NFL DFS Week 2 Strategy

Stokastic's Week 2 NFL DFS Tournament Strategy Show ran solo this week (Greg was tied up with other Stokastic business), but the read on the main slate came through just as sharp. The single biggest number to come out of it: Jake Hari's own Sims build is sitting at 81% exposure to Bijan Robinson (ATL), and he says he wouldn't mind waking up Sunday at 100%. Around that anchor play sits a bounce-back angle on a rookie tight end who caught zero passes in Week 1, a chalk debate at running back in Minnesota, and three years of data on what winning tournament lineups actually look like on ownership. Here's the full breakdown, plays and leans both, before Sunday's DraftKings and FanDuel slates lock.

In Summary

• The Play: Bijan Robinson (ATL) at 81% Sims exposure, the one name in this build that isn't a lean.
• The Data: three years of Power Sweep and SPY winners show 85% carried three-plus sub-10%-owned players, but only 5% had zero players owned 20% or higher. Don't fade the chalk; add cheap leverage around it.
• The Bounce-Back Angle: Colston Loveland (CHI) and Jordan Addison (MIN) both went quiet in Week 1 and are projected for single-digit ownership in Week 2's Bears-Vikings game.
• The Backfield Debate: Aaron Jones (MIN) grades well in the Sims but risks getting too chalky; Omarion Hampton (LAC) and Jadarian Price (SEA) are the value pivots if that happens.
• Watch Before Lock: a Thursday/Friday injury report (Nico Collins, Zay Flowers, Joe Burrow, Brock Bowers, Chris Olave) that could reshuffle exposures across the board.

Watch The Video

Jake runs the full Sims build live, position by position, on the Stokastic NFL Tournament Strategy Show: Watch on YouTube.

What Three Years Of Winning Lineups Say About Week 2

Before getting into this week's board, the show leaned on a Wednesday deep dive that's worth carrying into every GPP decision this week. Stokastic pulled the last three seasons of DraftKings Power Sweep and SPY winners (roughly 55 contests each) and broke down exactly how those winning lineups were built: salary, roster construction, stack shape, and ownership by band. The full data is published free on Stokastic; here's the piece of it that should change how you build this week.

The headline finding was at quarterback: 75-77% of winning lineups rostered a QB priced at or just below $6,000, and only six winning lineups over three years used a QB above $7,500. Five of those six were Josh Allen (three times) or Lamar Jackson (twice). Cheap, low-owned quarterbacks aren't just fine in a tournament; they're what actually wins them.

The ownership breakdown is the more useful tool for building today's lineups specifically:

The standout row is the middle one: 85% of winners rostered three or more players under 10% ownership, against just 70% of the field, the single biggest gap in the whole dataset. But notice the row right below it: only 5% of winners got there with zero players owned 20% or higher. Averaged out, a winning lineup carried about two sub-5% players, four sub-10% players, and two-to-three players at 20%-plus. The lesson isn't "go as contrarian as possible." It's "keep the chalk you trust, and find your leverage in the 4-10% range around it." Runbacks told a similar story: lineups with two players from the same game as their stack partner won about 60% of the time (the field did it 56% of the time), but less than half of all winners used a runback at all. Good when it's there, not a requirement.

That "keep the chalk, add cheap leverage" framework is exactly the lens for the two biggest angles on this week's board.

The Play: Bijan Robinson At 81% Exposure

If there's one name locked into this build regardless of how the rest of the roster shakes out, it's Bijan Robinson (ATL).

Bijan Robinson (ATL) · 81% personal Sims exposure · 43% optimal on a 13-game slate

The case:

• He posted a 54% opportunity share in Week 1, the highest of any player in the league.
• The Sims have him at a 43% optimal rate this week, which Jake called "a ridiculous number" on a 13-game slate.
• Atlanta's Week 2 opponent, Carolina, just gave up 300 rushing yards and six rushing touchdowns on the ground in Week 1.
• Michael Pennix's return from a season-ending injury adds uncertainty to the Falcons' passing game, but Robinson's workload doesn't depend on the passing game working.

The whole build starts here. Jake said flatly that if he ended up at 100% Robinson and something went wrong, he could live with it. That's the level of conviction an 81% share represents, and it's the number everything else in this build gets weighed against.

Build your own exposure numbers before lock. The same Contest Sims that produced that 81% figure are available free for a week. Run the Week 2 slate yourself and see exactly where the field is landing. Use code SIMSTRATWK2 for 10% off your first week or month of Stokastic Sims.

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The Bounce-Back Angle: Loveland And Addison

Week 2 is Jake's favorite week for exactly this reason: "everyone fades everyone who had a bad week." Two names fit that setup perfectly, and both play in the same Week 2 matchup between Chicago and Minnesota.

Colston Loveland (CHI) looked like nothing in the box score (zero catches on two targets), but the underlying usage says otherwise. He ran 34 routes last week, more than any other Bears player (nobody else topped 27), on 38 dropbacks from Caleb Williams, and played 87% of the snaps. Chicago simply didn't need to throw much against Carolina's defense; that doesn't mean Loveland's role shrank. He's down to $5,000 this week and projected for just 5% ownership. OddsShopper's alt lines even price 100-plus receiving yards for Loveland at 8-to-1, a number worth a look given Minnesota gave up seven chunk plays of 20-plus yards to Green Bay's Jordan Love in Week 1.

Jordan Addison (MIN) had the same quiet line (zero catches on two targets) in the same Week 1 sample-size trap, and he's still Minnesota's clear No. 2 receiving option. The idea Jake floated on the show: pair Addison and Loveland as a two-player mini-stack from opposite sides of the same game, layered inside a build anchored somewhere else, rather than betting on either alone.

That's the ownership math from the section above showing up in real time. Loveland's 5% and Addison's expected range both sit right in that 4-10% leverage band that winning lineups actually carry, without needing to fade the chalk everywhere else to get there.

Backfield Value: The Aaron Jones Chalk Question

Not every angle on the show resolved into a fired play, and the clearest example is Aaron Jones (MIN). The Sims like him (he's projected at $5,100 for the same Bears-Vikings game), but Jake was explicit that his exposure depends entirely on where the field lands: "if Aaron Jones is very chalky, I'm not doing it." That's a lean with a condition attached, not a play, and it's worth tracking his ownership right up to lock.

If Jones does get too popular, two cheaper backs give you a real pivot:

Omarion Hampton (LAC) is projected for just 4% ownership and 4% optimal despite still handling 75% of the Chargers' running back carries in a rough Week 1 for LA's offense (the Chargers' new offensive coordinator's debut was ugly, and Hampton wasn't targeted at all in the passing game). The context changes this week: the Chargers are 6.5-point home favorites, and Brock Bowers is unlikely to suit up. Jake framed him as a "one-to-one pivot" off a 20%-owned Ashton Jeanty, a 17%-owned Javonte Williams, or Bucky Irving, if the field crowds around any of those instead.

Jadarian Price (SEA) got minimal run last week behind Kenneth Walker but made it count: 5.2 yards per carry on 10 attempts against a good Patriots run defense, with a long gain of only 13 yards, meaning that average wasn't propped up by one explosive run. He's priced at $5,500 and stands out as the value pivot off Aaron Jones if Jones's number gets too high to touch.

Quarterbacks And The Injury Report That Could Flip The Board

Asked for his top four quarterbacks going into Week 2, Jake named Dak Prescott (DAL), Baker Mayfield (TB), Drew Lock (SEA) (if Sam Darnold remains out and Lock stacks with Jaxon Smith-Njigba), and Jaden Daniels (WAS), who was pulling only 5% ownership against a Dallas defense that closed Week 1 looking, in his words, "embarrassingly bad."

None of that is final until Friday's practice report lands, and a handful of injury designations were doing more to move this board than anything else on the show:

• Nico Collins (HOU): questionable; his absence reroutes a chunk of Houston's target share.
• Zay Flowers (BAL): did not practice Thursday; his status swings the entire Ravens passing-game read.
• Joe Burrow (CIN): dealing with back tightness, a limited participant in practice.
• Brock Bowers (LV): still not practicing.
• Chris Olave (NO): left Thursday's practice with a hamstring injury.

Any one of those flipping changes exposures across multiple builds, which is exactly why Jake keeps rerunning the Sims through Friday morning rather than locking a build on Wednesday's information.

Putting It Together

The throughline across all of it is the same one the historical data laid out at the top: don't try to get away from the chalk you trust. Bijan Robinson at 81% is proof that sometimes the right move is more exposure, not less. The leverage comes from stacking cheap, low-owned names like Loveland and Addison around that anchor, the same 4-10%-owned range that showed up three years running in actual winning lineups. Get the roster and workload reads right, watch Friday's injury report, and the ownership math takes care of itself.

Run the same builds the show ran live, with your own exposure controls, in the NFL DataHub, the source for every projection, ownership number, and stack in this piece. New to tournament DFS? Start with the DFS 101 beginner guide before you build.

New to Stokastic? Grab a free week of the NFL Sims and build your own Week 2 tournament lineups with the same exposure data from this show. Code SIMSTRATWK2 takes 10% off your first week or month if you subscribe.

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More on this: NFL Week 1 DFS Picks 2026 · NFL DFS Showdown Strategy: Captain 1.5x & Leverage · NFL DFS Defense Strategy: How To Pick A DST · NFL DFS Tight End Strategy: Win The Matchup, Not The Name · NFL DFS Quarterback Strategy: The Dual-Threat Edge