Betz’s Small Field GPP Review: Week 5 (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 5 Small Field GPP Lineup
The Thought Process
-Much like a few weeks ago when we had Marcus Mariota at $4K, this was an extremely loosely priced slate where you could do almost anything thanks to the cheap RB price tags on guys like Rico Dowdle, Rachaad White and Michael Carter. On top of that, even Breece Hall was wildly underpriced for his role + matchup sans Braelon Allen. For cash, I played JT, Achane and Dowdle (and had an awesome week, fortunately), but I figured that type of roster construction (one cheap, two studs) would be wildly popular in this contest. As a result, I decided to fade the $4,000+ RBs…and well, I got Rico’d.
-The worst part about this “leverage” play in my mind was that Dowdle (22.5%), White (17.7%) and Carter (2.3%) weren’t even all that popular, relative to the popular (albeit strong) RBs I had in my lineup. Results aside, this was just a flat out miss my part, and I paid the price.
-I knew Fields was going to be insanely popular here, so I decided to play Breece and hope the Jets would win this game and feed him in a positive game script. Welp! Side note – the Jets are now the first team in NFL history to start 0-5 and not record a single takeaway so far. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to see many positive game scripts this year for Hall, but that was at least the thought process here. Of course, Fields smashed and was 40% rostered, so I knew it’d be an uphill battle after he was a garbage time hero.
-I didn’t really feel too comfortable getting off the board at RB this week as those “cash” RBs were just so strong. As a result, I knew I wanted to get a little unique at WR, which led me to Malik Washington as a one-off play with Tyreek Hill on IR. Happy to get him at 1.8% as he was my dart throw in Best Plays, but obviously the result was horrific. With the “chalk” build for cash games being JSN + cheap RB + two stud RBs, I also figured this cheap WR build would funnel me onto a unique build. Of course, that meant I was fading JSN, and he went out and smashed with Darnold.
-As for my stack, I’m happy with the ownership I got here on the Herbert double (relative to Fields – G Wilson, who were both 40+%), but again, disappointing result for the Chargers against the Commanders.
-At DST, I mentioned the DFS Podcast that I thought flipping the Saints to the Giants was an interesting GPP leverage opportunity. When the chalk DST smashes, it’s pretty tough to come back from that. New Orleans came in at 29.3%, and the Texans were at 27.8%. Both crushed with 18 and 11 points, respectively. The process here was what I was looking for, getting the Giants against Rattler at just 4.5%. Unfortunately, that also didn’t work in my favor.
With the Benefit of Hindsight
-I need to go back through my first five weeks of DFS in this contest to answer this question, but I wonder if I’m playing a bit too wild in these small field contests. If I zoom out, I’ve been profitable for a few years now in these single entry contests, so I don’t want to overreact to a small-ish sample, but in 2025, we are seeing the best plays perform well week in and week out. As DFS evolves, projection systems are getting sharper and sharper. Perhaps I need to adjust to that reality a bit. Of course, that’s always going to be a slate-dependent decision, but it’s at least in the back of my mind.
-I noted above I was happy with the ownership I got on my Herbert double, but perhaps I should have considered the state of the Chargers as a whole. Going into this game, the Bolts were down to their LT3 with Joe Alt and Rashawn Slater on the shelf. To make matters worse, RG Mekhi Becton and RT Trey Pipkins are also battling through injury. In my opinion, analyzing offensive line play is one of the most underrated parts of fantasy football. Just a week ago, we saw the Chargers pass game really struggle against the Giants due to, in part, the OL issues.
-Overall, rough week for me in this contest but definitely a lot to learn from. Here’s to a better Week 6!
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