Single-Entry NFL DFS Lineup Review for Week 16

Each week, I’ll review my single-entry NFL DFS lineup, as well as a couple others. I will also track success rates throughout the season. The criteria for the other lineups to make the article (and tracking) will be over 10% of my overall investment. This week, that includes:

• Three three-entry lineups

The goal here is to hold myself accountable for the decisions I make while also helping to provide a blueprint for long-term success in GPPs. 

Throughout the year, I’ll emphasize the top 10% and top 1% hit rates. While profit/loss is at the mercy of significant variance at the top of tournaments, these hit rates stabilize much faster and can therefore paint a stronger picture of our performance. 

These cash and top 10% rates are just downright obnoxious at this point without a top 1% finish. Injuries once again derailed my hopes this week, with both Miles Sanders and James Robinson leaving early.

The Lineups

With three lineups to discuss, let’s get right into the key decisions.

Every choice we make can be categorized in one of four groups:

1. Bad Process, Bad Outcome
2. Bad Process, Good Outcome
3. Good Process, Bad Outcome
4. Good Process, Good Outcome

We’ll begin with No. 1:

Bad Process, Bad Outcome

Tyler Lockett

I wanted to believe the snow didn’t matter, but Seattle stepped off the gas as a result. I fell in love with the matchup, ignoring other key details.

Bad Process, Good Outcome

N/A

Good Process, Bad Outcome

Miles Sanders

Even as the Eagles offense did next to nothing in the first half, Sanders was effective. It’s a shame we didn’t get a chance to see what he could do in the 31-point second half.

James Robinson

Dare Ogunbowale had over 15 DK points. That was essentially Robinson’s floor in this one if he had stayed healthy. Ugh.

Keenan Allen

I have no idea what went wrong here, but surely a target hog without Austin Ekeler and Mike Williams was in a great spot, right? Right??

Jalen Hurts/Dallas Goedert

I was tempted to include this pairing in the bad decisions section because I chose them over Josh Johnson/Mark Andrews or Joe Burrow/Mark Andrews. Goedert had a TD called back for a phantom hold though, which would have changed things pretty drastically. Still, I had every intention of pairing both Josh Johnson and Joe Burrow with Mark Andrews and at least one of the Cincy WRs, I just couldn’t find the right combination to do it.

Good Process & Good Outcome

Tee Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase

Not much to say here — these Bengals were featured in my Advanced Matchups, Top 10 Under 10% and GPP Stacks articles and they came through exactly as we hoped. I just wish I got them paired with Burrow and Andrews more.

Antonio Brown and Justin Jackson

If you recall from my DFS Performance Deep Dive, mid-tier WR chalk is the best chalk there is, and the cheap RB chalk is the only RB chalk we want to prioritize. These two continued those trends.

Kyle Pitts

For much of the day, Pitts had a great chance to be TE1. Still, a 100-yard day is a definite success.

Josh Johnson

The only QB on the slate who could have competed with Joe Burrow lineups was Josh Johnson because of the savings. It pains me to have been so right about that game but underexposed to Mark Andrews and Joe Burrow (was overweight on both in MME, but no shares in 3E). 

Takeaways

I have two this week:

1. Even on weeks where RB and WR are stacked, prioritize your favorite contrarian plays in SE/3E. 

More Tee Higgins would have gone a long way, especially if paired with Josh Johnson or Joe Burrow.

2. Sometimes things don’t have to fit perfectly.

As I mentioned, I ended up without a Joe Burrow lineup because I just couldn’t find a lineup where I liked each and every play with him at the helm. Here is a lineup I was toying with:

I didn’t love Odell Beckham as the last piece (other than the correlated leverage over Cooper Kupp) and was $100 short of using Ronald Jones/TB DST (instead of Beckham/PHI), which is what I’d hoped for. I didn’t want to use Jones without their defense. Similarly, if I did use Jones without their defense, I would have had enough to get from Miles Sanders to James Robinson, but then the Eagles DST play wouldn’t have made as much sense. Consequently, I pivoted away from this masterful double-stack and what would have been a 10-point takedown in the $150 power sweep. Oops.