NFL DFS Slate Review: Week 9
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 about posting my cash lineup write article as I have for years. Apologies, 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.
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 $200, 3-Max tourney with 111 entrants, which is what I played this week.
Slate Context:
*I thought this was one of the best tournament slates of the season because there wasn’t an obvious game to stack like we’ve had in recent weeks. In addition, because of the cheap QB values and the cheap RB values in Devin Singletary ($4,600) and Jonah Coleman ($5,300), pricing was wide open, allowing us to build really however we wanted.
*Knowing that, I wanted to try to play the slate in a way that was different than the field. With Drew Lock and Shedeur Sanders in play at the stone min, and most of the cash teams playing Mahomes or the Dak double once Pickens was ruled out, I knew this mid tier range of QBs was going to get overlooked, which led me to Tyler Shough at home off the bye against the Browns.
*With LT Kelvin Banks returning, Jordyn Tyson making his debuit, and Kendre Miller getting cut on Saturday, I figured the plan would be very throw-heavy at home in the dome. I was the only one in the field that played the Shough to Olave stack. I got a great runout with the game going to OT, but Shough only threw one TD, and Olave fell just short of the 100-yard bonus, which would have made a big difference in my ROI.
*I’m really happy with that build leverage (avoiding the punt QBs and identifying a unique construction), but I’m really kicking myself by not playing KC Concepcion in this lineup. Ironically, I played him as a one-off in a different lineup in this contests, but I didn’t do in the lineup that had the Saints! Just a silly oversight on my part there that cost me some serious money…whoops. I did think that $4K WR range was really important to get right on this slate.
*As per usual, there were no good sub $4K plays at WR on DK. As a result, in cash games, we saw everyone playing at least one (or sometimes two) of Ryan Flournoy, AD Mitchell, and Antonio Williams. Knowing that those three would soak up so much ownership, I personally wanted to limit my exposure in a single lineup to just one guy, which led me to a pivot of Omar Cooper > AD. Super happy to get him at only 8.1% versus 18% for Mitchell.
*The other big pivot I made here was to go double elite RB with McCaffrey, who I thought was just straight up one of the best plays on the slate, and Ken Walker, who Chris wrote about in his Tournament Takes article this week. I got super lucky to get a 99th percentile outcome here with 3TDs, but I felt his floor/ceiling combo was just as good as Gibbs in this spot at home against a struggling Jets defense. In small field, we can usually get great plays at a fraction of the ownership because a lot of the entrants are playing variations of cash teams.
*The final pivot here was to plug my nose and play Dalton Schultz over Greg Dulcich. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Greg D plenty, and I streamed him in a home league, but 40% for a pass catcher from Malik Willis is always going to be a fade for me, regardless of matchup. I didn’t really think Schultz was a particularly strong play, but as I’ve noted a few times over the years on the DFS Pod, these cheap TEs (Generally speaking) are all the same bet. And when that’s the case, I’m usually going to try to find some contrarian options. Happy to pick up a few points on the field with the Doctor outscoring the D.
*All in all, I thought this lineup was pretty well built. Some good, strong chalk and a very unique construction, allowing me to gain a ton of leverage on the field and find success despite not having CeeDee (Slate Breaker!!!) or Puka. We press on – see you in Week 10!
Cash’s Large Field Review
I finished 55th in a contest with 29k people and still lost money. The best lineup gets the screenshot. The other 149 took my Chili’s money.
This week, I wanted to look beyond my own results. Who actually played all 150? Which combinations made money? What can we learn from the field?
These numbers reflect the 29,104 entries of the MEGA Mini-Max. I did not feel good coming into Sunday, so I maxed that instead of the Flea Flicker and spent $300 instead of $750. Sometimes, it is the contests you do not play.
Who Actually Maxed Out?
Of 1,464 users, 135 had all 150 entries represented, while 762 appeared with just one. Those max-entry users supplied 69.6% of the available lineups. The single-entry group supplied only 2.6%.
Most users appeared once. Most lineups came from people playing all 150. That distinction matters when discussing ownership. One max-entry user playing someone at 50% adds 75 entries. A single-entry user adds one. Ownership measures lineups, not how many different people liked the play.
The Combinations That Mattered
Jordan Love, Christian Watson, and Matthew Golden appeared together in just 181 lineups, or 0.62% of the field. That trio landed in eight of the top 10, and 180 of those 181 entries cashed. Even removing the winning lineup, the remaining group produced +2,320.8% ROI.
Kenneth Walker III and Jonah Coleman appeared together in 3.5% of entries. Those lineups cashed at a 58.8% rate and returned +239.4% ROI even without the winner.
These are actual appearance rates, not pre-lock pOwn. They are also results for complete lineups, not proof that clicking two players creates a profitable strategy. The lesson is to review combinations alongside individual ownership.
My 150
My portfolio finished at -36.7% ROI, with 31 of 150 entries cashing. The bigger issue was where my losses accumulated.
Drew Lock and Malik Willis accounted for 48 entries, or 32% of my portfolio. Only one cashed. That group returned -95.8% ROI, while my other 102 entries finished at -8.9%.
Changing the players around a QB creates different lineups. It does not remove their shared dependence on that QB and I should have been more cautious with Willis considering his injury/rushing woes last week. Betz sums it up here:
Willis has been on MIA's injury report the last two weeks but has not carried a game designation either week.
However, clearly limited as a runner:
Averages Wks 1-7: 5.8 carries, 37.2 yards
Average Wks 8-9: 1.5 carries, 4.5 yards https://t.co/paynFWjGpJ— Matthew Betz (@TheFantasyPT) November 9, 2026
Meanwhile, I had one Love lineup and zero Love-Watson-Golden combinations. Having 150 entries did not mean I covered every important outcome.
My takeaway: Review complete stacks, key pairings, and QB allocation before uploading. A 20% exposure is 30 entries depending on one player, so, feast or famine is a deliberate stance.