Borg’s DFS Cash Lineup Review for Week 10 (Fantasy Football)

The goal of this article is neither to boast nor wallow in “shoulda, woulda, couldas” but rather give a transparent look at my thought process for the week. Hopefully, this will help DFS & Betting Podcast listeners and DFS Pass subscribers get a deeper window into the ups and downs of playing DFS and help you in your selections each week. On Tuesdays, Betz and I review our cash lineups, and this week we’ll give some common overreactions we see and hear.

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

If you want to go back to the drawing board, we did an overview podcast before the season on DFS Cash Game Strategy + Creating Player Pools. I also published an article on DFS Strategy for Beginners and another entitled: How to Approach Each Position in DFS & Gain an Edge.

Week 10 Cash Lineup

Draft % and cash lines each week will be from DraftKings’ $25 Single-Entry Double-Up with roughly 7,000 entries. This is a slightly elevated price point from the $1, $5, and $10 double-ups and I think gives a solid idea each week of double-up roster percentages.

The Thought Process

Every week I’ll move from where I started on Tuesday to where I landed on a Sunday.

Cash Locks (In My Opinion)

• In our Week 10 DFS Best Plays (which comes out on Saturdays for DFS Pass subscribers only), I shared the pool of players that were basically locked from the beginning of the week.
• Joe Mixon was my locked-in cash play: “As a 6.5-point home favorite, it feels too easy this week plugging him in. He has 90(!) percent of the CIN rush attempts this year.” He got into the end-zone and 2xed on his salary but it was nothing special from Mixon this week.
• At QB, I never really wavered from playing Geno Smith. His price point ($5800) and matchup against a Washington team ranked dead last in fantasy points allowed to the QB position. It sounds so elementary but seeing a green “32nd” next to any player’s name in DK is a good feeling. Sam Howell ($5900) and Dak Prescott ($6700) were the only other QBs I recommended.
• At TE, Trey McBride was the play all week. His salary went down from the previous week and while I liked other TEs at higher price points for GPPs (T.J. Hockenson and Dalton Schultz), I knew saving here was essential and that the field would gravitate towards McBride as well.
• Amon-Ra St. Brown ($8300) was in from Tuesday’s podcast. He was cheaper than some of the other elite WRs and 2nd to only Ja’Marr Chase in targets per game in the NFL. Chase was very high in our Best Play ranks but with his nagging back injury keeping him a game-time decision, I decided to play it safer while also acknowledging I was playing Mixon and a punt WR on the same team.

Gut-Wrenching Decisions

My goal in this section is to discuss the pool of players I considered for cash and how I arrived at my final lineup.

• At RB, Bijan Robinson stuck out from the beginning of the week but I never locked him in due to my Falcons bias and pain. If you know me, you know I regularly talk about the fact that whenever people count on the Falcons to come through, that is the exact point you bail out. Nevertheless, the Cardinals’ run defense was weak and a talented RB at $6K was always in consideration. If I wanted to go to a 3RB build, I really only considered Christian McCaffrey ($9200) and Tony Pollard ($7300) as the third piece. CMC is a machine and totally worth his salary but I felt like I was sacrificing my FLEX when I paid up for him. Pollard was screaming as a positive TD regression but you’ve probably heard that exact statement every week. I figured this would be the week against the Giants for him to rewrite the script. (Narrator: But he did not.)
• In my WR pool, the middle range once again offered some great value with Tyler Lockett ($6100), DeAndre Hopkins ($6000), Tank Dell ($5500), and Marquise Brown ($5200) all in consideration. Brown was the cheapest but with McBride already in my lineup, I preferred to mitigate risk with this being Kyler’s first game back. I preferred Lockett and Hopkins to Dell, in all honesty, but the projections were strong enough with Dell at his price point that I could stomach dropping down. The salary also worked although Jaxon Smith-Njigba ($4100) was another name I briefly considered in my final 2v2.
• This week felt like it was necessary to punt at least one WR spot. I wrote in Best Plays: “Punting the WR position comes down to stone min Trenton Irwin for the Bengals or Noah Brown of the Texans. You don’t want to punt multiple WRs.” That rule of thumb wins out 9-out-of-10 times but if you went with a true stars and scrub approach with BOTH of those guys, congrats. With Dell in my lineup, I didn’t want two Texans pass-catchers so I took Irwin at the stone min. His early TD made me feel so smart until the AM slate went on. Apparently, Noah Brown is the second coming of Jerry Rice these days.
• One of the issues I was running into with this build was feeling like I would miss out on one of the elites. If I didn’t have CMC, Ja’Marr Chase, or CeeDee Lamb, would I get buried? In order to try and make those work, I would’ve had to bring in multiple punts. But looking back now, that was definitely a weakness in this build that does often get exposed. Luckily, these three weren’t very popular in my $25 Double-Up: CMC- 28.8%, Chase- 10.34%, Lamb- 6.35%. That is a huge takeaway if you are new to DFS. Ask the question: can this player hurt me? If they go off 3-4x their salary, will the field bury me?
• DST was a bit tricky and unlike anything we’ve seen in 2023. An expensive chalky defense is not usually in the cards. Dallas ($4400) was a true hinge point of the slate while Arizona ($2500) offered so much savings that you could spend up and add another elite if needed. I wrote in Best Plays: “think about it this way… spending in the mid-range at a WR or TE (think Tyler Boyd or Dalton Schultz/Evan Engram range) and punting DST is basically the same salary allocation as DAL DST and a cheap TE/WR. Dallas’ floor feels like 3-4 sacks versus the great Tommy “Danny” DeVito and their 10.8 (insert roaring laughter) team-implied total. But what is their ceiling? 20+ points? You’re building in some chalk but also some ceiling in arguably the best defensive matchup of the year… In tournaments, they are an expensive wildcard that the field will be playing. This is why we love DFS: every week is different. You can’t use last week’s strategy and assume it will work this week.”
• The question will come up: was Dallas the wrong play? I think it’s the wrong question to ask when evaluating cash lineup builds. Obviously, I was able to comfortably cash in Double-Ups and H2Hs with Tony Pollard AND the Dallas DST. They did not make-or-break cash lineups (in my opinion) as the cheap WRs we recommended (Irwin and Noah Brown) smashed and the true air-balls on this slate were playing Marquise Brown, DeAndre Hopkins, or getting cute Jahan Dotson. If you had one or more of those types of guys, I am sorry. They profiled as good plays in good matchups but didn’t come through. The leverage from plays in the lower 15-30% range (think Bijan, Rachaad White, Tyler Boyd, Noah Brown) was enough to knock out some of those teams. A DST at 44% could’ve buried you if you didn’t play them but if you played them and the only other chalk DST (Arizona- 21%) fails to come through, then you are good in Double-Ups.
• My final 2v2 came down to Bijan + Pollard or CMC + JSN. I loved both builds but the projected points and weighted opportunities were not even close.

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Mistakes Were Made …

Every week I’ll highlight my biggest mistakes which range from not weighing low-end outcomes to assuming, to not thinking, and ultimately moving away from plays I started with. We’ve all been there… stay water. Don’t try to justify yourself or make things sound better than they were. You made a decision, now deal with it.

• Tony Pollard is on the naughty list but you probably already felt that way. His TD unluckiness will correct itself soon but this run0out for the last month is truly frustrating if you’ve played him in DFS.
• The only other frustration I had was not leaning more into the Cowboys team total at other angles. I’m a Ceedee Lamb truther and I toyed with Dak for a bit knowing how on fire this tandem was and how I stacked them in cash last week.

2023 Results

Each week I’ll post my head-to-head (H2H) win percentage here to give you an idea of what type of week I had. Keep in mind there are varying price points, competition, and players who take my H2Hs in the lobby that have no rhyme or reason. The volume of my H2Hs differs each week due to my feeling of the slate and my weekend activities with my family. Every week I will also post the “cash line” from the $25 Double-Up from DraftKings.