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Shark Autopsy Report Chronicles – Analyzing the Winning Milly Maker Lineup

Welcome back to the Shark Autopsy Report chronicles, the chronicles deconstructs weekly winning DraftKings Milly Maker lineups of the NFL 2019 season.  Over the course of the NFL season this article builds off of the “Dossier on How to Win the DraftKings Milly Maker” I wrote and published prior to week one of the 2019 NFL season.  You may access the VIP article here.  Deconstructing lineups that win massive tournaments such as the Milly Maker is not easy because we have to get into the mindset of the winning entrant and understand why the entrant utilized players in the lineup they used.  As the author of the Shark Autopsy Report, I am here to tell you that your dreams can become reality with the right tools, lineup construction methodologies, hard work, and gumption!  

The Milly Maker contest is 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 people think that lineup construction to win the Milly Maker tourney is all about constructing the most contrarian lineup possible, sometimes that is the case, but most of the times that is not the case.

Little Bit about the DFSArmy

For those of you who are new to Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) or are looking for that one DFS site that can propel your play to new heights, then look no further, the DFSArmy is a top notch, second to none DFS site that can provide you with the tools to construct quality DFS lineups like the pros use.  At the DFSArmy, we pride ourselves on the ability of our coaches to teach and provide our members with the methodologies, processes, tools and thought processes to become an equitable DFS player, who can grow their bankroll with proper bankroll management and turn your everyday Joe into a DFS Pro.  DFSArmy covers all of the DFS sports from the main 4 (MLB, NBA, NFL & NHL) to PGA, MMA, Soccer and College FB and BB.  Additionally, DFSArmy has its own Sportsbook team to help you with sports betting.  The DFSArmy is an all-in-one Fantasy Sports and Sportsbook site that you can’t afford to not be a member.

Synopsis of the Shark Autopsy Report Chronicles

Lineup deconstruction is vital to DFS’ers success and it’s why all of the DFS provider sites have members writing about, but other sites articles lack substance and are simply generic.  Take a look at those articles and draw your own conclusions.  As the author of the Chronicles, I am trying to break the code and help my readers do the same.  The Chronicles will showcase: the Vegas closing lines and how those Vegas lines contributed to the winning lineup construction, is it vital to max enter,

The Shark Autopsy Report is different from the other DFS site’s lineup breakdown articles that you can read online, as there are 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 $4.5M 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 contest, 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 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 you may not have otherwise noticed if you were not reviewing over past week’s lineups.

Vegas Closing Lines

If you want the most comprehensive breakdown of how closing Vegas lines predicatively determines future results, read my “Dossier on How to Win the DraftKings Milly Maker” in conjunction with each week’s Chronicles article.

The winning lineup utilized a QB/WR/TE stack of Patrick “Mahomie” Mahomes at QB, Demarcus Robinson at WR, and Travis Kelce in the Kansas City v. Oakland game which had closing Vegas lines of 53 total points and a -7 spread.  The actual scores in this game underwhelmed that of what Vegas predicted to be a high scoring game.  But, the winning Milly Maker lineup nailed all 4 TDs in his KC stack.  In fact, the two highest projected closing Vegas lines games didn’t produce the total number of points that Vegas projected would occur.  Well what most don’t know and many of the sharp bettors in the industry know, is that over the course of the first 4 weeks of the NFL season, Vegas can be off on their projections for the games.  Much like the public they’re trying to get a feel of how the teams will produce.  Predictive analytics suggests that during the first month of the season we fade the Vegas lines in favor of our own predictive analytics and research of each team’s construction offensively and defensively.  The top games that actually scored the most points were the 4th highest projected line in the Seattle v. Pittsburgh game, the 6th highest projected line in the Dallas v. Washington game and the 7th highest projected line in the San Francisco v. Cincinnati game.  So why did these games out score the Vegas projections for these games?  Defenses! San Francisco decimated a porous Cincinnati run defense on the ground with a 100+ yard performance from Matt Breida, and 2 TD from Jeff Wilson Jr.  Russell Wilson threw for 3 TDs and 300 yards against a good defense in Pittsburgh.  Zeke ran all over the Redskins rush defense for 111 yards and a TD, Dak Prescott threw for 269 yards and 3 TDs with one TD and 74 yards receiving going to Devin Smith!

When the author was making lineups in week 2, a strong urge came over him that Zeke was going to crush against the Redskins came over him and upped his ownership by 3 fold as compared with the field, but it still wasn’t enough ownership in Zeke.  Time and time again the consistency of the RB spot is vital to the success of a lineup winning the Milly Maker and ownership should not play much of role in your lineup decision making for RBs.  Zeke is an absolute beast and can win entrants a lot of money and week 2 was no exception as he was in the winning Milly Maker lineup.

Predicatively nailing those games that go off on a given slate will give you the necessary boost to take down slates.  As the season matures over the season, Vegas lines become more predictive enabling you to utilize the lines with more certainty than in the first 4 weeks of the season.

Stacking is the Most Advantageous Strategy

To make serious gains on your competitors and move up the leader boards, you must learn how to construct lineups utilizing an artful stacking process!  This doesn’t mean that you stack every game on the slate, but to choose those games you have researched and believe may go off on that given slate. In the winning Milly Maker lineup, the entrant utilized a stack that went off in the high projected closing Vegas lines game but was actually a game that scored under 40 total points.  The Patrick Mahomes, Demarcus Robinson and Travis Kelce QB/WR/TE stack yielded 30.39% overall ownership, 10.13% average ownership and 100.52 DK points.  The overall stacking combination average for these 3 players was low enough for the winning Milly Maker lineup to crush!  Do we need to go crazy with our stacking combinations with game stacks and multiple stacks within one lineup (what I refer to as Stacks of High Society) on most slates?  Maybe, but maybe not.

Stacking proves once again to hold true in the winning Milly Maker lineup and it continues to showcase that you must stack up your lineups in these tournaments.

Game Theory

Game theory is the analysis of strategies for dealing with competitive situations where the outcome of a participant’s choice of action depends critically on the actions of other participants.  The game theory strategy utilized in the winning lineup isn’t simple to see to the untrained eye, but one that we are accustomed to in the industry is the stars and scrubs approach.  What wins the Milly Maker when a player explodes the prior week?  FADE THAT PLAYER!  Then when that player duds and entrants get off of them the following week of a dud, top DFS players attack and load up on them after a dud week.  That’s the advantage we need to attack in our lineups.  So who could fit that bill in week 3?  Sammy Watkins could definitely fit that bill in a projected high scoring game!

Pricing in week 3 to get the top players in the top projected Vegas lines games is tough and doesn’t allow you to get to all of the best plays at RB where consistency runs true, entrants will look to roster a less optimal play in their lineup in order to maximize a game that Vegas projects as high scoring.  What if in week 3, the optimal approach to win the Milly Maker is not to squeeze in low priced RBs to get a game stack of the Batimore v. Kansas City game that is so high priced.  Can a game stack of this game go off, absolutely, and it should be part of your portfolio, but in the Milly you need to think differently and fade crowd think!!!

Time and time again a slate will not play out as the DFS pundits believe it to play out!  It’s advisable to utilize the information from the pundits and mold that information with your research for solid lineup construction.

Mining for Defensive Diamonds to Achieve Glory

So will the winning Milly Maker lineup in week 3 roster the highest salary defense?  In the author’s opinion, rostering a defense in Dallas at $4,300 against a wretched Miami offense doesn’t allow you the flexibility to construct quality lineups that win a massive contest like the Milly Maker.  Can it happen, yes, but not likely!

Take a look at what Dallas would have to score to make value at even paying of their salary, would you rather roster a high variance defense who over the course of the first two has scored 1 DK Point in week 1 against a weak Washington offense led by Case Keenum and 6 DK Points against old as shit Eli Manning? OR would you rather roster Frank Gore who’s $100 more on DraftKings at $4,400 against a weak rush defense?  Let me help you with the answer, you will take the consistency with the running back and roster Gore.  Put it to the test, and see how hard it is to construct lineups with Dallas as your defense at $4,300 versus have Gore in your RB2 slot.  This is what is referred to as the art of roster construction, honestly it is not all about a scientific approach to constructing the winning Milly Maker lineup, it takes as much art as it does science to create a lineup that will be in the top 10!  How does the author know, well in week 17 of the 2018 NFL season, the author placed 6th out of 294K entrants in the Milly Maker!

Keep this point in mind, Miami sucks extremely bad all around, but they are still professional players and they can turn it on at any time and those that believed Dallas was a sure bet defense can be sorely upset come the end of the slate when Dallas defense scores 10 to 12 DK Points and their lineups are not even cashing as they didn’t hit value to pay off their massive salary.  If you like the highest salary defenses use them in cash, but in your GPP lineups look at the Dossier and determine which defense can crush with specific closing Vegas lines guidelines.

Under the radar defenses can absolutely win you a Milly Maker and week 3 will be no different! 

Did You Notice in the Milly Maker Lineup?

You need to look closely at the winning Milly Maker lineup above, what do you notice?  I will help you out, and I am not even sure the entrant that entered this lineup meant to have this combination of plays in his winning Milly Maker lineup.  It’s absolutely dis-advantageous to play an offensive player versus the defense they are playing that week.  This is the first time in the winning Milly Maker lineup the author has seen this occurrence.  Is it wrong to do, no, but not encouraged.  In the New England v. Miami game, New England eviscerated Miami on both sides of the ball and to utilize a Miami player against the New England defense meant one thing, the winning entrant either panicked to find a player with $3.4K salary and settled on Preston Williams of Miami and got lucky, or accidentally picked Preston Williams by mistake and got lucky.  You may be saying to yourself, well it worked this time and it can work again, that may be the case, but do you really want to bet your bankroll on it to find out?  I’d bet you wouldn’t!

Tools I Utilize Weekly

I utilize every tool available to me from the DFSArmy’s vault of successful tools and coaches.  I develop my own player projections and system that I utilize in the construction of my cash and GPP lineups.  THE two DFSArmy tools I utilize the most in my thought processes and research of each slate is the FFootballGeek’s NFL Weekly Geeks Picks and the coaches notes.  The other tools I utilize are the WR vs. CB breakdown chart (by the way, I develop this tool on a weekly basis), DFSArmy’s Research Station, FFootballGeek’s Early Look Vegas Lines Podcast, the Wolfpack podcast and the Player’s Club Podcast.

Entries to Glory

The number of times I have heard from many in the industry, most are fishes in the seas of sharks, that you need to enter the max number of lineups (150 max) to win the Milly Maker, doesn’t make me pity them it makes me want to educate them further.  Now for some education, during the 2018 NFL season 94.1% (16 of 17 weeks) of the time the winning Milly Maker entrant DID NOT max enter the Milly Maker contest!  Now fast forward to current, and last week the winning entrant of the Milly Maker did not max enter the Milly Maker, the entrant only entered 3 lineups into the Milly Maker.  Through the first 2 weeks of the season, the winning Milly Maker lineup did not max enter the contest.  Can you win with less than 150 entries, the answer is unequivocally YES, and in fact 94.1% of the time this reigned true last season and 100% of the time in the current season thus far!  I will take those odds every day of the week and fade those (I don’t care who the pundit is, I will fade their opinion 7 out 7 days of the week) opinions that believe you can only win with 150 entries.  Can you win with a single bullet?  YES YOU CAN AND I’VE SEEN IT DONE, but it’s much harder.

To My Weekly Readers

I want to thank my weekly readers for reading the Shark Autopsy Report Chronicles this NFL season, it means a great deal to me and the DFSArmy!

As the chronicles article matures over the course of the NFL 2019 season and more data is captured, the article with evolve into a dynamic tool that you should utilize as part of your research arsenal to make you a better DFS player.

To conclude this installment of the Shark Autopsy Report, the DFS Army was started based on the concept that bring high-level tools, projections, and information to average players would allow them to compete on a level playing field with the DFS pros that have been dominating the industry for years. Check out our full Wall of Wins to see countless other screenshots from regular players utilizing DFS Army tools and advice to take down 6 figure prizes on a regular basis. Sign up as a DFS Army VIP today to take your game to the next level and start competing like a pro.