Betz’s Small Field GPP Review: Week 15 (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.
Contest Format
- $100 Single Entry
- Total Entrants: 334
- Placed Paid: 71/334 (20.6%)
- Rake: 9.9%
Week 15 Small Field GPP Lineup
The Thought Process
– Going into the slate, Woody Marks at $5,600 was projecting as the most popular play on the slate (besides Puka maybe). I had no issues with Marks, who I of course played in cash, but I really didn’t think he was an amazing GPP play, despite the beautiful matchup against the Cardinals. Houston has struggled to run the ball all season, and Marks hadn’t really been getting much work in the pass game, and he had been on the injury report earlier in the week with a knee issue. I was always going to play him in cash given the projection sans Nick Chubb (Ribs), but I really wasn’t trying to play him into 50+% roster percentage. Given that I was going for the fade here, it made all the sense in the world to play a CJ Stroud stack and just hope that the TDs flowing via the air rather than on the ground.
– I was really happy when the cards flipped to see Stroud, Nico and Jayden Higgins as a contrarian stack. Stroud and Nico went off, but Higgins of course didn’t do anything, with Dalton Schultz as the optimal second stacking partner with Stroud.
– Because pricing was tight, a lot of cash teams were being forced onto 2TE builds and/or Mitch Tinsley at just $3,100. I really didn’t think Tinsley was a good play; He’s an unproven talent who’s floor is extremely low. Like Marks, I really wanted to get off him in GPPs. I did, however, like a lot of the cheaper TEs – Andrews/Likely, Theo Johnson, Harold Fannin Jr., Colby Parkinson, and AJ Barner were all plays I considered in this lineup. Given the insane DVP matchups for Likely and Johnson against the Bengals (32nd) and Commanders (31st), I opted to roll with those two. A swing and a miss!
– I also noted on the Friday DFS Pod that I really loved this spot for the expensive DSTs, which is not how I usually play DFS. The position is generally extremely volatile and projections are fragile. That said, I didn’t love many of the cheap options, and the expensive DSTs were all in amazing spots: Philly at home against Kenny Pickett behind a bottom five offensive line, Seattle at home against Grandpa Phil making his first start since 2020, and Jacksonville at home against the woeful Jets and UDFA Brady Cook. With a lot of cash teams funneling you onto cheap DST (I played Saints in cash), I knew one or two of the expensive defenses would get squeezed. Super happy to get Philly at just 3.6% and get a great score out of them with 16 points en route to a 31-0 victory.
– My original lineup had Christian McCaffrey, but after Likely goosed and Higgins flopped, I wanted to get off him as I figured CMC would be very popular. Ironically, Gibbs at 21% actually came in just above McCaffrey at 16.2%. I’m super surprised by this, but I suppose I should have understood that the field was going to hammer DET/LAR game stacks in the late window.
With the Benefit of Hindsight
– I’m not sure if this is hindsight bias, but in retrospect, playing both cheap TEs at almost 30% each feels bad; especially considering any and all non-elite TEs have a very low floor each and every week, regardless of matchup. I was definitely locked in on “TEs against the Bengals” and “TEs against the Commanders” in my analysis/thought process. Quite frankly, I got tunnel vision here, and I didn’t consider how much of the field was going to play both in the same lineup. In hindsight, that feels like a big mistake.
– The CMC/Gibbs decision was pretty bad. Not only did I swap onto a more popular player when my goal was to swap to a lower rostered one, I failed to understand slate dynamics with a lot of folks trying to stack up DET/LAR. In the same vein, I probably should have gone from Puka to JSN to get more unique after my Higgins and Likely scores. Of course, Puka smashed as well all thought he would…I didn’t swap because going into the late window, I was about 25 points off the min cash line. I figured Gibbs/Puka/Neal would be enough to get me to that min cash line, but with Gibbs flopping and Neal exiting because of injury, it was another struggle in small field GPPs. Hey, this is the life we chose…
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
- Week 14: 116th place, $0
- Week 15: 211th place, $0