Betz’s Small Field GPP Review: Week 8 (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 8 Small Field GPP Lineup
The Thought Process
-Entering the slate, the theme here was that there were several RBs in just elite spots – Jonathan Taylor at home against the Titans, Bijan Robinson at home against the Dolphins, Derrick Henry at home against the Bears and Rachaad White on the road against the Saints. Like most weeks this year, I thought those RB plays were all awesome in a vacuum, so I was certainly not afraid to play at least one, maybe two of those options. Sadly, Bijan and the Falcons just completely fell on their face in a dream matchup…variance? Poor coaching? Who knows…But without Drake London at home against a Dolphins defense that’s been bleeding production to opposing RBs, I did view Bijan as good chalk.
-As for my RB2 spot, I really thought Saquon might get squeezed in small field because a) he wasn’t a “cash play” on DK (I did play him in FD cash #Blessed) and b) the box score results hadn’t been there, and there has been a lot of public frustrations with the Eagles offense this year. However, the Giants were an elite spot to “get right” and I thought that without A.J. Brown (Hamstring), we might see even more of an uptick in usage for Saquon. Really pleased with my read there and the process that led to me to him as a contrarian play in small field. Getting him at 11% felt great and that 36.4 score was perfection…
-…As for the rest of my lineup. Woof! I did think some of the WRs this week projected well at their salary, so I was okay playing into the chalk there knowing my game stack was going to be somewhat unique. Playing Smith and Saquon together was a way to get exposure to an offense I thought could put up 28+ points at home in the #RevengeGame against the Giants. The leverage off Dallas Goedert sadly didn’t go my way as Goedert scored twice on National TEs day…classic. Without Drake London and a WR room that features arguably the worst depth in the league, I really thought Mooney’s opportunity at just $4,400 was a strong play against a Dolphins secondary we’ve picked on all season. But again, the systemic failure here from Kirk Cousins and Atlanta just cratered this lineup. Side note – how did this team beat the Bills in prime time while also losing to the Panthers and Dolphins by a combined 54 points?!
-I landed on a TB/NO stack as this one was of the games we highlighted on the podcast and one that Kyle wrote a lot about in his Pace of Play article this week. I liked the price tags here (Olave, Shaheed, Rattler, Otton, Tez all super cheap) and I thought the Saints had some ceiling outcomes in them against the Bucs’ pass funnel. Unfortunately, the Saints looked exactly like a team with just one win in this game, and ultimately, Rattler got benched as he fell on his face. Hard to win DFS tournaments when your QB is standing on the sidelines with an ear piece in! Regardless of the outcome there, pretty happy to get Rattler, Shaheed and Otton at a combined 30.6% as leverage off the super chalky Rachaad White and Chris Olave.
-I played Ja’Marr Chase in cash at $8,100 and he was one my best tourney team this week (Flacco team in large field), but I knew that because Chase was going to be mega chalk for just $200 more, I thought I could get Lamb around 9-12%. Really happy when the cards flipped to get him at 10.5% compared to Chase at 36.8%. Unfortunately, Lamb didn’t do enough to pay off his salary for it to matter.
With the Benefit of Hindsight
-Despite a terrible result, I actually feel good about the way I played this week. There’s some weeks where my GPP teams don’t perform well and I am not thrilled with the way I’ve played, but this lineup had everything I was looking for: Some good chalk (in my mind anyway), some pivots/contrarian plays and a QB/game stack. To be honest, there’s probably not too much I would have changed.
-The one thing I’m still wrestling with is how much roster percentage is too much for these really good plays? We know a lot of DFS data and analysis through the years has shown us the best tourney teams aren’t the ones with seven guys less than 10% rostered; It’s a mix of chalk and a couple of contrarian plays that over a big enough sample will produce a solid ROI. However, any play can fail in any week – was over 60% for Bijan too much? Could I have seen that coming?
-I of course knew he’d push 45, maybe 50%, but I didn’t think he’d push almost 65% especially with all the great RB plays on this slate. If you ask me if I’d still play Robinson at this ownership after the fact, I’m quite honestly not sure if I’d say “yes” or “no.” Like I said, I really thought he was an outstanding play – Entering the week, he had over a 19% target share with Drake London in the lineup…just an absurd role for a PPR site in this matchup. In my head, there was no way he could fail.
-The game element of DFS always makes these decisions difficult. We’re rewarded with such a massive payoff when we’re right, yet these guys can be a scary fade. Of course, it’s easy to know this in hindsight, but if I knew Bijan was going to push for this roster percentage while Jonathan Taylor and Christian McCaffrey were going to come in at 30% and 7.5%, respectively, I probably would have gone for the Bijan fade and let the chips fall where they may (shoutout Chauncey B). Back the drawing board for Week 9 as we try to right the ship. See ya next week!
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