Analysis
11/7/23
4 min read
2023 NFL Week 9 DFS: Lessons Learned From a Winning DraftKings Lineup
Reflection is an extremely underrated aspect of consistent DFS play. Think about this: How do pitchers, wide receivers or financial analysts remain on top?
They do so by learning, growing, being open to new ideas and practices, tweaking what works and what doesn’t and changing with the games themselves.
Reviewing your mistakes can give you staying power in any competition. Most of the top DFS players examine their play the following week — so what edge can we gain over even the most die-hard players?
Let’s examine the Week 9 slate and compare those conclusions with rosters from some of the top players in the game.
Week 9 DFS Lessons Learned
Week 9 Observations
We left off last week by saying, “Moving forward, we would do well to embrace additional variance while focusing on skinny stacks, game over-stacks and one-offs from teams expected to score a lot of points.”
The reasoning is simple: If teams are scoring fewer points, it increases the importance of game environments that vastly outperform their expectation as the chances of other game environments returning similar upside diminishes.
The Week 9 slate brought just 10 games on the main slate, five of which carried game totals of 40 points or fewer. There were no games with a game total of more than 50 points.
Even so, three games ended up with 50 points or more scored. One game (Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Houston Texans) erupted for 76 combined points.
C.J. Stroud broke rookie passing records by putting up 470 yards and five touchdowns. Also, an injury to K Ka’imi Fairbairn forced the team to attempt two-point tries in the second half.
Tank Dell, Noah Brown and Dalton Schultz surpassed 100 receiving yards and combined for four touchdowns. Eruptions like this are difficult to match with the state of the league.
There were only four skill position players who scored over 30 DraftKings points in Week 9: CeeDee Lamb, Dell, Brown and Schultz. Three of those four came from one team in one game environment.
Roster Examination
DraftKings user youdacao took another step toward cementing his status as one of the top DFS players in history as he took down the Week 9 2023 Millionaire Maker.
His lineup contained five players from the game between the Buccaneers and Texans, including Stroud, Dell, Brown, Schultz and Rachaad White, who returned the top overall running back score on the slate.
There were four primary differentiators: the Indianapolis Colts D/ST on the backs of two defensive scores, the Cleveland Browns D/ST on the backs of a shutout against Arizona, the Buccaneers-Texans game and Lamb against the Philadelphia Eagles. All but the Colts D/ST made an appearance on youdacao’s winning roster.
Most importantly, youdacao captured upside from five different players through one game over-stack. Stroud, White, Dell, Brown and Schultz combined for 166.6 DraftKings points.
As discussed, an eruption game won’t happen on every slate. When those games happen, their importance is paramount to success. Had that game not gone off in Week 9, we likely would have been left with a slate where skinny stacks and remaining one-offs shipped the Millionaire Maker.
That reinforces our stance that we should focus on game over-stacks, team skinny stacks and upside one-offs from teams expected to find offensive success moving forward.
Lamb made a lot of sense going into the week against a Philadelphia secondary playing below expectations this season. At the same time, the Browns D/ST were the top on-paper play after it was announced the Arizona Cardinals were starting rookie QB Clayton Tune.
Finally, Josh Jacobs found his way into two touchdowns against a mediocre New York Giants defense. The Giants struggled with time of possession following Daniel Jones’ injury.
Youdacao captured a brilliant illustration of the theoretical concepts we’ve been working through recently on his way to another Millionaire Maker win on DraftKings.
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