Jens DFS Journal 2016 week 2

By Jen Ryan

The amount strategies that one can deploy in daily fantasy are countless. Strategy can be exciting or maddening, depending on how things turn out. One of my favorite strategies is pretending to fade the Thursday night game. What I mean by that is, I make it a point to get in at least a few Thursday-Sunday contests each week, but I play one or no players from the Thursday games. This puts me ahead of the crowd because there is a whole other breed of DFS players that will do quite the opposite, and load up on players from the Thursday night game.

Jen's Optimal Lineups week2 (excel)

DFS Optimal Lineup Generator

This week, something perfect has already happened. I threw together two last minute lineups last night full of mostly what I refer to as “place holders” what I mean by that is, I build my whole roster out of players from the lowest price range, just so I can get the lineup in. The first lineup I built has a bunch of place holders in with Sammy Watkins. The (so far) perfect, second lineup that I built is also loaded with place holders, with the exception of Matt Forte, who went off for 33.9 points on DraftKings.

This week is as good a time as ever to talk a little bit about our DFS Lineup Generator. I have been excited about this tool all summer and we rolled it out last week. There are a lot of options and filters on the Lineup Generator and we also allow you to input your own projections if you would like. You can select as many or as few players as you’d like to lock into your lineup and we also give you the option to exclude players. Once your filters are set, you simply click a button and instantly 20 lineups are generated using your parameters. Our projections, or your custom ones, generate lineup totals as well. Finally, we give you the option to download your lineups in Excel. If you are an Excel nerd like me, you cannot wait to get in there, further analyze your 20 insta-lineups, and start studying your projections and ownership percentages.

This Matt Forte lineup may be my best chance at grabbing a piece of the money pie in a 29,411 player “NFL $100,000 Kickoff Special” GPP. The coveted first place finish will take home $5,000. A total of 7,950 entrants will take home at least $6 in this contest. I like my chances at the $6 I am already winning, but I am aiming way higher than that.

This is where our generator comes into play for me. Forte has me off to a great start, and there are some other players that are “must starts” for me this week. Those players are Eli Manning and Odell Beckham, Jr. Here is a link to all 20 lineups our tool generated for me using Forte, Manning, and Beckham.
Take some time to really explore your options with our Lineup Generator. Spend a little more time looking at what our model likes with my lineups built around Forte, Manning, and Beckham. Here are a few observations I made.

- We love C.J. Anderson this week. He shows up in nearly all 20 of my generated lineups. I expect him to smash his 14.794 point projection.
- Our model is much higher on Rishard Matthews ($3,300) than I am. I will throw him in a contest or two, but I will also re-run the generator with him excluded and will expect to see more of Cole Beasley ($3,200) and Jeremy Kerley ($3,000).
- Our Model is also very high on Jeremy Langford, who had 19 total touches last week. He has the upside to hit value with his $4,600 price tag this week.
- There are a few cheap, high upside players in some of these lineups that I love in the GPP format this week. Jermaine Kearse ($3,500), Vincent Jackson ($4,000), LeGarrette Blount ($4,000), and Kenny Stills ($3,400) are my favorites and will be in more than one of my lineups this weekend.
- The “contrarian” defensive pick is the New England Patriots at $3,000. They are a nice pivot off of Seattle, Carolina, and Denver, who all show up in many of these lineups.

Head over to our Lineup Generator and have some fun in there. We offer a generator for both DraftKings and FanDuel. Feel free to let me know @FFdeJENerate what you think of the 20 lineups I shared in the link above. Good luck this week!