LineStar NFL Takeaway - Week 1: Pros vs Joes

📝 @zeroinDenver 🎯

Hey everyone, it's your dude, ZeroInDenver. Most of y'all know me from the NHL chat and MLB chat, but I'm hoping to give some insights on NFL this year, starting with a look at the DraftKings NFL $5M Fantasy Football Millionaire contest. This is THE contest everyone wants to win, and at least for week 1, almost anyone could enter with the $5 entry fee.

Something that I find interesting, at least, is looking at how pros play in comparison to the field. DraftKings allows users to download contest results (it's 2021 and FanDuel still doesn't allow this) so I pulled results for the contest, crunched numbers, and took the top 20 ranked players in DFS, and compared what they did compared to the rest of the field.

Stack Ownership

First, let's take a look at stacks. It's a common question we get in chat. Should I stack? What's the right stack type? I took the top 10 for both stack combos and team stacks. Please note that I'm not including DST in stack calculations.

To me, the clear answer is that a lot of people are stacking. What's interesting is that not everyone is stacking! There are a lot of entries without a stack, both in the field and in pros' lineups.

Next, let's take a look at what teams players are stacking. Take note that the majority of lineups in the field were not stacked

You'll see, most of the field isn't stacking a specific team, but the majority of pros are. Both were similar in that KC was the top stack in week 1, but it gets a little interesting as you compare what teams were stacked by the field and by pros. Arizona was popular on both sides, but the pros went under the field on Philly, Carolina, and New Orleans.

Player Ownership By Position

Now, let's go position-by-position, starting with QB. I grabbed the top 10 owned players at each position (15 for wide receivers) so you could see at a high level, who the field played the most, and who pros played the most. I'm providing the images without commentary, but I'll give my thoughts at the end.

What can we learn from this?

We're only looking at one week, but something I like to do is compare what I did to what other players did. Did they take a swing and get lucky? Did they fade or go underweight on a "chalk" play and target a play that had similar upside at much lower ownership? How were lineups constructed? The LineStar tool is great because you can "hand build" winning lineups in the lineup builder and see where players spent up or spent down.

Remember, DFS is more than a game of trying to pick out the best players. You get no points for finding out the best matchups. Instead, we want to build full lineups that will outscore everyone else. Looking at some of the plays the pros went in on, you can see that they're not afraid to take some swings, and in giant GPPs, you shouldn't be either.

Thanks for reading and if there's something you'd like me to investigate or look into, let me know!