Betz’s Small Field GPP Review: Week 11 (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. Whoops!
Contest Format
- $100 Single Entry
- Total Entrants: 334
- Placed Paid: 71/334 (20.6%)
- Rake: 9.9%
Week 11 Small Field GPP Lineup
The Thought Process
– The setup this week on DraftKings from an ‘optimal’ or cash style build was pretty consensus – spend down at QB, punt DST, play the mid tier RBs, play Trey McBride and punt at least one WR spot. Knowing that, I weighed a couple of options on how to attack this slate for GPPs: 1) Lean into that style of build but play some contrarian pieces around it or 2) Flip the build and spend up at QB and spend down at TE.
– After thinking through both options, I didn’t love this spot for Josh Allen with the total dropping due to weather (in hindsight…lol) or Lamar Jackson against the Browns’ ferocious pass rush, so I landed on a cash style build, but wanted to make sure I built a lineup that could swap off Jacoby Brissett and Trey McBride if I got behind early. Knowing that almost all of the chalk (Jacoby, McBride, Dortch, Michael Wilson and Christian McCaffrey) was coming in the late window, I wanted to play a couple of low rostered pieces in the early slate to give me information. If my early guys flopped, I would have had to get off the SF/ARI game. My backup plan was to swap onto a SEA/LAR stack, but fortunately, I didn’t have to make that move.
– Most of the cash teams this week were three mid tier RBs or two mid tier RBs and an elite WR like Ja’Marr Chase. However, I didn’t see a lot of folks this week talking about a double spend up at RB, so decided to pay up for both Bijan and CMC. Really, really happy with the process here to get on a unique construction – Bijan came in at just 13% in small field while the mid tier RBs got steamed to high heaven in this contest. Jaylen Warren (54%), Chase Brown (41%), and Rico Dowdle (21.7%) were all super popular here, and Ja’Marr Chase also came in at 35%. I did look at teams with one or two of those pieces, but I certainly didn’t want to play all of them together given their projected ownerships.
– I was very fortunate to run into a big time ceiling game from Bijan, while almost all of the early chalk failed, so I was fine leaning into the chalk in ARI-SF as it projected quite well and was a game Kyle and I circled on the show this week as one to attack.
– I went for the fade on Michael Wilson here, opting to play Greg Dortch instead as part of my Jacoby stack. I thought I might get Dortch at like 15% or so, but he came in a bit higher than I thought. Michael Wilson aka Jerry Rice aka Randy Moss aka Calvin Johnson came in at almost 40% here, so I am pleased with the leverage I got here regardless of the outcome. Unfortunately, Wilson went beast mode on me, and you absolutely had to have him to finish first this week.
– Because I was leaning into this game environment, I decided to tack on CMC and Jauan Jennings as the double bring back, hoping this game went bonkers. It certainly did! Unfortunately, Jennings wasn’t brought along for the ride.
– At DST, I really liked my lineup and had less than $2,600 left. In that range, there weren’t incredible options, especially at low roster percentage. Tennessee was the cheap chalk DST of the week for cash games, and knowing that I had a chalky stack late, I wanted to fade them early and pivot in that range. I’m never excited to play DSTs against Lamar, but the Browns were just $2,400 at home, they’ve got one (if not the) of the best pass rushers in the NFL, and there was some nasty weather projected here for this AFC North slugfest. We’re not great at predicting fantasy DST scoring generally, so I leaned into the variance here, and obviously, got very lucky to get a pick six and 17 DK points.
With the Benefit of Hindsight
– Overall, I’m really happy with the thought process this week and the lineup I played. Early window information is so crucial in setups like this, and I really leaned into that by fading some of the early RB chalk. My biggest #Ragret was swapping off Christian Watson about an hour before lock in favor of Romeo Doubs. Perhaps I’m being too results oriented here, but Watson’s archetype is generally more favorable for GPP-winning scores. Doubs remains a solid NFL WR, but he’s rarely going for 20, 25+ DK points. The reason I went up to Doubs is because I felt like I was saving too much money off the full salary on DK.
– Historically, spending most of your salary cap is optimal, but there are times when we have some values that make leaving $700 to $500 viable. I got tunnel vision here and decided to spend most of my cap. I almost never leave more than $400 to $500 on the table in Classic slates, and while I do think that applies most weeks, I didn’t even consider not doing that as an option despite this being a slate where you could build teams that projected quite well with a few hundred left on the table.
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
- Week 11: 15th place, $250