NFL DFS Tournament Takes & Leverage Points: Week 4 (Fantasy Football)

We have enough weeks under our belt now that the field is starting to get a little more confident. That can be useful because this slate is giving us a pretty clear picture of how the popular lineups will be built.

RB is where the ownership is piling on in bunches. Christian McCaffrey, Aaron Jones, Chase Brown, and Jeremiyah Love all project for significant ownership, while T.J. Hockenson gives us a $3,300 escape hatch at TE. None of those plays are bad. The question is how many of them we can jam into the same lineup before we are simply building what everyone else is building.

• Which chalk deserves the attention?
• Where are we giving up too much projection just to be different?
• And how can we turn those answers into better tournament lineups?

Last week reinforced that chalk was not the problem, as the Milly Maker winner carried 121.8% combined ownership and still found leverage through Geno Smith, Jameson Williams (even with a snowflake), Kenyon Sadiq, Juwan Johnson, and MIN DST. The bigger lesson was construction: the edge came from combining strong plays in less-common ways rather than simply chasing low ownership.

Slate Overview

The good news is that we do not need to get weird everywhere. QB is wide open, several strong WR projections sit below 10% ownership, and even TE gives us legitimate alternatives if Hockenson becomes the default click. 

The overall theme for me is that this does not feel like a slate where we need to get weird everywhere. Build around the plays we actually like, then make one or two deliberate ownership decisions that give the lineup a different path to first. This does feel like a slate where getting off at least one popular RB could be incredible leverage if that RB fails.

Ownership Notes

Quarterback

• Lawrence at 14.2% is the clear ownership leader at QB, but I do not think that makes him bad chalk. He carries a 23.4-point optimizer projection, the highest mark on the slate, so if I am fading him it needs to be because I prefer another game environment, not because I am scared of the ownership.
• Brissett at 8.9% is getting plenty of attention for a QB projected for only 15.5 points. That makes him one of the spots where I am more interested in the pieces around him than forcing the QB himself. If I am eating ownership at QB, I would rather do it with a ceiling profile I trust more.
• Allen at 8.5% and Burrow at 7.4% are both very comfortable tournament plays. Allen still owns one of the best raw projections on the slate at 24.2 points, while Burrow gives us access to a CIN passing game without carrying overwhelming ownership.
• Kyler at 6.4% is right in the middle of the field, and that is about where he belongs. The 20.2-point projection is good enough, but he does not give us much of an ownership discount compared with the other names around him, and the jury is still out on whether he is actually capable of giving us 20+ points. I would like to see more production with his legs. 
• Stroud at 5.5%, Mahomes at 5.4%, and Purdy at 4.8% are the middle-tier QBs that stand out most to me. All three project for at least 19.7 points, and none is popular enough to dictate the rest of the lineup. This is the range where I think we can get different without sacrificing much projection.
• Darnold at 4.4% and Winston at 4.0% are the cheap swings I want to keep in the pool. Neither projects especially well, but both can unlock expensive RB and WR combinations that are difficult to reach with the top QBs. These are tournament construction plays more than projection plays.
• Nix at 3.7% and Maye at 2.8% are the next layer down if we want to get even more aggressive. I do not need much of either in tighter builds, but they both give us paths to lineups the field is unlikely to duplicate. Maye likely bounces back in the next few weeks to give us at least one decent game.

Running Back

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• CMC at 29.2% is the first major decision at RB, and I am comfortable eating some of that ownership. My blend still has him as the highest-projected RB at 21.4 points, so the case against him is mostly lineup construction rather than projection.
• Chase Brown at 25.9%, Aaron Jones at 23.1%, Jeremiyah Love at 20.0%, and Skattebo at 19.4% make the $5.8k to $6.1k range incredibly crowded. If I am using one of these backs, I want to be intentional about where the rest of the lineup gets different because this is where a lot of builds are going to start looking alike. I would also watch your combined ownership in MME sets. Meaning, if you are going to roster these guys, make sure you rotate them with one another. The right combo could be different between life-changing money and a min cash.
• K9 at 15.5% is expensive at $8.2k, but my blend still has him at 20.3 points. That is nearly two points higher than the optimizer, so I am interested in using the salary as a natural way to get away from the mid-tier RB congestion.
• Henry at 10.3% is the biggest projection disagreement for me. The optimizer has him at 16.7 points, while my blend has him at 19.3. That is a meaningful gap, and it makes him one of my favorite tournament pivots if the field keeps treating the $8.4k salary as a reason to stay away.

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• Jeanty at 10.9% and Cook at 9.7% both sit in a nice middle ground. My blend has them at 17.3 and 17.2 points, so both can fit tighter builds without forcing the rest of the lineup to compensate.
• Swift at 9.9% and Kyren at 11.8% are fine, but neither really jumps off the page for me relative to the options around them. They make more sense when the rest of the lineup naturally lands there than as players I am building around.
• Saquon at 6.1% and Javonte at 5.5% are the lower-owned names I want to keep around in larger fields. Neither needs a projection miracle to matter, and both give us a way to get different without dropping all the way into thin punt territory.
• Braelon Allen at 9.7% is the cheapest RB getting meaningful ownership at $5.2k, but he is not exactly sneaking through the field. If I use him, it is because I need the salary and like the construction, not because I am expecting ownership leverage. In lottos, sprinkle in some Isaiah Davis.

Wide Receiver

• Parker Washington at 22.5% is the clear ownership leader, but WR ownership is spread out enough that I am not overly concerned about eating it. At $6.5k with a 16.3-point projection, he is a strong play, but I do not want Washington paired with every other popular salary-saving option in the same lineup.
• Puka at 19.9%, Garrett Wilson at 16.6%, and Higgins at 16.4% make up the next tier. All three project between 14.9 and 17.0 points, so there is not much separating them outside of salary and the game environments we want to attack. This is a spot where correlation matters more to me than trying to rank them by ownership. 
• Upon further thinking, Puka is not being looked at enough. I wish the Q stayed next to his name through the weekend. It is down now, so his pOwn likely rises by kickoff. 
• Wicks at 15.1% is the cheap WR the field has found at $4.3k. The 12.2-point projection is fine for the salary, but once a player in this range becomes this popular, I want to make sure the savings are actually doing something meaningful elsewhere in the lineup.
• Chase at 14.2% stands out because my blend is noticeably more bullish than the optimizer, projecting him at 19.5 points compared with 17.8. He is expensive at $8.1k, but the field is not treating him like one of the slate’s premier WR plays, which makes him one of my favorite ways to spend up.
• JSN at 13.0% is still carrying the best WR projection at 21.1 points despite the $9.1k salary. He is expensive enough that roster construction naturally keeps the ownership down, and I am fine using him when the rest of the lineup can make the salary work. This sort of feels like a slate where the winner will just find all the right middle-tier pieces and the pay-ups do not really matter. 

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• Michael Wilson at 12.8%, Matthew Golden at 11.9%, Zay Flowers at 11.5%, and Pickens at 11.4% create a crowded middle tier. Golden is the one I am a little more cautious with because the optimizer has him at 15.5 points while my blend comes in closer to 14.1, so I am less interested in chasing that ownership when several players around him project similarly.
• Addison at 10.4% is interesting because the optimizer only has him at 13.3 points, but there is enough ceiling in the role that I do not mind keeping him around in tournaments. He also gives us a direct way to get different from the Aaron Jones ownership in the same game.
• Nico at 9.8%, DJ Moore at 9.6%, and CeeDee at 8.6% are where the ownership starts getting much more appealing. CeeDee is the one that really stands out at only 8.6% because we are getting an elite WR ceiling without paying an ownership tax, and Nico gives us another strong spend-up option that can separate from the more popular $6k range.
• Atomic Darts to Consider: Darius Cooper, Elic Ayomanor, and Dohnte Meyers.

Tight End

• Kittle at 14.8%, McBride at 14.0%, and Bowers at 13.5% are all strong plays, but I keep having trouble paying all the way up at TE. Too many winning lineups have gotten enough from the mid and low tiers, so I keep coming back to one question: what would it take for this player to actually break the slate?
• If an expensive TE needs a true ceiling game to justify the salary, I would rather let RB and WR handle those slate-breaking roles more often and save money here.
• Strange at 11.9%, Hockenson at 10.5%, Kelce at 7.8%, Andrews at 7.7%, and Likely at 6.8% all give us cheaper paths without completely punting projection.
• Likely is the lower-owned option I prefer. He is only 6.8% owned with a 10.4-point projection, which gives us a much cleaner way to save salary without leaning on a one-week breakout narrative like Sadiq. 
• Kelce at 7.8% is the one expensive-ish TE I am still willing to get to because the ownership has fallen enough that the ceiling matters more than the price tag. At $5k, he also does not force the same sacrifices as Kittle, McBride, or Bowers.
• Andrews at 7.7% is interesting because the field is treating him like a secondary option despite a 9.4-point projection. He does not need a monster game to pay off, and if BAL leans on him in the red zone, he can separate without requiring us to spend up.

DST

• DST is stupid, and I hate it. #analysis
• LAR at 11.6% and ARI at 10.3% are the clear chalk, but DST is volatile enough that I am rarely excited to follow the field here.
• MIN at 7.7% has the best projection on the board at 10.7 points, so if I am paying up, that is the defense when I can.
• SEA at 6.1% gives us a strong 8.7-point projection at lower ownership, while BAL at 4.3% is the spend-up leverage option.
• KC at 1.6% is the kind of aggressive tournament DST I want in MME. If they create a couple sacks and a turnover, that is enough to matter at almost no ownership.

Late Swap

Final Thoughts

1. Favorite Stack: I wanted to say CIN (again), but the combined pOwn of Burrow/Chase/Higgins is much too high for me this week (37%!). DAL is one of my favorite tournament stacks because the projection stays close to the very top without carrying the same ownership burden. Dak + CeeDee + Pickens projects for 52.5 points in my blend compared with 56.3 for Burrow + Chase + Higgins, but the combined ownership drops from roughly 37% to 24%. Pickens is due for some positive TD regression.

2. Favorite Leverage: Lamar Jackson or Derrick Henry might be the best pure leverage play on the slate. Lamar projects within a couple of points of Lawrence and Allen, but we are getting him at a fraction of the ownership with the same kind of slate-breaking ceiling against the worst team in the league. Henry likely trails CMC in the receiving game, but Henry is more likely to score two rushing TDs.

3. This is not a slate where we need to force low ownership everywhere. There is enough projection concentrated in the obvious plays that I would rather eat some good chalk and make one or two intentional leverage decisions around it.

4. RB is where roster construction can separate quickly, while TE is the position I am most comfortable paying down. I would rather spend salary on RB and WR ceiling than ask an expensive TE to be the player who breaks the slate.

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5. Keep late swap in mind before lock. The afternoon games give us enough pivots at RB, WR, TE, and DST that a bad early start does not have to kill the lineup if we are willing to get more aggressive later.