Borg’s Cash Lineup Review for Week 8

Ok, normally I start this article giving you advice to not go down the “shoulda, woulda, couldas” of DFS.

I want this week to be an example of what NOT to do. Yes, I repeat someone who does this for a living made a royally stupid mistake this week.

Call it galaxy braining. Call it overthinking.

When you see the swing of points within a short period of time, you’ll ask yourself the question, “What the heck was he thinking?!”

To which I respond with: “I wasn’t. I was living on impulse and fear.”

Before I reveal my cash lineup for this week, I’ll set the scene for Sunday AM at the Borg House. It was a pretty big day:

• Breakfast and wild morning with two boys
• Finishing some AM Footballers work
• NFL action with the sad but sobering news about Falcons’ Calvin Ridley
• Halloween get-together with my family
• Trick-or-treating with my kids with my wife sick in bed.
• My Atlanta Braves potentially closing out the World Series.

These aren’t excuses but just revealing it was not a sit-back-and-chill type of Sunday.

I personally use a spreadsheet (#SpreadsheetBro) each week to compile projections and roster percentages to compare different cash lineup configurations. Here’s where I was Sunday morning before inactives came out:

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Yep, your boy didn’t know he was sitting with a cash lineup that would’ve gone over 200 points.

The rest of this article is describing how I went from this well-thought out cash lineup to the disaster you are about to see before your eyes. Seriously, from 11:30 AM EST to when the games finished, only THREE players in this lineup remained?!? What the?!?

I hope my moronic moves can help you (DFS Podcast listeners and DFS Pass subscribers) because there is a key principle of “late-swapping” that I need to hammer home… to myself.

Week 8 Cash Lineup

For cash, I specifically play 50/50s, Double-Ups, and H2Hs on DraftKings. I’ll share my unfiltered gut reaction, my thought process behind this lineup construction, and at the bottom, I will post my weekly results including ROI and H2H record to stay accountable with you.

If you’re wanting to go back to the drawing board, we did an overview podcast before the season on Cash Game Strategy. I also published an article on How to Approach Each Position in DFS & Gain an Edge.

“Listen Kyle… I know you’ve always been a big fan of Marvin Jones Jr…. but why? Why? Why now?”

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Ah, this is the beautiful (and therapeutic) nature of this article. I get to walk through and explain why my brain was thinking the way it did. When you do that, it makes sense. Right? OK maybe it won’t be you’ll get to see a bit more about my wiring and probably one of the flaws in the way I approach DFS sometimes.

Let’s first talk about how this lineup started:

• Josh Allen was in my QB slot the entire week. From our Tuesday to Friday podcasts, we screamed that Allen was the best QB play on the board by a wide margin. He delivered albeit late in the 4th quater as that MIA-BUF game was soooo slow in the first half. They never showed Buffalo on Red Zone channel because they didn’t really make any red zone trips. That fear that Allen would bust also contributed to some of my late swap moves.
• Michael Pittman Jr. (affectionately known as Pitty City around these parts) was also my main cash game staple from Day 1. I made him the cover boy of the Best Plays article on Saturday loving his salary, his role, and the game environment versus Tennessee. He went bonkers with two early TDs and some production towards the end that made him the best WR play on the slate.
• In terms of RBs, I identified Darrell Henderson Jr., Joe Mixon, and D’Andre Swift as my favorite RB plays on the week. Henderson was locked-in from Day 1 and up until inactives I had Mixon as well. However, when news came out that Lions RB Jamaal Williams would be inactive, I moved off Mixon to Swift who already had strong projections and now was locked into nearly an every-down role against the Eagles. That $200 difference also led me to switch Elijah Mitchell ($5,400) to Tee Higgins ($5,200) to get a piece of the Bengals offense at only $5,200.

So far, things look pretty good Kyle. In fact, that seems pretty normal to switch to someone like Swift for $200 more. Where did you tailspin?

• The Calvin Ridley news was devastating for a couple of reasons. I’m a Falcons lifer, born and raised here in Atlanta. I feel for the guy who has been nothing but great as a person and player since coming out of Alabama. My brother loves the guy (Bama fan) and I have nothing but respect and compassion for someone on that big of a stage to say they need a break. It opened up Kyle Pitts ($6300) as a viable TE/FLEX play. The last two weeks he went over 100+ yards and so it minimum I considered eight targets his floor against the Panthers.
• After Pitts decided to have his worst game of the year, I headed into the afternoon slate with Chris Godwin, Dan Arnold in the FLEX, and WAS DST. All three were projected as super popular in our Roster Percentage Report with Godwin likely going to be over 50%. Dan Arnold also was early on the best punt play on the board… So how did I move off these two?

I was more confident in the field’s ability than my own. While being just short of the cash line heading into afternoon games, I thought I needed to get different in order to get ahead. I was so fearful of being pushed down by players I didn’t have that I moved off the obvious good plays in my lineup. But if I would’ve take the time to sit and think about “who was left”, there was really no other popular players left. But in the midst of Halloween Hoopla, I didn’t have the time to look at the numbers. Looking back, here were the most popular cash plays in DraftKings’ Massive $25 Double Up for the Week 8 Main Slate:

Notice any of those names? Seven of the top eight were part of my lineup. In other words, the only name on the afternoon slate that could’ve hurt me in a massive way was RB James Robinson. You have to dig even further to find players that had any semblance of upside by the field: Jerry Jeudy-10.7%, Keenan Allen– 8.3%, Damien Harris– 7.6%, Ricky Seals-Jones– 7.4%, Jared Cook– 5.7%. In other words, I assumed the field would have plays ready to jump ahead of me but when massive chalk like Jalen Hurts and Cordarrelle Patterson failed, I actually was ahead of the curve. I just didn’t know it. Mike Evans could’ve been that guy versus Godwin but even he was rostered on only 2.5% of lineups.

So I decided what could give me leverage over Dan Arnold and Chris Godwin (who were already on my team!), JAX teammate Marvin Jones Jr. and Antonio Brown replacement Tyler Johnson. Yep, those names. Johnson was on my punt radar at just ($3,100) and I loved Marv’s matchup against a Seattle CB who allowed the most yards per route covered as detailed in the WR vs. CB matchups. I thought I needed leverage against those names in order to get ahead so I went off-the-board with two names I knew no-one would roster. Crazy I know but that’s where I went.

Late-swapping is useful when there is chalk on the board you don’t have. Since I had Chris Godwin, Dan Arnold, and Washington DST left, I had arguably the three most popular plays left in the afternoon slate. Something in me just hates the idea of “moving with the herd” in DFS. I enjoy being contrarian in nature and only want to do things in DFS (and in life) if I personally feel the conviction of something. When it was inching closer to the afternoon slate, Swift and Pitts had busted and Josh Allen had yet to score two touchdowns in the fourth. I had made the internal decision that I was going to get buried by the field in the afternoon if I did not make a major change.

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Part of DFS is withstanding your own stupidity. I mean there’s not much more I can add to this. I made a terrible pivot and finished… drumroll please… less than six points from the cash line in Double Ups and 50/50s.

2021 Cash Results

I put it this way to Betz: I’ve been staying afloat in cash so far. Luckily, I had a good week in GPPs including winning the “Battle the Betz 2” tournament at BallersDFS.com. All-in-all a gloriously stupid outcome turned out to put me at basically even for the week. Stay with it folks! Heading into Week 9, this is about having a long-term view. Make sure you check in with me for the DFS First Look Pricing article that comes out Tuesday AM!