saturday games in week 16) to learn more about what these lineups did and if it was something we could replicate. I analyzed 165 lineups in total, and in the article below I will outline the successful strategies and lineup construction tips that I found in my research. I truly believe we’ve found a few new edges that can be exploited for our first SIX FIGURE win in NFL Showdown and I’m so excited to share it with you!

NOTE: When I refer to a ‘winning lineup’ in the following, I mean a lineup that was one of the three best of each slate. Typically you need a top-three lineup when MME’n to have a positive ROI.

How Does DraftKings Showdown work?

First, let’s have a quick refresher on how DraftKings Showdown and it’s scoring. Each week, DraftKings has five showdown slates, Thursday Night Football, two on the main slate Sunday, Sunday Night Football, and Monday Night Football. Occasionally they will throw a few more in there, but for the most part, these are the main, with the primetime games having the biggest contests and prize pools.

When building a lineup for a showdown game, you choose 6 players, and they must be a QB, RB, WR, TE, K, or a DEF and you must have at least one player from each team. There is also a salary cap of $50,000. You don’t need to spend all of it (in fact you shouldn’t but more on that later) but you can’t go over.

The big difference between showdown and a normal slate is that there is a Captain slot in each lineup. The player you choose for your Captain gets 1.5x points for each point he accrues, but his salary is also 1.5x. This is the real key to showdowns, choosing the right Captain. A cheaper captain lets you fill the rest of your lineup with studs, but he also needs to produce. So how do you choose the right captain? There’s a strategy to that, but more on that in a bit.

2018 Draftkings Showdown Results

As I said earlier, I went through 165 lineups from last season and pulled some very interesting nuggets that can help us build winning lineups, particularly BIG TIME winning lineups, so let’s get into the results.

First things first, some of the basics, I looked at 165 lineups which included a whopping 990 players (though not all different players). The average lineup salary was $48518 or about $1500 under the max salary. The average points per lineup were 134.6 and the average value was just under 3x at 2.77.

The big takeaways from this is that the average salary was about $1500 under the max. This doesn’t mean that there weren’t any lineups that used all of the salary and won (12 out of 165 or 7%) but when building lineups with the goal of taking down one of these big-money GPP’s with 90K+ entries, any sort of uniqueness you can create is important. One way to do that is to build lineups under the salary cap, and clearly, with 93% of these ‘winning’ lineups being under the max, it’s a smart strategy.

Positional Breakdown:

Now that we have the basics out of the way, we can look at what positions showed up most in showdown lineups. Each game script is going to change what sort of lineup construction you will have in terms of the players, but in general this can give us an idea of a base lineup.

Without taking into account the captain spot, on average each top three lineups had:

2 WR’s

1 QB, 1 RB

1 QB or RB

1 DST, K,  or TE

Pretty standard, but the big takeaway here is how important the WR position is, and in turn, how important PPR (points per reception) is in this format. When you dive into this a little deeper what you find is that it is often a stud WR1 paired with a cheaper WR2 or WR3. Think Michael Thomas and Tre’Quan Smith or Tyreek Hill and Chris Conley, but it’s not always two WR’s on the same team, in fact only 27% of the time was this the case, but more on that when we get to QB stacks.

Typically, starting QB’s are the most expensive in showdown, so it’s not surprising that we don’t see two QB’s show up more often, but it is surprising that RB’s show up less than WR’s. Salary notwithstanding anecdotally we think that both starting RB’s are going to get a ton of work most weeks, so one would think that they would show up more, but the fact that they don’t again gives credence to the importance of PPR. It also makes some sense when you think of game script, typically one RB gets taken out of the gameplan when a team gets down. We also see more RB’s by committee than ever before which could have something to do with it as well.

When we look at the captain spot we find that despite not showing up as often in lineups overall, RB is king on DraftKings for the captain slot.

RB – 35.76% 

WR – 24.85% 

QB – 22.42%

DST – 9.7%

TE – 6.06%

K – 1.21%

Right off the bat, you should NEVER have a kicker in the captain slot. I love the salary relief that kicker gives you in regular lineups, but there’s just really not very many scenario’s where the kicker is going to be ‘the play’ at captain. The scenario where it was the number one lineup though is interesting and might be a nugget we can store for this year.

If you were to tell me that a kicker was the nuts captain in a game that scored 83 points, especially one between two prolific offenses like the Patriots and Chiefs I would have called you a crazy person, but it actually makes a ton of sense when you look at the lineup.

By rostering Stephen Gostkowski in the captain slot, this user was able to jam in Patrick Mahomes, Tom Brady, Tyreek Hill, and Kareem Hunt something that literally no one else was able to do. Now he obviously had to have some things go right for this to work, but it’s an interesting strategy to keep in mind for this year when we have two goliath offenses match up.

So we can get rid of kicker here, and that leaves five spots, can we eliminate DST or TE as well?

Let’s look at TE first, the TE’s who were winning captains last year were: Jared Cook, Evan Engram, Vance McDonald, Eric Ebron, George Kittle, Zach Ertz, Kyle Rudolph (as a Vikings fan I can’t believe this). Noticeably missing? Travis Kelce way too many studs in that offense. These guys were arguably all top ten TE’s last year so it does make sense that they popped.  I wouldn’t necessarily write off TE’s completely from the captain slot, but it definitely needs to be a case by case basis, and I’m likely only allocating between 5% to 10% of my captain shares to them. One interesting piece though is that 80% of the Captain TE’s last year played for teams that were Vegas dogs in their matchup. Skilled TE who is a vegas dog looks like the recipe for some TE captain shares, but again don’t go crazy.

Defenses showed up in the Captain Slot around 10% of the time last year and when we look we find that they were all, with the exception of the Steelers (Scored twice) and Bears (51 point total against the Rams but weather played a huge factor) and Chiefs (meaningless WK 17 game) they all were games that were under a 45 point total at game time. Outside of those random events happening, it’s important to not target a defense unless we have a game that has a total of less than 45. I’ll push my captain shares to others when the total goes over 45.

As far as the remaining positions go, I think following the average percentages with some slight adjustments based on game script and vegas lines is the best way to go. The vast majority of the WRs and RBs are WR1’s and RB1’s. Once in a while you get the vulture from LeGarrette Blount or the random Marquise Goodwin big game, but focusing your captain slot on WR1’s, RB1’s and QB’s is a much better strategy than trying to guess when you’ll get those games from a 2nd or 3rd tier player.

Captains and Vegas:

One thing I wanted to look at was if there was any sort of correlation between the captain slot and vegas odds. Is it more likely that a captain is on a team that’s a dog or favorite? Does that vary by position? Here’s what I found from last year.

The information here is a bit muddled and with all these positions the sample size is pretty small, but there are a few things we can pull from this. Below is how often they show up in the captain slot relative to their vegas odds leading up to the game.

1. Favorite RB
2. Dog RB
3. Dog WR
4. Dog QB
5. Favorite WR
6. Favorite QB

What this really tells us, is that game script is important. One of the keys to building NFL showdown lineups is that they need to tell a story about what is going to happen in the game. It should be no surprise that the Favorite RB shows up more often than any other position in the captain slot. If an RB is favorite, he is likely to get the ball more than if his team is behind as teams try to grind out the clock, especially late in the game.

Dog RB comes in next and similarly to favorite RB’s they get lots of run when they get ahead in a game, Vegas isn’t always right. They are followed by Dog WR. Think about that from a game script if a team is down they are likely throwing the ball quite a bit and the WR on the team that is down benefits from that. Similarly a QB who is a dog ranks ahead of a Fav QB because they are throwing the ball more.

A general guideline for building lineups here would be to prioritize Favorite RB’s, and Dog WR and QB when setting up your MME. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be playing the others, but those are more likely to end up in the nuts at captain.

RB Captain and QB:

Another thing I wanted to look at was if an RB was captain, does their QB show up too? It would make sense that if an RB has a big game, his QB wouldn’t be as productive.

Interestingly, 60% of the lineups that RB captain, had a QB paired with them. What this doesn’t necessarily show is how many of those RB’s are what we would call a ‘Pass Catching’ RB? The reality is that with the state of the NFL today, almost all running backs are pass-catching backs. Very few starters get less than 4-5 targets a game if not more. The ‘third down’ back is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

What this means is that their value isn’t separate, and can often be tied together. There are a few cases where we have an RB that doesn’t catch passes and could be the only scorer for that team in the game, Mark Ingram comes to mind, but for the most part, the vast majority of running backs have points connected with their QB’s.

If the QB is terrible it doesn’t matter though. An RB can go off without a QB regardless of if they are a pass-catcher or not.

The other situation where we could have an RB without a QB is when the game is low scoring. QB’s need lots of points on the board to score whereas WR/TE/RB’s don’t necessarily need that.

Essentially I wouldn’t shy away from stacking a QB with an RB captain unless the game is projecting to be low scoring or their quarterback just isn’t very good and isn’t a great play regardless.

WR Captain and QB:

In that same vein, what about WR captains and their QB? Surely if a WR is going to be captain, they have to their QB with them in the lineup.

Interestingly, only 71% of the time does a WR Captain have his QB with him in the same lineup. Anecdotally, I would have thought this number would have been much higher, but as I dug in what I found is that there are certain situations where this does work, and we can actually recognize these situations and build lineups accordingly when the opportunity presents itself.

The first situation is a low scoring game. A low scoring game is easier to predict and in those situations, it’s likely that neither QB’s end up in the winning lineup. Quarterbacks need points on the board to rack up fantasy points. A 16-13 game likely means that a QB doesn’t wind up as a ‘nuts play’. With the importance of PPR, if a WR racks up a bunch of catches and maybe the only touchdown in these low scoring affairs he can easily find himself as the best captain play. So anytime we have a predicted ‘low scoring’ affair, we can build lineups that have a WR with no QB as the captain.

The other situation is a blowout and it’s much harder to predict.

As you can see in the lineup above, DeVante Parker ended up the nuts captain in WK 8 against the Texans without his QB. There are a couple things at play here.

1. It was a blowout and you needed all the Houston studs in your lineup to win.
2. Parker was super cheap and allowed you to get all those studs.
3. Maybe the most important is that Brock Osweiler is a terrible QB

Obviously Parker still had to perform, but the logic is sound. Bad QB in a potential blow out? Play a cheap WR from the OPPOSITE team so you can jam in the studs from the good team.

QB Captain and WR/RB/TE’s:

When a quarterback is captain, what pass catchers should you play with him? And how many? While this is going to change game to game, here is what we found from last year to give you some guidelines.

First, let’s look at how many pass-catchers you should be playing with a QB Captain. What we find is that the vast majority of winning QB captain lineups used either 2 or 3 pass catchers. Rarely they only had 1 or 4 pass catchers but it is possible.

So we know that if we have a QB captain we need to have at least 2, and more often 3 pass catchers, so who should those pass catchers be?

While it isn’t surprising to me that WR’s were the heavy favorite to pair with Captain QB’s it is a bit surprising that RB’s are lower than TE’s, but when you think about lineup construction and salary constraints, it makes sense.

When you play a QB in the captain slot you are likely rostering one of the two or three most expensive players in a slot that requires you to 1.5x the starting salary. This doesn’t leave a lot of salary for the rest of your lineup. Running Backs are typically the second-highest priced player on average behind QB’s so it’s not surprising that they don’t show up as often in QB Captain lineups, while TE’s are fairly cheap and can bring some huge upside if they catch a TD and even if they don’t they bring PPR upside on Draftkings.

Another reason that RB’s don’t show up that often is because if they are going to have a big game, they likely outscore the QB and end up in the winning lineup as a captain instead.

A general rule of thumb would be if you are rostering a QB in the captain slot, you need to pair him with 2 or 3 pass-catchers, with the majority of those pass-catchers being WR’s. Tossing in a cheaper TE is also viable. The only RB’s that show up in QB Captain lineups are those that are heavily involved in the passing game, the Todd Gurley’s of the world (though not this year).

Captain and Opposing Defense:

This little gem is something that popped when I was entering all of these lineups into a spreadsheet and I thought it was just an anomaly at first but it turns out it actually happens quite often.

17% of winning lineups in showdown last year played a defense AGAINST their captain. Let me repeat that. 17% of winning lineups in showdown last year played a defense AGAINST their captain!

That’s insanity. We’ve been told our entire DFS lives that you can’t play your defense against your players. It’s an engrained truth of DFS NFL. The most basic of the basic. And now you’re telling me that in almost 1/5th of the winning lineups from last year a defense was rostered not only against their players but their most important player, the Captain?! Yes, it’s true and it’s actually an ingenious strategy. Let’s take a look at one of these winning lineups.

In Week 8 of last year, the Saints and Vikings squared off at US Bank Stadium on Sunday Night Football, with the Saints whooping my Vikings 30-20. Stefon Diggs had a HUGE game with 46.35 DK points in the Captain Slot. He had a TD catch early in the game, 10 receptions, and 119 yards on the night. Yet, the Saints D ended up in the winning lineup against him so how did that happen? P.J. Williams intercepted Kirk Cousins and returned it for a touchdown.

Most slates, Defenses are priced below $3500 and are often very underowned, particularly in games with high totals like the one above. In the NFL last season, there was on average about 3 touchdowns each week scored by a defense. If a defense scores a TD, they are almost assuredly going to be in the nuts lineup. Remember above that winning lineups hit an average value of 2.77. For our sake, lets say that’s 3. If a defense scores a touchdown and doesn’t do anything else they almost hit value with that alone. Beyond that, it also gives the offense an extra possession, which benefits your captain.

It’s a long shot that a defense scores a touchdown, but it does happen and while this number could certainly go down this year from 17% of winning lineups, it’s worth taking some shots in GPP’s, especially if you are MME’n and trying to take down one of these big prize pools as it gives you a huge uniqueness because it’s generally been thought of to be a cardinal sin to play a defense against your captain.

NOTE: As shown above this occurs more often with RB’s and WR’s at captain than QB’s.

Quarterback Stacking:

Quarterbacks are the most important players on the field, but how important are they in DraftKings NFL Showdown and should you be trying to jam in two quarterbacks as often as you can?

When we look at all of the winning rosters from last year we find that double QB was only in around 33% of lineups. As typically one of the top 3 or 4 most expensive players on the slate, it’s often difficult to roster two quarterbacks and have a productive remainder of your lineup.

When you dig a little deeper though you find that 74% of those lineups that had two QB’s in them had at least one player that was under $3000 as their lowest salary player. To make the double QB work you need those salary savings. You also need that player to be productive, but they don’t have to be a stud. Here’s an example of a roster that employed this technique.

This lineup had both QB’s, including Marcus Mariota at the Captain slot, and rostered Allen Hurns at $2800. Hurns was working his way back from an injury but till garnered some ownership at this price tag. He only scored 9.3 points, but that was good for 3.3x value. If you remember we are really only looking for 2.7x in all of our roster spots on average. By playing a cheap Hurns, they were able to roster both QB’s and Amari Cooper as their ‘studs’. This was a somewhat low scoring game though so can this be done in a high scoring game?

With Melvin Gordon III out for a game against the Steelers in Week 13, this user rostered both Justin Jackson and Travis Benjamin below 3K. This allowed them to get not only Phillip Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger but also Keenan Allen and Antonio Brown. They all smashed (well Big Ben was just OK) and Jackson/Benjamin were just average in comparison, but at their price tag, they didn’t need to be.

Of the 74% of Double QB lineups, 40% of them rostered a WR as their under 3K player, 25% rostered a defense, and 20% rostered a TE. This again shows how important PPR is in this format with cheap WRs and TEs showing up here and providing huge value. Opening up your MME to some of these lower owned WRs and TEs allows you to get creative with the roster and they don’t need to do much to help you out, but more on this strategy later.

Of the 26% of lineups that had two QB’s and DIDN’T roster a player under 3K, what I found was that the vast majority of these employed a cheap captain for salary savings. This is a little more risky strategy because you need that captain to crush, whereas if you just roster someone cheap in the rest of your lineup, 3x value is great.

I remember this slate specifically and when I came across it I had pangs of regret. With a 54.5 total, I wanted two QB’s in this game for sure, but when building lineups I kept coming across roadblocks. Damien Williams was a lock at his price with Kareem Hunt out but I thought the Chiefs would have to throw the ball to keep up with the Chargers (they didn’t). I specifically remember trying to make rosters work with Keenan Allen, Tyreek Hill, and Travis Kelce as captains, but no lineup looked good. I never even thought to throw Mike Williams in there. Now it should be noted that prior to this game, Williams was averaging 2.7 receptions a game for 47 yards and .63 touchdowns a game. He does tend to have two TD games at a higher rate than the rest of the NFL, but still, playing him at captain was a risky proposition. That being said, it allowed this user to roster Mahomes, Rivers, and the rest of the studs from this game.

The important takeaway for me here is that you are much better off when having double QB lineups to try to find a cheap option rather than play a cheaper player at captain and hope they smash. There are situations where you get a player stepping into a smash spot at a low price because of injury and in those situations, I will definitely be jumping on the cheap captain route (it actually happened in this game with the second nuts lineup as Damien Williams was stepping into a big role because of the Hunt injury). For the vast majority of slates though, opening up your player pool to some of these cheaper options so you can get in double QB seems to be the best course of action.

Finally, can we talk for a second about the fact that 10% of winning lineups had ZERO QB’S?! WHAT?! I had to double-check this number (Actually triple checked it because it just didn’t make sense to me) and it actually happened in the very first showdown slate ever last year! I completely forgot about the insanity that the first game was with no QB showing up in ANY of the top three lineups.

Carson Wentz was hurt. Nick Foles was terrible. Matt Ryan threw a pick and had a fumble. Most importantly though, it was low scoring. All of the lineups with the exception of two had games that were under 40 points total. And most were under 35. The two exceptions had bad Fantasy (and real-life) QB’s (Matt Ryan, Eli Manning, Case Keenum, and Josh Rosen) and were running back/defensive shows.

So, if a game looks to be low scoring and has two bad QB’s? Start loading up those no QB lineups, otherwise, you need at least one QB in every single lineup.

Team Stacks:

An important piece of lineup construction is how many players from each team you have in your lineup. You have three options: A balanced approached with three players from each team. A favored approach with four players from one and two from the other. Or an all-out approach with five players from one team and only one from the other.

 

The 4-2 or favored approach is the most used, occurring in almost 51% of the winning lineups last year on DraftKings. The balanced approach followed with about 31% of the winning lineups employing that approach and only 18% using an all-out 5-1 strategy.

When you dive in deep you find that the 5-1 stacks are typically in blowouts, while the 4-2 and 3-3 happen in a variety of different game scripts. Having a 4-2 approach doesn’t necessarily mean that those four are on the winning team though. In fact, 21% of the time a 4-2 was employed, the four players were NOT on the winning team. The actual teams that occured to the most? The Chiefs, Vikings, and Rams. What do they all have in common? A bunch of highly productive offensive weapons. Targetting teams with offensive studs seems to be the right play regardless of whether they win or not.

Salary and Ownership:

This my friends, may be the most important piece of information in this entire article, how salary and ownership come into play with winning lineups.

What we did was find the average salary and ownership of every single position in a lineup. Draftkings handily organizes your lineup after you enter it in order of most expensive to least expensive in the flex spot, which allows us to actually look at a roster focusing on each flex position individually.

Some interesting takeaways from this research is that the Average Salary of a captain comes in at only $12,271. When you think that a stud QB/RB/WR is often over 15K in salary (The week 1 season opener with Bears and Packers has 3 players priced over 15K, Aaron Rodgers, Mitchell Trubisky, and Davante Adams) it brings in an interesting strategy. While there can be an argument that some of the cheaper captains skew the results and the average salary, only 36% of winning lineups had a captain who was priced over $15000! Utilizing a cheaper ‘secondary stud’ in this spot seems to be the way to go.

Ownership is really not something I pay much attention to in the captain spot because at the end of the game there are only 2-3 players who feasibly could end up in the winning lineup as a captain.

Where I do pay attention to ownership is in that final flex position. The middle spots are interesting, but pretty much what you would guess it would look like. Fairly chalk players with a an average descent in salary. That final flex spot though is, in my opinion, the KEY to winning a big gpp.

On average that position has a salary of $2,704 and ownership of 15.49% but as we go a little deeper we find some VERY interesting data.

40% of winning lineups had a player that was priced below 2.5k and 21% had a player below 1.5k! That’s incredible because, for the most part, these guys don’t make users player pools! Of these players, only 18% had more than 10% ownership! If you don’t know, anyone less than 10% owned in showdown is crazy low owned. 44% of those players were under 5% owned There are only so many options so for a player to be that low owned means that he’s literally on no one’s radar, but should he be?

Playing someone this low owned gives you massive leverage on the field and makes you unique. You don’t need them to smash (though they did average about 14 DK points, skewed by some massive performances by Chris Conley, Wendell Smallwood, and Aldrick Robinson) as long as they are on the field and playing some they become an option to roster.

As a whole, users playing showdown eliminate these cheap low owned players from their pool and in fact they should be opening up their pool to more of these cheap options that can not only differentiate your lineup but allow you get more studs in.

Does this mean you should be playing a 6th string receiver that might not even dress? Am I suggesting that you should roster Robert Tonyan at .00001% (he actually was in the nuts once) No. A 4th receiver though or a second TE makes sense though. You don’t need a ton but 5-6% of them in your 150 lineups gives you a chance at the big money as they let you pile in the studs in the rest of that lineup.

While many argue for a tight player pool in DFS (and I think it makes sense in a lot of sports) the data shows that you should actually be expanding your player pool at the bottom of the salary range in DraftKings showdown.

What does it all mean?!

Look, that was a TON of information. I’ve been deep-diving into these showdown slates for the last few weeks and I’m currently having dreams about rostering a 5% owned TE in the Flex 5 spot and him dropping a TD pass. So what are the big takeaways that are going to help you build winning lineups? Here’s the cliff notes version of the info above.

1. You don’t have to use all your salary

In fact, you probably shouldn’t. The average salary of winning lineups is around $48500. I wouldn’t suggest setting the ‘max salary’ for your MME in the Domination Station to 48,500 but dropping it below 50K or max salary and increasing the amount of randomization should get you a pretty good spread of total salary. One thing you can do is build in batches. An example would be to build 50 lineups with 50K max salary, 50 lineups with 49K max salary, and 50 lineups with 48K max salary. You will need to go through and look for duplicates but this can get you a wide variety of lineup structures.

2. Running Back is KING in the Captain slot

RB – 35.76% 

WR – 24.85% 

QB – 22.42%

DST – 9.7%

TE – 6.06%

K – 1.21%

Running Back shows up 10% more of the time in winning lineups than WR and 13% more than QB’s. While PPR is huge, the consistency and floor of RB’s combined with their massive upside make them the King of the Captain slot.

Conversely, Defense, TE, and Kickers rarely pop here and really are positions I’ll avoid almost entirely this year in MME. If the game script calls for it, defense is an intriguing play, but for the most part, focusing your captain position on RB, WR, and QB (in that order) is going to give you the best chance at a takedown.

3. Vegas can help choose a Captain

1. Favorite RB
2. Dog RB
3. Dog WR
4. Dog QB
5. Favorite WR
6. Favorite QB

When we look at who shows up in the Captain slot most often in regards to Vegas odds, the Favorite RB is the clear cut best option for a Captain, followed by Dog RB, but then Dog WR and QB show up. Targetting the dog in showdown makes a lot of sense as they will likely be playing from behind and need to air the ball out to get back in the game.

4. RB Captains CAN and SHOULD be paired with their QB

Despite what anecdotally makes sense, you should be pairing an RB captain with their QB. Almost all of the running backs in the NFL are pass catchers now and 61% of Running Backs in the captain slot had their QB with them in the winning lineup.

5. QB Captains should have 2 or 3 pass catchers

81% of QB Captains had 2 or 3 pass catchers with them. This seems to be the sweet spot. What type of pass-catchers? WR’s for the most part, followed by TE’s and finally RB’s. RB Captains should have QB’s paired with them, but QB Captains shouldn’t.

6. Play the opposing defense against your Captain

Huh? I know this goes against all conventional wisdom, but what we found when diving into last year’s results was that almost 17% of winning lineups had an opposing defense against their captain. When you think that likely less than 1% of lineups overall do this, this is a HUGE edge that we can take advantage of. Don’t do this in all of your 150 lineups, but 10% will be 10x the field, building this type of lineup.

7. Double QB Lineups need a cheap WR.

When you dig a little deeper though you find that 74% of those lineups that had two QB’s in them had at least one player that was under $3000 as their lowest salary player. To make the double QB work you need those salary savings!

8. NO QB when you have a low total or awful QB’s

Almost all of the games that had a NO QB winning lineup ended up under 35 points total. QB’s need points scored to be in the winning lineup, especially when you consider how they are the most expensive player most weeks. This number is small though, in general, you really should have at least one QB in your lineup. The exception was when you had awful QB’s and in these games, it was a heavy dose of running backs.

9. 4-2 is the most common winning build

Lineups constructed with four players from one team and two from the other was the most common build, but the four do NOT have to be from the winning team. In fact, in 21% of the winning 4-2 lineups, the four were not from the winning team. Don’t be afraid to roster four players from offensive firepower teams if they are dogs, actually you probably should.

10. Open up your player pool!

40% of winning lineups had a player that was priced under 2.5k! Typically these players are going to be under 10% owned as most people just refuse to use the cheap options. They allow you to stack studs and if they end up having a productive day you likely find yourself close to the nuts and winning yourself a LOT of money.

Final Thoughts:

Showdowns are incredibly high variance, if you are going to MME them you have to be willing to get completely shut out. A one player switch can be the difference between 50K and $50. It’s wild. You honestly are better off not looking until the game is over (unless you wanna know who you need to cheer for or against). Hopefully, this deep dive can give us a chance at some of these big wins this year.

My final nuggets of advice are this.

1. If you are entering a contest with 250,000 entrants and 150 max entries, get CRAZY. Don’t try to min-cash it. Play your defense against your captain. Roster someone ultra-cheap. Stack the studs. Do something to make your lineup unique. With 250,000 lineups it’s likely that someone has the ‘perfect’ lineup so don’t make something chalky and expect to win the whole thing.
2. If you are playing cash in showdown, disregard everything I said above. (ok not all of it but most of it). Cash you need to build for a floor. 2 QB, 2 RB, 2 K if possible is the ideal cash build with the RB at the captain slot. You are essentially locked into all of the scoring for the game and this type of build ‘should’ get you across the cash line.
3. While there is a huge edge in showdown and something that I think we can exploit, because of how variant it is, you need to be willing to lose because it’s going to happen. Don’t play your whole bankroll on one slate. Spread it out, play within your means, and build your way up to the bigger contests. The smaller 20 max contests are perfect for those looking to break into showdown.

I’m so excited for this season and I’m looking forward to providing showdown notes for our VIPs and seeing us take some MASSIVE GPP’S down this year!