Betz’s Small Field GPP Review: Week 13 (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 the fourth week in a row. I’m not sure if DK is no longer offering the 334 person Spy, but if that’s the case, I may switch the the End Zone permanently for this article. Either way, let’s jump in!
Contest Format
- $100 Single Entry
- Total Entrants: 334
- Placed Paid: 71/334 (20.6%)
- Rake: 9.9%
Week 13 Small Field GPP Lineup
The Thought Process
– What a slate we had on our hands for this one…all the best games with the highest totals were played on Thanksgiving, giving us a slate with every game at 45.5 or below. Just entering the slate, it felt like it was going to be ugly, and sure enough, it was. On these types of slates where the chalk felt particularly fragile (I played way less volume in cash than I normally do as I just didn’t feel comfortable in the builds), I’m really trying to identify fragile chalk and steer clear while trying to maximize correlation/minimizing things I need to get right to win.
– Despite the increased price tag on the Arizona guys, I decided to right back to the well on the Jacoby doubles. They had been uber chalk for a couple of weeks in a row, yet the return of Marv muddied those waters, leaving Brissett, Wilson and McBride as somewhat contrarian options. Overall, pretty happy with the play here, as it’s very clear what teams have to do against Tampa – throw the ball at an elevated rate. That wasn’t going to be an issue for a Cardinals offense that ranks #1 in PROE over the last month. Decent result here with Jacoby, but of course, Wilson came back down to Earth, and my bring back in Egbuka obviously didn’t deliver.
– At RB this week, most cash teams were going to have at least two, but maybe all three, of Achane, Walker and Breece. I knew I didn’t want to play all three of those guys in the same lineup given the combined ownership, so I went for the Achane fade, who came in at over 62%. Walker and Breece were fine, but obviously, they didn’t do enough at their price points.
– Cheap TE was certainly in play, and I really did not feel good about the Gadsden chalk, so I decided to pivot in that range to Barner while also playing Ladd McConkey for direct leverage on his teammate. I was happy to get those guys at very reasonable roster percentages, but again, their scores weren’t good enough at their tags. In addition to the pivot off the other cheap TEs, I like pairing Barner with Walker and just betting on the Seahawks to roll against Max Brosmer making his first career start (Dude, that was tough to watch. Gotta feel for the guy…) By pairing those two, I could also get big leverage on JSN.
– I’m always looking to get off the board at DST when the cheap defenses are taking heavy roster percentage. Those DSTs are usually played because of their price, not because of the projection, matchup or talent level of the actual defense. This week’s “cash” DSTs on DraftKings were the Titans and the Jets. I wanted to get away from that, so I spent up a little bit for Cleveland at home in the elements against a somewhat inconsistent Brock Purdy. Really excited to get them at just 10%, but obviously, they didn’t deliver.
With the Benefit of Hindsight
– Overall, I think I played okay this week, correlating and getting leverage where it made sense. Sometimes, things just don’t go your way, and that’s the reality of DFS. The one thing I wish I had considered more was whether I needed to force a double stack with Brissett. I’m almost always going to play him with McBride as he’s been the go to guy, especially down in the red zone, but Wilson was approaching $6K…certainly not free. Should I have forced it with the hopes Marv was limited in his first game back, or should I have just played someone else in that range with a better projection? I’m really not sure of the right answer here, but as Kyle and I talked about on the show, this stack was getting more expensive, so a “good” score wasn’t going to be good enough at these prices; you would need a great score.
– I’m a really big proponent of late swap, and I failed to execute that this week. Entering the late window, I was right on the fringe of the min cash line and had Walker, Ladd and Barner remaining. I decided to let it roll, but if I’m being honest, I think that was a big mistake. Sure, Walker could have had a nice game, but I should have looked more closely at his projected roster percentage and understood that it was highly unlikely that even if he did have a good game, I wasn’t going to win after Ebuka, Wilson and CLE DST all failed. I probably could have come away with a min cash (you only needed about 124 to cash in this contest this week), but there was no way I was going to vault up the leaderboard with the Walker chalk. The most likely pivot would have been to move up to Vidal from Walker and down to someone like DK Metcalf from Ladd. It’s so easy to say in hindsight given the results from Vidal, who put up 23.7 DK points at 15%, but even without knowing the result, that type of pivot is probably what I should have done.
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
- Week 12: 16th place, $250
- Week 13: 181st place, $0