NFL DFS Slate Review: Week 2
After a weekend of NFL action, this article is meant to give you a review of each week’s DFS slate.
It will function like a rolling blog with three of our DFS experts giving you their perspectives:
- Cash Lineup Pool– Kyle Borgognoni highlights how the field approached cash lineups.
- Small Field Review– Matthew Betz breaks down his lineup used in small field.
- Large Field Review– Chris Cash breaks down how the field approached GPPs.
Hopefully, this will help DFS & Betting Podcast listeners and DFS Pass subscribers zoom out to see the ups and downs of playing DFS and help you in your selections each week. On Tuesday’s podcast, Borg and Betz review our cash lineups, and this week we’ll give some common overreactions we see and hear.
Also highly recommend jumping into our Discord if you want to sharpen your DFS skills around a community of people willing to walk every step of the way.
Borg’s Cash Pool Review
Every week, I want to give you a look at what the field did in cash contests.
My goal in this section is to give you highlight 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.
I received some feedback last week about posting my cash lineup write article as I have for years. Sorry to disappoint but my Monday responsibilities for Footballers have shifted where I simply do not have the same available time to give a full write-up as I did in the past. For transparency purposes, I can post it here and talk through my decisions at the beginning of Tuesday’s podcast. I must confess I do not play near the same cash volume as in the past.
Betz’s Small Field Review
Each week in this article, I’ll share my small field GPP lineup and discuss decision points along the way. In most weeks, this will be the $100 Spy or the $50 contest on DraftKings.
Slate Context:
*It was another RB-heavy slate where a lot of the top values for cash were in great spots – Bijan with a QB willing to feed him targets, CMC against the Dolphins with his top competition for touches on the injury report, King Henry at home as a TD+ favorite against the Saints, Javonte at home as a bell cow against the Commanders in the highest total on the slate, and Aaron Jones at just $5,100 against the Bears without Jordan Mason. I knew that group would soak up the vast majority of pOwn, but I couldn’t disagree with the field as I thought all were awesome plays. For me, it was always going to be a 3RB slate in small field given the strength of those plays, but the key to me was trying to figure out how to play those RBs in a smart way.
*I landed on a Javonte/Jones/CMC combo here and was really happy with my read on McCaffrey vs. Bijan. With Robinson ahead for most as the better cash play (I agreed), I figured he’d be the first click in for most of the field. He was 55% in this contest, so getting McCaffrey at almost half the ownership here was great. Like I said, I like Bijan, but there were so many systemic risks with their QB situation that I didn’t want to play that chalk in GPPs when we had soooo many other great RB plays at our disposal.
*I decided to go all in on SF, pairing McCaffrey with Purdy. I debated playing a WR or Kittle to go with a bigger stack, but those teams didn’t project quite as well, and I generally don’t want to get too off-the-board when it comes to projections in GPPs. By playing Purdy + CMC, the story I was telling myself was “Niners roll and put up 30+ points and I get access to all of the TDs.” Check!
*At the WR position, I opted for a balanced build, playing 3 WRs who weren’t too far off the board, yet I knew would get coverage in terms of roster percentage. DK Metcalf was cheap given the Steelers’ pass rate without Michael Pittman (Foot), yet I know a lot of people weren’t going to be excited to click his name after a lackluster 2025 and disappointing Week 1 against Christian Gonzalez. Parker Washington has one of the most valuable WR roles in the NFL, yet I figured the field wouldn’t get too carried away on his ownership given the “Aren’t you worried about Pat Surtain on the other side?” narrative. Garrett Wilson was in a good spot against a Green Bay defense that is looking vulnerable early in the season, yet it’s tough for the field to really get juiced up about a Geno Smith pass catcher. Collectively, I’m happy with my ownership read here. Sadly, Washington just missing the 100-yard bonus ended up being the reason I didn’t at least get a min cash. #GPPLife
*As for DST, I knew that because the Bucs were in play as possibly the most popular DST of the week against the Browns. I ended up playing them in cash, but in tourneys, the Eagles as a TD favorite were a low-owned price point pivot against Cam Ward, who looked out of sorts in Week 1 and has been prone to turnovers and sacks in his young career. Tampa came in at 16%, so I’m really happy with my read on that, getting Philly at just 7.8%. Unfortunately, when Carolina relegates the “Falcons” to the CFL, expensive DST was not what you needed in GPPs this week.
*All in all, I think I played okay this week and this lineup was min cashing for most of the slate, but unfortunately, the CeeDee afternoon hammer kicked me out in the final minutes. It also pushed me over the cash line in double ups, which is the tough part of playing high volume in cash while also trying to churn out a profit in tournaments. Fortunately, I was able to have a nice cash week and placed 4th in the $15 3-max, so it was a great week overall despite the results of this contest, which is a good reminder to myself and all of you guys playing every week – All we can do is build +EV lineups, regardless of the contest we’re in and let the chips fall where they may. Onto Week 3!
Cash’s Large Field Review
Each week, I will break down a large field tournament, looking at:
- How the field built
- Which decisions paid off
- Where my own lineups landed
This week, I maxed 150 lineups in a 23,780-entry tournament and finished with a -55.67% ROI. My best score was 175.26 and finished 540th, a top 2.27% finish. That sounds a lot nicer than it felt, considering the winning score was 228.76.
Of my 150 lineups, 146 were unduplicated. Getting different was not the issue.
My best lineup spent the full $50,000 and paired Dak Prescott with CeeDee Lamb and Ryan Flournoy, with Christian McCaffrey and Dalton Schultz among the remaining pieces. Dak, Lamb, McCaffrey and Schultz also appeared in the winning lineup. I had four of the right pieces, but the other five spots created a 53.50-point gap.
Where the Field Was Right and Wrong
Lamb was rostered in 23.73% of the field, and Schultz came in at 31.83%. Both appeared in all 10 highest-finishing lineups.
Aaron Jones was another popular play that worked, appearing in seven of the top 10 at 26.96% ownership. Once again, avoiding every popular player would have meant avoiding several players we needed.
Bijan Robinson was the most popular player at 47.88%, but he did not appear in any of the top 10. Lineups containing him returned a -57.42% actual ROI.
Justin Jefferson and Colston Loveland were even more painful, with their lineups returning -79.91% and -87.02%, respectively. These are the returns of the entire lineups containing each player, not isolated player grades, but they show where large portions of the field struggled.
The Panthers DST provided separation without requiring a completely different lineup around it. Carolina was 5.92% owned, appeared in six of the top 10 and produced a +404.12% ROI across lineups using it. That return includes the winning lineup, so I would not treat it as some repeatable expectation for a low-owned defense. It does show how valuable getting that final spot right can be.
What the Winning Lineups Did
The winner, carpark03, spent $49,900 and paired Dak with Lamb, while playing Ja’Marr Chase and Schultz together from CIN/HOU. McCaffrey and Jones filled the RB spots, with Jaylen Waddle, Darren Waller and the Panthers DST rounding out the lineup. Waddle at 3.62% and Waller at 0.33% provided plenty of separation without requiring a full lineup of darts.
Dak accounted for seven of the top 10 lineups, with Brock Purdy in the other three. But the construction that stood out most was at FLEX: eight of those 10 lineups used two TEs, compared with 22.91% of the field. Schultz cost $3,200, and pairing him with another inexpensive TE created room to spend elsewhere.
That showed up at WR. Eight of the top 10 paired Lamb with Jaxon Smith-Njigba, a combination that cost $15,400. The savings at TE helped make those expensive WR combinations possible.
All 10 highest-finishing lineups were unduplicated, and every one spent between $49,800 and $50,000. The winner’s combined ownership was 150.66%, above the field average of 133.23%.
Looking Beyond My Best Lineup
Here is where my review gets uncomfortable: I used an RB at FLEX in 135 of my 150 lineups. That is 90.00%, compared with 53.18% of the field. I had just seven double-TE builds. That does not automatically make my RB-heavy approach bad, but it does mean I was much more concentrated in one construction than the field was. I likely will not get that cute again.
I also had Lamb in 49 lineups and JSN in six, but never paired them. Not once in 150 entries. I am not going to pretend that combination was mandatory before kickoff, but seeing it in eight of the top 10 makes it worth examining why it never appeared in my builds.
That is more useful than simply telling myself to play more JSN next time. I want to look at how much salary I committed to RB and whether that spending squeezed out too many strong WR combinations.
There is also another reminder of how these tournaments pay. The winner entered 150 lineups and averaged 115.75 points, below my 119.52. I cashed 31 entries compared with their 23, but they finished with a +1,274% ROI. My higher average and extra cashes did not come close to making up for their one lineup reaching first.
For Week 3, I am not making double TE a rule because it worked this week. I want to review my salary allocation and the combinations my builds are leaving out, not just each player’s exposure percentage. This week, I had several of the right players. I did not do enough with the rest of the lineup around them.