Every NFL DFS player has a different style. But, many of you are new to MME when it comes to fantasy football. We are going to embark on a mission to expand your game whether you are new to the MME (mass-multi-entry) game or a seasoned veteran looking for new thoughts.
I’m Upperslad in the DFS Army, and you might have a simple question on your mind currently: Who am I to tell you how you should MME?
Well quite honestly everyone is different and my way wont work for everyone however it does work for me. Over the course of my time with the Army I have taken down multiple .05, .25, mini-max contests and Dive contests whether it be for NFL, MLB or NBA.
I am honestly 100% MME GPPing in everything I do. I have been with the Army for about a year and with the help of the coaches, the tools, the community I have become a much better player.
Introduction to the NFL MME Playbook:
The purpose behind this weekly article AKA the NFL MME Playbook is to really dive into how I setup the DS, run my stacks, adjust exposures and everything else I may do in the week to get ready for kick-off. Before we get into that I want to express how volatile GPP weeks can be and make sure you are mentally prepared for the potential of roller coaster type weeks. The most important thing is to realize that GPP is not cash, obviously but do you know what this really means?
In GPP you’re not trying to be better than 50-60% of the field, no, you’re goal in GPP is to be better than 99% of the field for those big hits. Is it hard? Yes. Is it impossible? No. As an Army member we see it all the time with our big take down binks and the most important thing is to stick with a process that works best for you. Don’t completely change what you’re doing just because it didn’t work week 1. You can adjust the process, fine tune the process but it’s all about YOU to find what works best for you.
Please, please, please manage your bankroll. Don’t blow your entire nut chasing all your week 1 entries. It’s a long season and there will be ups and downs. If you aren’t careful the potential down in week 1 can handcuff your entire season so you’re chasing everything.
NFL Last Week in Review:
Being that this is week 1, this section will be empty. However, every week after this I intend to show you with 100% transparency on how I finished the NFL DFS week out. I’ll explain where I went right/wrong and break it down what adjustments I may make in the future.
Why the transparency? It’s easy for me to release this weekly and just say what I’m currently looking at but with the transparency we can go through the GPP roller coaster together.
Setting Up the DS for Fantasy Football MME:
Here we will be the settings I intend on using in the Domination Station each week and please keep in mind you do not have to use these settings to be exactly the way they are listed. It’s up to you to really define your process.
Unique Players:
Let us starting with the unique player drop down bucket. Everyone is different with this category and it’s all about your comfort level. We have the option of choosing between 1 to 6 unique NFL players.
Why do we want this? It creates a higher number of diverse lineups which creates more opportunities for line-ups to break off and climb to the top.
What are the negative effects? It’s all about your tolerance level. The downside of using a higher unique number is it potentially impacts your cores. If you’re using 2 or 3 unique players and your core is 70% on players, this could work. However if you’re going 5-6 unique players it could drop your cores down to 30-35%. Is this bad? No, it just means you’re really hoping for one line to climb to the top whereas if you use a tighter core and the cores goes off, you’re potentially looking at 10-20 fantasy football lines climbing toward the top. However if your NFL core busts, you have less opportunity for a break off. Again, it’s all about your risk tolerance.
My happy number: 3 is where I feel the most comfortable.
Players Vs Defense:
This setting is exactly as it sounds. It will let the DS select offensive players go against the defense that is being used in that lineup. Why would you want that? Defense in NFL is tough to predict, especially when you get down to the cheaper ones however if a defense gets a pick-6, punt/kick-off return, fumble returned for a touchdown you get the TD points from it for your defense. Now if your defense gets one of those, it can absorb an offense guy who scores a touchdown or two. It creates a unique lineup that will not be popular because most people are going to do this on most slates.
On larger DFS slates I will likely put this at allow 1 player against your defense and will not go over that. On smaller 2-3 games slates, I have no problem taking that up to 2 or 3 NFL players and maybe even go to 4 depending on how I’m feeling.
The Flex Position:
This option allows you to enter the percentage of position you want in your player pool. You have the options of RB, WR and TE to enter a percentage for and a quick note on this is you have to ensure the numbers equal 100 or it will stop running your lineups at whatever percentage it adds up to. For example RB at 65% WR at 30% and TE at 5%.
My personal preference for this is:
RB at 60%/WR at 40%/TE at 0%
I may increase the WR spot a by going higher or lower depending on the slate however for the most part this is where I leave it. You may be asking yourself why no TE? I don’t love the volume a TE receives generally so I avoid wasting my FLEX for that NFL DFS spot. There are weeks I may go up to 5% but I have never increased over that. Editor’s Note/Tip – If you read “The Shark Autopsy,” you will hear mention that no TE over $8000 has ever found his way into the Milly Maker winning lineup. That’s worth noting, and the article is worth reading for our VIPs!
NFL Randomization:
This feature will adjust the projections by whatever percentage you may input with a cap of 50%. The important thing to remember here is that the number you place could run it minus or positive for every lineup generated.
For my personal preference I will run this at 5%. I wont go higher than that due to the lower variance for NFL; however, I will run it at the 5% mark so it will alternate those guys around the same projection. If I don’t run a number I will generally get that guy at 16.50 over the guy at 16 in my lineups.
DFS Player Pool:
Now we are going to get in the area that can make or break your NFL GPPs. The player pool. One thing I will mention real quick is that the players that I mention here in this article are my early look players and my plays could absolutely change leading up to kick off. How do you get the newest up-to-date information? I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED. If you are not a VIP member yet, what are you waiting for? Sign up today and become a full on VIP member getting access to all of our tools such as Research Station, VIP Articles, Domination Station, Cheat Sheet, Discord Server and take full advantage of the coaches/fantastic community! In order to join, simply click on the picture below.
Before we get into the position by position I want to just discuss the total amount of players I am ideally looking to include in my player pool. Lets say that we are looking at the untouched version of the DS with projections. You will see roughly 200 players in the pool to choose from and that is way too many. I will begin to go through position by position and remove players I have no interest in. By the end of the player cut I will be between 85-100 NFL players. I try to keep it at the lower end of this number and really it may be uncomfortable for you, but you have to take some stands.
Quarterbacks:
Here we will start with the QB position. On every main slate I will run no more then 5-6 QBs across 150 lines. Why? This is where you really start the tightness of your player pool and related stacks which we will cover a little bit further down. I do not adjust any projections on my QBs as I have them easily spread across the run. If I’m running 5 QBs I will let each run at 30 lines and if 6 QBs I will run each at 25 lines. Something I do consider with the 6 QBs is if I have one that I am not super thrilled about I may run some different numbers and leave the 6th at 10-15 lines. Below are the current QBs I will be looking at for Week 1.
As you can see I am going with some of the higher owned individuals such as Allen, Mahomes and Winston but then I am turning it around with some lower owned ones like Fitzpatrick and Tannehill. As you can see I have 7 listed and have a choice to make which will likely come down to Fitzpatrick or Jones. We shall see where I land during week one for NFL DFS.
Running Backs:
Next we come around to the RB position which I like to leave around 8-10 running backs. Some weeks this is a really hard choice to break it down and ultimately depends on pricing. Running backs is the one area I will eat the chalk depending on the situation however I try not to get too cute here, I’ll get cute at WR/TE as the running back position is almost always the most secured position with touches.
This was a tough thing to do because as you scroll through the list you so many familiar names and you have to decide what to do. Don’t allow comfortability/familiarity to drive your results. As you can see I’m eating some chalk here with Mixon/Kamara/CMC/Gibson/Cook but then I have some guys that are much lower. Take James Robinson at 7%, I love going over the fantasy football ownership here and likely run him quite a bit. We will discuss NFL DFS exposures a little bit later.
Wide Receivers:
Wide Receivers is the position I will have the most of and ultimately this will drive the total number of my player pool. This is less of a cut down and could easily run 50-55 WRs. With QBs/RBs it’s a little more painful cutting them down whereas here you have a little more freedom to really run through who you like. The one thing I will do slightly different here is I will click on the NFL team header so it sorts by team and go through each to really determine who I want.
Tight-Ends:
With the TE position I am perfectly comfortable cutting this down to 7-8 as there are ones that have more consistent outings and you can rely on them for 5-7+ targets whereas many of them could really only see 3-4 and you’re hoping that one of those is a touchdown. While it as a smaller number I have no problems really going lean here as overall I hate playing the position.
Defense:
There are multiple ways people play the defense position. There are the people that pay up, people who pay down or people who go with both. I am more of a pay down guy where I will choose 5-6 defenses and use the 20/80 rule where I have one top defense then 5 lower end defenses. I love the pay down NFL defenses because they allow the higher tier position players. Defense can be highly volatile and you’re really hoping for those defensive/special teams touchdowns which can come at anytime.
During this player pool cut down when all is said and down, I have finished at around 87 players in my pool which as mentioned above is right around where I want to end up. I will likely cut this down more the longer I dive through the data.
DFS NFL Stacking:
I cannot stress this enough. Stacking/Correlation is so very important and needed for massive takedowns. There is very few situations that I will go unstacked and it is usually around Lamar Jackson as my QB. So let’s breakdown how I set up my stacks and I run this in multiple steps.
When I am setting up my NFL stacks I am very comfortable with the correlation stack option. This is completely player preference but I have had the most success with this one.
Lets say that this example is for my Winston stacks.
- Winston – 15 lines – Game stack. I want to target the games I think play out as shoot-outs, highest scoring and best players. This game sticks out to me as you have Winston, Callaway, Kamara on one side and Adams, Tonyan, MVS as potential for the other side.
- Winston – 5 lines – team stack only – I want some just as a team stack because what happens if the Packers just fall completely flat. Adams is held to two catches, Rodgers is just awful.. then those game stacks are just dead.
- Winston – 5 lines – team stack only with a secondary stack not game related. I do love the secondary stacks set up and one thing I do here is I do uncheck the WR+RB from the same team. The reason for this is I don’t like targeting both spots from the same team as they eat into each other. If a RB is going completely nuts, the chances the WR is getting a ton of targets is pretty low.
Stacking Exposure:
The most important thing to do here is setup your stack exposures first and really try to limit adjustments to one at a time and run the DS. I will talk about this even more but if you make any adjustments one at a time, if the DS formulas no longer work due to settings being too tight you can easily go back and fix them instead of resetting everything.
Things I think about when I’m using correlation stacking:
- Is the running back in my player pool? If it is, is he a pass catcher in the NFL or just an early down back? This will determine if you want him at all to pop in the correlation stacks. If he is a pass catcher, I usually go 20-30% of that RB with my QB (Example: Kamara) however if he is not a pass catcher I will go 0-5% with my QB (Example: Derrick Henry)
- The secondary receivers such as Curtis Samuels/MVS and guys like this. You really have to decide how much exposure you want to those individuals. This allows for some nice pivots off the number ones like Callaway, nothing wrong going to Tre’Quan Smith solo in some of the correlation stacks.
Once I run these DFS stacks I will then go to the stack combination tab and depending on how it populates I will adjust the percentages of the stacks it is showing. Again, be very careful with this process and do one at a time.
Overall Player Exposure:
Now we get to the next step once your QB settings are set. You will then begin to adjust your exposure on the other players. Remember be very mindful of your correlation exposures as to not accidently upset the balance of percentages you have already adjusted.
This is the time you want to look at projected ownership and see where you stack up according to those. Please be mindful that Keg will adjust these exposures after Friday’s NFL injury report is released so what you may see during the week can absolutely change on Saturday when I’m really finalizing my optimizer runs.
Make sure you are leveraging NFL ownership and utilizing the Chalk Board and the Pivot Tool.
Some of the examples I can give you around my exposures based off current ownership. Again, keep in mind that this could absolutely change based on news/ownership updates/gut.
- James Robinson – I will be way over the field with him and above 30%. Nothing wrong with the more expensive running backs but due to his pricing, especially on FD I want to pivot off some of the chalk there.
- Rondale Moore – I will be over the field with him and above 15%, due to his pricing I will have him in place of Callaway.
- Ryan Tannehill – He will be one of my 5 QBs and will have him around 17%. I love Tannehill in what could potentially be a shoot out with AJ Brown/Julio Jones in the correlation stack.
I will say it again because I cannot stress it enough. I will run the DS 150-200 times if not more because I am adjusting one exposure at a time. I want to be able to easily fix the issue I have if the exposures become to constrictive. I also do not place a min and a max on the same player.
In order to get a player increased I could very well adjust the NFL projection as opposed to the minimum. I will adore/like/hate players based on my feeling to adjust how they are populating. If it’s someone I really want I could potentially increase their projection manually however be careful with this setting. When you adjust this as opposed to the minimum your player will show more in your top lines instead of being spread more equally throughout the run.
Final NFL DFS Thoughts:
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope it helps you and always open to feedback. This article will be a changing document week by week and as more questions/thoughts are asked, I will incorporate them into this. I would also be willing to take a Q&A part of this where during the weeks upcoming if questions are asked that I see could benefit everyone, I’ll include them as a separate part.
If you notice I didn’t talk a lot about the NFL research end because everyone is different and it’s ever changing how people talk about it. Below you will find all the tools that a VIP member has access to that aids everyone in their pre-game training rituals. Make sure you sign up for the VIP access/treatment!
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