Borg’s DFS Cash Lineup Review for Week 15 (Fantasy Football)

We play a silly game. Admit it: we assume we know how things will play out every week. Despite the chaos that ensues, we quickly forget on a Monday or even when the page turns to the next week on a Tuesday.

Game scripts and matchups that we thought would be one-sided eventually play out over 60 minutes and turn into relative garbage. We not only have limited knowledge of actual gameplans but we are guessing based on limited information of the strengths and weaknesses of real human beings.

All of that to say… it is nice every once in a while to have an incredibly strong conviction and see it play out pretty much exactly how we thought.

Actually, let’s be brutally honest: one of those players did not go as planned.

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 15 Cash Lineup

Draft % and cash lines each week will be from DraftKings’ $25 Single-Entry Double-Up with roughly 5,000 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.

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The Thought Process

Cash Locks (In My Opinion)

• In our Week 15 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.
• Everybody and their mama played Chuba Hubbard. It was easy to lock him in and move on. Chuba was played by 79% of the field. Move on.
• Beyond that, I really didn’t lock anyone into my cash lineup except… Amon-Ra St. Brown. In hindsight, it’s wild to see him come in under 13% in Double-Ups. He was a true difference-maker in the afternoon slate and ultimately one of the key reasons I was able to cash this week. I was pretty bullish on the matchup from the First Look article, to the Pace of Play, to making him my slate breaker on the podcast, and my Bold Call in the Best Plays. I thought his floor + ceiling combo was overlooked at his salary and he represented a great opportunity to buy into the highest over/under of the week. This isn’t a chance to toot my horn but recognize why he was an excellent cash play.

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.

• I’ve been a strict proponent of 3RB builds and this week, that was tested. With Chuba in, my pool consisted of Derrick Henry, Jahmyr Gibbs, Chase Brown, James Conner, Rico Dowdle, and Brian Robinson Jr. You could honestly make a great case for any of those guys. Gibbs got dqueezed out with Amon-Ra in my lineup and the fact that the field probably wouldn’t have paid up for him. Dowdle was tough. I knew he’d be popular and it definitely could work with 2 RBs in the same game. The matchup said play him. But, I thought his ceiling was lacking and there was a route for DAL/CAR to absolutely dud. I wanted to protect myself from going all-in on one game in cash at RB.
• Conner was a key pivot point in this lineup decision-making process. I loved the matchup and the fact Arizona runs at a top-5 rate inside the red zone. A 5x outcome was certainly more than I would’ve thought and it gave me leverage on Murray lineups. I don’t always play that was but it was an “added boost” in my mind for choosing him at RB.
• At QB, I went back-and-forth between Kyler Murray and Justin Herbert. The salary was almost a non-issue but with Conner in the mix, it gave me a chance to diversify my resources. The matchup for Herbert against the Buccaneers also looked like it would push him in the passing volume arena. The end result was not what I thought but with Kyler failing and Conner balling out, this was the decision tree that I won out on.
• Truth be told: I didn’t want to play Stone Smartt. I voiced this on the podcast but whenever a punt TE is steamed up, inwardly I want to go the other direction. The savings is the key not the production as they frequently put up under 5 points. However, with Herbert at QB, some in-game correlation and the fact this TE would be played by 50+ % of the field was reason enough to stay and not try to get cute. It’s conceding a spot in my H2Hs and Double-Ups but I didn’t have a strong enough conviction to stay with Brenton Strange. Once Evan Engram was put on IR, Strange (who we utilized early in the year as a punt TE) was on the map. You can see my frustration in a text with Betz

• One of the things I noticed early on about this slate is there seemed to be no consensus about which WRs would be played. Betz and I both talked up the CIN WRs but beyond that, the only other WR I figured would catch a large amount of roster percentage was Adam Thielen. I personally thought there were routes to Carolina failing so I ruled out Thielen early from my player pool not wanting two in my cash lineup. With Amon-Ra in, I had to play around with a few lineups seeing if I could fit in both the sun god AND Chase or Derrick Henry. In order to make that happen, I’d have to find some WRs in the $5K range that I felt comfortable with.
• Calvin Ridley and Brian Thomas Jr. were my top choices and I went back-and-forth about that decision until lock. Whoops!
• The Bengals decision was probably the most gut-wrenching. I honestly didn’t feel good leaving out Higgins and Chase and siding with Chase Brown. The combination of Brown + Amari Cooper versus Higgins + Elijah Moore felt safer… at the time. Brown’s opportunities had been unbelievable performing like an RB1 for five straight weeks. I decided to emotionally hedge playing Brown in cash and fading in tourneys. Whoops!
• At DST, I toyed around with PHI and ARI early before locking onto CLE. They were cheap, at home, and the weather conditions were supposedly going to be rough. I have zero regrets punting away and I honestly did not know the field would be this into the Browns.
• Henry eventually was cast aside for the simple reason of I wasn’t afraid of the field playing him. He was expensive and I thought he’d easily run for 100+.
• After updating Best plays on Sunday AM, I shared this with our #dfs Discord channel. A lot of lineups had to pivot but you can see how my final lineup follows the updates I gave:

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 that much confidence in Cooper feels silly now. Whoops!
• Oh, and Calvin Ridley. Man, I thought at least ONE of those WRs would hit a ceiling outcome (20+ DK points) but they both disappointed. Thank Amon-Ra for saving this lineup. Honestly, my lineup came down to 3 guys: Chase Brown+ James Conner + Amon-Ra St. Brown balling out at lower roster percentages.

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.

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We’ve been on a roll in Double-Ups hitting the cash line in SIX straight weeks. On the season, we are 10/14 on Double-Ups! Oh, and I lost by 0.1 in Week 5.

For that record, I am quite proud of our process.