Betz’s Small Field GPP Review: Week 10 (Fantasy Football)
Welcome to a brand new article for the 2025 DFS season! I get most of my action in cash games and small field tournaments for DFS, shying away from the large field lottos. In this article each week throughout the NFL season, I’ll recap my lineup for small field GPPs on DraftKings, highlighting my process and strategy. For the 2025 season, I’ll usually be playing in the $100 Single Entry Spy on DraftKings.
*Note – For this week, I played in the $75 Single Entry End Zone as I failed to register for the Spy in time. Was dealing with some sick kids Saturday then went to a family event, so I opted for this similar single entry contest with 378 entrants.
Contest Format
- $100 Single Entry
- Total Entrants: 334
- Placed Paid: 71/334 (20.6%)
- Rake: 9.9%
Week 10 Small Field GPP Lineup
The Thought Process
– For perhaps the first time all season, we had a really tightly priced slate on DraftKings, and as a result, there wasn’t a clear “cash build.” I thought that presented a great opportunity in GPPs to heavily correlate lineups and bet on game environments vs. specific players. As you’ll see, I went in on TB/NE (I played Drake Maye in cash) as I really thought there was a solid ceiling here where both QBs could interact in a way that was good for DFS. Both NE and TB are strong against the run and have shown vulnerabilities against the pass and both QBs are willing to push the ball down the field, helping speed up the game. I wish we could have gotten an extra TD or two in this game, but I’m certainly not going to complain about a combined 91.32 points from my game stack here.
– The other reason I decided to go in on this game was because of the injury situation on both sides creating a condensed touch tree. With Bucky, Godwin and Mike Evans still out, it’s very clear where the ball is going when Baker drops back. That makes it much easier to correlate and stack. The same can be said on the New England side where Rhamondre Stevenson and Kayshon Boutte‘s injuries helped improve the projection on guys like TreVeyon, Diggs and Hunter Henry.
– Obviously, Henry flopped big time here as the de facto cash TE, but I went into this slate with the goal to fade him at ownership, and I thought just playing Cade Otton the other side was really easy leverage. Here’s what I wrote in Best Plays: “I’m totally cool with Hunter Henry in cash, but he feels a bit fragile at our projection of 14.3% (as of Saturday am). Cade Otton is just a few hundred bucks more, yet projecting for sub 5%. Since Week 4, New England ranks 26th in schedule-adjusted points allowed to the position, and the man with the taped fingers never leaves the field.”
– As for Henderson, I didn’t think the matchup was necessarily great, but Tampa has been vulnerable to some of those runs on the perimeter, and I thought with Maye more likely to drop back at an elevated rate, we could see T Hendo get even more work in the pass game. I played him last week in this GPP, and unfortunately, just didn’t get the result. Even still, he played 75% of the snaps in that game last week and had 20 total opportunities. That role (if sticky) was just too cheap at $5,600, regardless of matchup. He was once again in play on FanDuel cash, but I figured he wouldn’t be too popular here, so I ran it back as part of the Bucs/Patriots game. Obviously, very very fortunate to get a 90th percentile outcome.
– The other area I wanted to attack was the Detroit Lions. I really felt strongly that the Lions were going to come out after a loss in Week 9 and hang a huge number on a reeling Washington squad. We’ve seen Dan Campbell be willing to run it up at times, and this looked a lot like one of those spots. As a result, I spent up on Amon-Ra, and I thought we were cooking early, but it then became the Jahmyr Gibbs and Jameson Williams show in the second half.
– I won’t lie…I had zero plans to play Jaylin Lane on this slate, but I really needed some cap relief somewhere in this lineup, and I really liked the team I had in, so I decided to punt it off and hope we got some garbage time. After all, I was correlating with St. Brown, so it at least made some sense. I also thought the Commanders would want to get a look at their rookie WR as the season is quickly getting out of control, but alas, whenever you have a chance to run Treylon Burks and Robbie Chosen out there down 3+ TDs, you just have to do it! I’m not tilted, thanks for asking. Friendly reminder to myself and everyone reading…NFL coaches do not do rational things very often :)
– As for the final spot here, I went with the Derrick Henry + BAL DST stack. King Henry was my Slate Breaker on the Friday DFS Podcast. I also wasn’t quite sure what we were going to get from J.J. McCarthy, who has been wildly inconsistent this season. If McCarthy flopped, obviously I thought the Ravens D (which is finally healthy) would benefit, and in those game scripts where Baltimore controls the ball, King Henry usually feasts. If you told me pre-lock that Henry was going to get 23 touches and the Ravens would win, I would have played this combination every time…sadly, Justice Hill had one carry, and it came at the goal line. Pain.
With the Benefit of Hindsight
– Overall, I’m really happy with my play this week. I had a nice mix of what I viewed as ‘good chalk’ and some lower rostered pivots that were correlated with the rest of my lineups. These are the types of slates I enjoy playing where you can correlate and still feel confident in your lineup…if we minimize the number of things we need to get right, we’re more likely to find success in these tournaments. Ironically, the Milly Maker winner was a Baker triple stack.
– My one #Ragret was not stacking Baker with Emeeka Eg-Big-Boo. If Baker was going to hit a DFS ceiling, it was probably going to come with his best pass catcher going off. Why did I pass on him? It was two-fold: 1) I figured Egbuka was going to be pretty popular as he was in play for cash on both sites this week. Ironically, he was only 16.9% here, so that was a miss on my part, and 2) Stylistically, I did not think this was a great matchup for Egbuka. His splits against zone vs. man were drastically different, and the Pats are a heavy man coverage team, so I was okay getting leverage off him if he was going to carry heavy roster percentage.
– Just typing that makes me feel like an idiot. I do think those stats are fun to analyze and they can be helpful in context, but 90+% of the time, those things are pretty noisy. Not playing a very talented WR who’s already shown a great ceiling with my QB in a game I was excited to attack just because of his man vs. zone splits is honestly just bad process.
Weekly Results:
- Week 1: 35th place, $250
- Week 2: 72nd place, $150
- Week 3: 242nd place, $0
- Week 4: 28th place, $150
- Week 5: 312th place, $0
- Week 6: 319th place, $0
- Week 7: 237th place, $0
- Week 8: 287th place, $0
- Week 9: 271st place, $0
- Week 10: 72nd place, $150