Week 8 NFL DFS Picks: The Ravens Stack The Sims Don't Want

In Summary

• Lamar Jackson (BAL) Is The Quarterback The Sims Keep Leaving Out, And I Want Him Anyway. He is $6,800 on DraftKings at 4.4% projected ownership in a game with a 54.5 total and a three-point spread, against a Buffalo defense that has allowed 29 or more points in five of its six games. Josh Allen (BUF) is $7,700 at 8.4%, and the projection gap between them is about five points. The Jackson double with Zay Flowers (BAL) at $7,200 and Ja'Kobi Lane (BAL) at $3,400, run back with James Cook III (BUF), simmed at 54% on air, and swapping Lane for Mark Andrews (BAL) at $3,400 pushed it to 72%.
• Chase Brown (CIN) At $6,300 Is Where The Field Is Going. The Sims have him at 21.3% ownership, second among running backs only to Jahmyr Gibbs (DET) and second on the whole slate, on a 10-point favorite over Tennessee with 16, 17 and 20 looks over his last three games. I do not want to be overweight on him, and I am going to be anyway.
• The Dallas-Arizona Game Is The Chalkiest Build Of The Week, And It Is Better With Two Run-Backs. Dak Prescott (DAL) with George Pickens (DAL) and CeeDee Lamb (DAL), run back with Trey McBride (ARI) and Kendrick Bourne (ARI), simmed at 94%. The triple stack with Ryan Flournoy (DAL) came in at 75%, and the triple is still a build the field underplays relative to how often it wins.
• On FanDuel, Jahmyr Gibbs (DET) At $9,300 Is Cheaper Than He Is On DraftKings, And I May Play Him In Every Lineup There. The Sims project him at 49.1% ownership on FanDuel. Bijan Robinson (ATL) is $300 more there and Javonte Williams (DAL) $200 more, on a cap that is $10,000 bigger, which is close to flat.
• Last Week's Winners Were A Double Stack With Two Secondary Pieces And A Naked Joe Burrow (CIN) With A Double Run-Back. The two winning lineups shared two players, Tony Pollard (TEN) and Tre Tucker (LV). Matthew Golden (GB) was 36% owned and appeared in none of the top 1% of lineups. The full ownership table, every build I ran with its Sim ROI, and the FanDuel pricing gap are below.

Watch The Video

This piece comes from my Wednesday single-lineup Sims show for Week 8, where I review last week's Power Sweep and Spy winners and then build single-entry lineups for the DraftKings and FanDuel main slates in the Stokastic single lineup simulator. Every salary, projection and ownership figure below is a main-slate number from the Stokastic NFL Sims feed, pulled Wednesday with projections stamped Tuesday, Oct. 27 at 8:03 p.m. ET, and checked against what I said on air.

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Run Your Week 8 Lineup Through The NFL Sims

A week with two 54.5 totals is a week where the field piles into two games, and the edge is knowing which pieces of those games are actually crowded and what the simulator does to a lineup that goes around them. Both live in the NFL DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub for the DraftKings and FanDuel main slates, and they re-run as injury news lands. Save 10% on any Stokastic DFS package, any sport, with code SINGLEWK8.

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Eleven Games And Two Totals At 54.5

The Week 8 main slate is 11 games again, with Panthers-Packers on Thursday night, Eagles-Commanders on Sunday night and Bears-Seahawks on Monday night off it. The late window is six teams: Chargers-Rams, Chiefs-Broncos and Patriots-Dolphins. Someone in chat called it an avoidable late-window slate, and whether late swap matters this week depends on where you are once you get there.

DraftKings lines for Sunday, Nov. 1, as of Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 28.

Two games at 54.5 is the slate. For reference, 54.5 is higher than the Packers-Lions total was at this point last week, and that game finished 20-17, with Gibbs and Golden among the biggest disappointments on the slate. That does not mean the chalk misses this week, and you should not avoid chalk because it is chalk: a recent Milly Maker winner carried something like five players at 20% ownership or more, and the moment you start fading the games of the week is the moment Dallas and Arizona go for 90. If you do not have them, you are cooked. The point is what the field does with two games like this. It concentrates, and the Sims say where: Lamb at 17.2% and Prescott at 12.5% on the Dallas side, Chase Brown at 21.3% in the Cincinnati backfield, and Jackson at 4.4% in the other 54.5 game. That is the story of this week's builds, and the lineup I came in wanting to build is the one the simulator likes least.

The Ravens Stack The Sims Keep Leaving Out

I know the tools do not love Jackson this week. The projection gap is about five points, 24.5 for Allen against 19.4 for Jackson, and it is possible the simulator simply prefers Allen with Ravens coming back to Jackson with Bills coming back; the salary gap between the two quarterbacks is not large. Here is what the Sims have for the two quarterbacks and their pass-catchers as of Tuesday night.

DraftKings main slate, 11 games, Sunday, Nov. 1. Stokastic NFL Sims projections and ownership stamped Oct. 27, 8:03 p.m. ET.

The row that matters is Jackson at 4.4%. Baltimore's implied total of 25.75 points is the highest of any underdog on the slate, even though Buffalo's own 28.75 is higher, and it comes against a Buffalo defense that has given up 31, 31, 29, 34 and 30 points in five of its six games (Buffalo had the Week 7 bye), with the Chargers game the only exception, and Jackson, officially questionable, is reported to be close to 100% and expected to play. If his ownership is half of Allen's and Flowers at $7,200 is still too cheap, the stack is easy. The reason I prefer it to an Allen stack is the run-back side. With Baltimore, Flowers is not a guess. With Buffalo, you are choosing among Kincaid, Shakir, Moore if he plays, and Coleman, and that is a guess every week.

The read on Baltimore-Buffalo: the Ravens side is the one where the second piece is not a guess. Flowers at $7,200 and Lane at $3,400 cost $10,600 together, and the Bills' run-back candidates are four pass-catchers nobody can rank with confidence.

The second receiver is Lane, not Bateman, and I am not going to die on that hill, but the argument for paying $500 more for Bateman is thin. Lane played three fewer snaps than Bateman last week with Tyler Huntley (BAL) at quarterback, out-targeted him, and has five targets in back-to-back games against five total for Bateman over the same two. Bateman has had years to prove he is a target-earner for this offense and has not, outside of one touchdown-heavy season. If you want him, play him. I just do not see why he would take over Lane now.

The build I ran on air was Jackson, Flowers and Lane, Cook as the run-back, the Broncos defense at $2,300, and Chase Brown at $6,300, which left $16,100 for three spots. Completing it in the simulator at 5% randomness for a large-field, top-heavy contest gave me Bhayshul Tuten (JAX), Ja'Marr Chase (CIN) and Charlie Kolar (LAC) at $2,500, a legal $50,000 lineup with a double stack, a run-back, a Bengals secondary stack of Brown and Chase that is a way to get different in a build like this, and a 54% Sim ROI. Sim ROI is the number the simulator returns after running a hand-built lineup against a simulated field thousands of times; a positive number means the lineup projects to make money against that field. These are simulated results, not actual returns, and they can and do miss. If you want the longer version, the NFL DFS Sims vs optimizers guide has it.

Someone in chat asked what happens with Andrews over Lane, and the answer is that it looks better. Andrews at $3,400 with Jackson, Flowers, Cook and the Broncos, completed by the simulator, came back with A.J. Brown (NE) at $5,900 and an ugly double tight end, and the Sim ROI moved to 72%. I will take the ugliness. The idea that Andrews is no longer the tight end in Baltimore is one I keep seeing in chat, and I do not know where it comes from. Andrews has been bad, and that often means nothing: Baltimore extended him and moved on from Isaiah Likely (NYG) after he was bad. With Jackson back, I would assume a decent amount of Andrews.

Chase Brown At $6,300 Is Going To Be Everywhere

The Sims ran a lot of Chase Brown before I touched anything, and I thought I would tamp that down. I did not, because $6,300 against Tennessee as a 10-point favorite is too cheap.

DraftKings main slate. Stokastic NFL Sims projections and ownership stamped Oct. 27, 8:03 p.m. ET.

Brown is the second-most-owned player on the slate and the second-most-owned running back, behind only Gibbs at $9,500, and $3,200 cheaper. The Bengals fans in chat are shaking their heads because it has been rough, and I understand the bias, but the usage is still there: 16, 17 and 20 looks over his last three games by my count, and 20-touch upside on a double-digit favorite. The game-script worry is that Cincinnati goes up early and takes its foot off the gas, which is a real risk against a Titans team that struggles to keep games competitive, and it is also the script in which Brown gets the carries. If Chase has three touchdowns in the first half, none of it matters anyway. I asked the free Ask the Sims tool on the Stokastic.com predictions page on air: Chase scores two or more touchdowns about 11% of the time, Tee Higgins (CIN) about 10%, two in the first half is 3% for Higgins and probably about 4% for Chase, and the Bengals score 30 or more almost half the time and 40 or more 12% of the time. That last number is the one I care about.

This is the same logic that made Pollard at $5,300 a play last week, when he had been bad up to then and then put up three touchdowns and 40 DraftKings points at under 8% ownership in the Power Sweep. Bo Nix (DEN) had been bad until last week. From this year alone there are five players you could name who had done nothing, got cheap enough, and then were needed to win a tournament. DFS is different from betting in most ways, and the same in one: price matters. Brown at $6,300 is a price.

Two more backfield notes. If Aaron Jones Sr. (MIN) misses Sunday with the knee that knocked him out of last week's game, Jordan Mason (MIN) at $5,700 against Detroit is going to be the chalk value back, in a Minnesota offense that is not good right now. Jones is day-to-day and we will know more Friday. And Pollard at $5,800, on the Tennessee side of the Bengals game that Brown anchors, gets even better if Tyjae Spears (TEN), questionable again, is out.

Three Ways To Build The Dallas-Arizona Chalk

The Cardinals-Cowboys game is the chalkiest build of the week, and I do not love the Pickens-Lamb double, but the chat wanted it and the simulator did not mind it. All three versions start with Prescott, Pickens, Lamb, Chase Brown, Tuten and the Broncos defense, because the Broncos at $2,300, possibly with Pat Surtain II (DEN) back, open up everything else.

Malik Washington pops up every week because he is cheap, he is on the field a lot, and Miami usually has to throw from behind. Treat him as a placeholder for that price range. Jakobi Meyers (JAX) at $4,500 against Indianapolis is a spot I do not mind at all, Keenan Allen (IND) is $4,500, DeMario Douglas (NE) is $4,400, and Bourne at $3,900 turns the double into a full game stack. At the flex, the show-affordable-players toggle offered Greg Dulcich (MIA), Jerry Jeudy (CLE) and Evan Engram (DEN), all of which are gross, and Parkinson at $3,100, who is not bad at all with Terrance Ferguson (LAR) not expected to be ready. That is how Build B became a double with a double run-back and a 94% Sim ROI.

The one I lean toward is Build B. The triple stack with Flournoy simmed lower at 75%, and I would still not talk anyone off it. When I went back through three seasons of winning lineups in the post-contest sims, triple stacks won about 6% of the time while the field played them about 3% of the time, so there is leverage in them even though they are uncomfortable; one Stokastic subscriber won one Milly Maker with a Houston triple stack last year, which is a single result, not a pattern. When they hit, nobody else has them. The full logic for why a stack's shape matters as much as its pieces is in the NFL DFS stacking guide.

The Builds Off The Chalk: Mayfield, Goff, Murray

With the two big-total games covered, the next three builds came from chat, and they are the ones that show where the simulator draws its lines.

Build D is the one I wanted to like. I am a huge Mayfield fan, Tampa-Atlanta games shoot out more often than they should, Egbuka at $5,800 is coming off a 16-target game before a concussion kept him out last week, and Atlanta has been something of a pass-funnel defense outside of its win over the 49ers. Irving at 11.9% ownership fits right into that stack and Bijan is the run-back. Someone asked how often opposing running backs both hit, and the honest answer is that it depends on game flow, but both of these are viable pass-catchers: Bijan had 59 receiving yards last week and a 90-yard receiving game earlier this year. I like Strange over Hunter Henry (NE) at $4,300 this week, which leaves $300 of the cap unspent. It simmed at 31%, and most of that is that Mayfield does not look great in the Sims. I am not ready to give up on the Buccaneers passing game, but the simulator is.

Build E is the Lions stack for the people who think Goff is a monster at home and want Jefferson coming back. Goff is 4.8% owned at $6,600 and Jefferson 10.5% at $7,100, so the stack itself is not crowded. Nobody is going to want Goff against this Minnesota defense, and to some extent I agree; there is a real chance he struggles under the pressure. The build also spends $15,800 on Gibbs and Chase Brown before it buys a single pass-catcher, which is why it needs Concepcion and Washington to close, and the run-back it pays for is a receiver on the slate's worst offense. The 45% is the simulator pricing all of that: fine, not exciting. The problem with any Vikings run-back is the Vikings offense, which has been so bad it makes for terrible game stacks. The dump-offs that offense produces are worth more to the pass-catchers than to the quarterback, which is why I would almost rather have Murray than Goff, as gross as that sounds.

Build F is the one that surprised me. I could not bring myself to double Murray, so I skinny-stacked him with Jefferson, who is still getting the targets at a price that has come down to $7,100, ran it back with Gibbs because he projects so well, plugged in the cheap defense, and let the simulator finish it. It came back with Chase Brown and a Hockenson double tight end at 90%. It gives you more because you can run it back with Gibbs. The hope is that Detroit scores early and forces Murray to throw, because Minnesota has not needed to throw against New Orleans, Indianapolis, Miami or Tampa Bay. This is one of those weeks where punting quarterback is harder than usual, and we punt quarterback on this show almost every week, so the Murray build stays in the rotation. Of the three, Build F is the one I would actually register, because it is the one that gets Gibbs and Jefferson into the same lineup at a quarterback price nobody is paying. For the trade-off between a 3% quarterback and a projection you do not love, the NFL DFS leverage and game theory guide is the place to start.

FanDuel: Gibbs At $9,300 And A Price Sheet That Makes No Sense

FanDuel's pricing is whack right now, and maybe that is intentional. You have a $60,000 cap and play the same number of players, and the running backs are priced within a few hundred dollars of their DraftKings salaries, with Gibbs the one who is actually cheaper.

Gibbs is cheaper on FanDuel than on DraftKings, and the Sims project him at 49.1% ownership there. If he is going to be around 50% owned, I may just play 100% Gibbs on FanDuel this week, and I am not kidding. Bijan is $300 more on a cap $10,000 bigger, Javonte is $200 more, and London is $700 more. Chase Brown is the one with a real gap, $7,100 against $6,300. The pricing was never like this before. The site-by-site differences that make this gap matter are in the DraftKings vs FanDuel NFL DFS guide.

FanDuel this week: Gibbs at $9,300, the running backs priced like DraftKings on a $60,000 cap, and a Lawrence stack with Irving and Pollard underneath that simmed at 90%. Play FanDuel this week.

The optimal FanDuel build at 0% randomness was Prescott, Gibbs, Javonte Williams, Higgins, Egbuka, Michael Wilson (ARI), Travis Kelce (KC), Chase Brown and the Lions defense, a legal $60,000 lineup. It should not sim well because it is chalk, but if you play cash, that is probably your cash build. I cannot believe you can do that on one site.

For a tournament, the build I like is Lawrence at $7,700. Jacksonville is going to be popular, and I really like Lawrence in this spot, but the stack attachments make less sense than the quarterback does: Washington at $7,200 and Strange at $5,100 is what we tried. I have no interest in running it back. Indianapolis looks like it is pumping the brakes on Jonathan Taylor (IND), who reads like the next trade candidate, and Seth McGowan (IND) had 11 carries in a competitive game last week; I cannot see paying up there. Brian Thomas Jr. (JAX) at $3,600 on DraftKings is an insane fall for a player whose rookie year was remarkable, and he is basically irrelevant this season because they are not using him. Completing the Lawrence stack at 10% randomness gave me Gibbs, Chase Brown, Chase, Germie Bernard (PIT) at $5,000, which is a great price, and Pollard. Then I took Chase Brown out, kept Pollard and Chase, and put Irving in for the $7,400 that opened up. Brown projects better; I like Irving here, and if Spears is out the Pollard side gets better too. That version came back at 90%.

What Last Week's Winners Said

I open every one of these shows with the previous week's Power Sweep and Spy winners, and Week 7 was the most extreme version of the lesson we have seen all season. The two winning lineups shared exactly two players out of nine: Pollard and Tucker. Last week was a lower-scoring week, which usually means one or two outliers decide everything, and Pollard's three-touchdown, 40-point game was one of them.

The Power Sweep winner was a Matthew Stafford (LAR) double with Puka Nacua (LAR) and Colby Parkinson, who did little but cost $3,000 in the flex, with Tucker as the run-back, plus a secondary stack of London and George Kittle (SF), Pollard at under 8% ownership in that contest, and Josh Jacobs (GB) for 20 points at 2% ownership and $6,300. That is a build I love: a double stack with a run-back and a secondary stack, five players at 5% ownership or less, six under 10%, one above 20% (Kittle), 83.9% total ownership, and every dollar of the $50,000 spent. I was surprised Stafford was only 5% owned, and I misread Nacua, who I expected to be more than 13% owned; he was 12%. Jacobs at $6,300 was not a play I would have made. Hindsight says otherwise, and I am still not convinced.

The Spy winner is the one I cannot explain: a naked Burrow with Andrews and Flowers as a double run-back, Irving, Pollard at 3% in that contest, Jefferson and Tucker among the rest, seven players under 10%, 59% total ownership, and $100,000. The players are fine. The build is bizarre, because Burrow is not a quarterback who is going to run, and there is no world where I double run back a naked Burrow. Some winning lineups are objectively bad, and this is one, and it does not matter: you won. Across simulations it is not a lineup that wins long-term.

Post-contest numbers read on air from the Power Sweep's top 1% of lineups.

The chalk fades were sickening: Golden at 36% and in none of the top 1%, the Titans the same, and Jordan Love (GB) a disaster even with 18 points because of who came along for the ride. Gibbs, Otton and Hurst were collectively 61 or 62% owned and all disappointed, and Sam LaPorta did too. The strange one is Hurst, who scored zero and was still in 20% of the top 1%, because he was so cheap that he let you get to expensive players elsewhere; those lineups did not win, but he did not kill you. On the other side, the Buccaneers defense was in 60% of the top 1%, Higgins was a massive leverage spot that came through, and Chase was 8.9% owned and in a third of the top 1%. Chase did not win it for you. My guess, and it is only a guess until someone shows me the top Burrow lineups, is that the expensive Burrow double stack forced you down to Irving, Pollard and Tucker, and those were the cheap players that hit. KC Concepcion (CLE) was in my own best lineup, the one that finished fifth in a single-entry contest, and he died in the second half. Raw points matter, and there is more nuance to it than that: it depends on how popular a player was and how cheap he was. If you want to see what the Sims do with a hand-built lineup against that kind of field before Sunday, the how to use NFL DFS Sims guide walks through it.

Where I Land On Week 8

This slate rewards being right about which of the two 54.5 games the field actually crowds, and the Sims say it is Dallas, with the Cincinnati backfield next and Lamar Jackson almost nowhere. I am going to have plenty of the Dallas chalk, mostly through Build B, the double with McBride and Bourne coming back, because the simulator liked that shape best and because it fits Chase Brown and Tuten under it. The lineup I care most about is the one it liked least: Jackson, Flowers and Lane, with Cook coming back, at 4% on the quarterback in a game with a 54.5 total against a defense that has allowed 29 or more in five of six games. The simulator will keep telling me the chalk is chalk for a reason. If Baltimore-Buffalo turns into the shootout the total says it is and Dallas-Arizona stalls, that is the lineup that wins a single-entry tournament, and almost nobody else will have it. On FanDuel, Gibbs at $9,300 goes in everything, and the Lawrence build with Irving and Pollard is the one I run.

Injury news will move all of it before Sunday. Jackson, Aaron Jones, Egbuka, Spears, Surtain and Breece Hall (NYJ) are the names to watch, and the Sims re-run as each piece of news lands. The Friday Sims tournament strategy show will have Wednesday and Thursday practice reports and some of the early Friday ones, which is where the Jones and Egbuka questions get answered, and Thursday night's Panthers-Packers showdown strategy comes before that. Every slate is different, and the one lesson that carries from week to week is that price matters: Pollard at $5,300 was the one last week, and Brown at $6,300 and Jackson at $6,800 are the two I keep coming back to this week.

Sim ROI figures are from the Stokastic single lineup simulator as run on the Oct. 28 show. Salaries, projections and ownership are from the Stokastic NFL Sims feed for the Nov. 1 DraftKings and FanDuel main slates, stamped Oct. 27, 8:03 p.m. ET, and will move with injury news.

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