Borg’s DFS Cash Lineup Review for Week 12 (Fantasy Football)

I’ll preach that “Slate ID” is one of the best tools you can add to your tool belt: “who will be popular” and “what does a player need to do at their price point” is half the game. You just hope that the results will follow more than half the time as well :)

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 12 Cash Lineup

Draft % and cash lines each week will be from DraftKings’ $25 Single-Entry Double-Up with roughly 3,500 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

Cash Locks (In My Opinion)

• In our Week 12 DFS Best Plays (which comes out on Saturdays for DFS Pass subscribers only), I shared the pool of players and this week was blatantly obvious who the top plays were.
• I was committed to the 3RB build this week so it’s probably obvious where I ended up at that position.
• Kareem Hunt was played by 83% of the field so you and everyone else locked him in. Did the outcome turn out the way we wanted? No. But whenever there is a chalk player above 75%, you just move on and analyze the cash slate at the other spots.
• For what feels like every week over the last month, De’Von Achane was once again in my cash lineup. I wrote in Best Plays: “I really like the combination of ceiling and floor with De’Von Achane. He’s averaging 23.6 DK points per game in six Tua starts and his salary still hasn’t risen to a point where you worry about fitting in everyone else. As a receiver, he’s averaging 6.2 receptions in those Tua games and the Dolphins are more than a TD favorite at home. It’s hard poking holes in Achane and outcomes of 30+ points are obviously on the table if he breaks a long one.”
• The 3rd RB I never really wavered over was Brian Robinson Jr. I knew he would be popular and with the next 3 most popular RBs putting up sub-10 points, BRob did not make-or-break lineups.
• At WR, Courtland Sutton was ranked as our consensus WR1. The opportunity,

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.

• Perhaps the biggest decision point this week was at QB. I opened up the discussion in our Ballers Discord to get a pulse of what people would do and added some quick thoughts on my own.

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• It felt really tight and my intuition was that Anthony Richardson and Geno Smith would be the most popular. Richardson’s rushing floor and the indoor matchup against Detroit definitely seemed like a strong combination. However, I also did a deep dive in the Pace of Play article where Richardson’s splits against heavy man coverage was atrocious. This is one of those nuanced decisions where you don’t always get things right. The NFL doesn’t always play out the way we want it to (case in point this Jason Moore tweet). You can go back and read that section but it had a deep imprint on how I viewed ARich: “…apart from a dynamic game on the ground, it’s hard seeing volume getting him there against a Lions defense that quietly ranks #1 in EPA per pass attempt.” Often, these takes are irrelevant as the cash game we play in DFS is more about “what does this player need to do at his price to pay off?” The “hand in the dirt” football take won out this week which is a good feeling. I did not foresee him being 40% rostered which would’ve been a death sentence in cash if he went off for 25-30 DK points.
• After being slightly worried about the weather in Seattle, I leaned into Bo Nix (as a stacking partner with Sutton) as perhaps my most comfortable cash option at QB. It was a little pricey but as I mentioned in Best Plays: “spending a little more for Bo Nix makes sense if you have the extra salary.” I did have the leftover salary thanks to some cheap options. It’s wild to think a rookie QB on the road could give you so much safety but that’s where (unexpectedly) we are with the Broncos in 2024.
• At TE, I really only considered two options: Hunter Henry ($4000) and Luke Schoonmaker ($2500). Punting TE off a bridge with the Skoon-Man (man where else do you get to write sentence like that?!) was my route after stumbling into the stat that he was targeted on a team-leading 34% of his routes last week with Cooper Rush. I don’t fault anyone for getting to Henry and while Travis Kelce ($5800) certainly was too cheap, I had him ranked as my TE5 this week. McBride is who I played in tournaments and someone Mike FLEXED in his Fantasy Faceoff lineup Friday on the main podcast.

• After surveying what I thought the field will do, I figured cash lineups this week would make-or-break based on this combination at WR. The projections were so close but I personally wanted to go into this street fight with at least one stud. Amon-Ra St. Brown ($8200) and Nico Collins ($7600) were the only ones I truly considered. Nico was my slate breaker on the DFS & Betting podcast and I felt strongly at his price point he’d see enough volume.
• I really wanted Jauan Jennings ($5600) to be in my lineup. My heart spoke of how much I like him on the podcast BUT… (and this is a VERY IMPORTANT BUT) we are allowed and SHOULD shift our thinking throughout the week with more information. As much as I like Jennings as a player, the surrounding situation in San Francisco slowly went into the drain as Brock Purdy was ruled out on Friday afternoon. In DFS, we care about opportunity cost and with a myriad of options at WR, there was zero need to hold onto my priors with Jennings. He dropped out of top options and this was reflected in our Best Plays: “He’s still fine at his price point but in H2Hs, don’t expect to see him as much when the cards are turned over. “. I also wrote him up as a fade: “We play a game and there are certain moments where we weigh other things like leverage. In tournaments, there are other guys with great ceiling outcomes while Jennings’ median outcome is likely much higher at his price for cash purposes.“
• After letting Jenning sink to the bottom of the ocean, it did shift the construction of my roster. It fit nicely on a Thursday and then all of a sudden, I needed to find another WR to work with. Jaxon Smith-Njigba ($6300), Calvin Ridley ($5700), and Jakobi Meyers ($5100) were in that same Jennings range. All 3 had talking points but only one of them profiles as the true, unquestioned #1 target on their team. I went with Ridley with a slight nod to the correlation with Nico building in some ceiling outcomes for that game. While cash is all about looking at median projections, I do want to foresee routes where they could also go off.
• At DST, I never really honed in on a team until about an hour before lock. I figured the Bears ($2500) would be the most popular due to their price and being at home. They were always in contention but after playing around with a couple of different combinations, I had enough salary to get to the Buccaneers ($3300), Broncos ($3200), or Dolphins ($3100). I crossed out the Broncos with two of their offensive players in my lineup. I just didn’t want to triple up but the Bucs against arguably the league’s worst offensive line and TOMMY CUTLETS under center was too joocy to pass up. Betz mentioned his historic pressure-to-sack ratio last year and messaged Betz that I might as well put my mortgage on Bucs ML this week.

What Did the Field Do

My goal in this section is to discuss the pool of players used the most in cash style contests. You can compare the roster percentage, DK outputs, and how much of their salary they X’ed this week.

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.

• Having bias against a player like Jakobi Meyers is definitely something I need to take account of in the future.

2024 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.

It was a “no doubt” week after seeing in the early window that Richardson failed for other cash lineups and the DEN stack in the late window. This is a nice 3-week stretch winning back some losses from Weeks 8 & 9.