NFL DFS Week 10 DraftKings Millionaire Maker Lineup Review and Strategy

Every week, some lucky person takes home $1 million by winning the DraftKings DFS Millionaire Maker contest, aka The Milly Maker. The contest is $20 to enter with a maximum of 150 entries per person. I looked at a few key trends from two years of winners this summer and pulled some key trends that can be found here: Five Key Trends from Million Dollar DraftKings NFL DFS Lineups. In this series, we’ll look at what the winning lineup did each week with its DraftKings picks for the Millionaire Maker and see if it aligns with prior trends or if there are new ways and DraftKings lineup advice we need to take down the contest. Here is the Week 10 breakdown.

DraftKings DFS Lineup Advice: Week 10 Millionaire Maker Review

The Winning DraftKings DFS Lineup Picks

NFL DFS

The Week 10 Milly Maker was won by “MEAGANJOY” with a stack of Kyler Murray and DeAndre Hopkins with a Cole Beasley runback. This lineup had an average ownership of 11.5% and no player was owned in over 20% of lineups.  The roster may have stacked the most popular quarterback with his most popular receiver, but that was the only chalky play featured in the lineup. That was also the only instance of correlation within the lineup, but there were other decisions that gained this lineup leverage over the field. Obviously, this can’t be predicted with great accuracy, but getting three players with over 25 points, two of whom topped 30, all at less than 5% ownership certainly helps. Their massive games shouldn’t have come as an unimaginable surprise, though.

Cole Beasley

Beasley was the No. 3 receiver in a game with a 29.25 implied team total. He was averaging six targets per game heading into Week 10 and had a 12-target game in Week 17. He was a cheap and unique way to get access to the game of the week.

Josh Jacobs

Jacobs’ team was favored by a field goal at home and had a 26.75 implied team total. He was averaging 22.5 touches per game heading into last week. A single game of Devontae Booker getting in the mix may have kept his ownership in check. A half season of data would suggest ignoring that one game.

Diontae Johnson

Johnson and the Steelers had a 26 implied team total. Injuries had kept him in check throughout the season but he had four games of double-digit targets. He was hurt at some point in all of his other games. These three plays hit so it’s easy to point out the reasons why they were good plays. However, Beasley was a leverage point on the more popular Stefon Diggs and John Brown while still giving lineups access to a run-back in the best game of the week. Johnson and Jacobs were high-volume players with high implied team totals at low ownership. These types of DraftKings picks won’t always smash, but they are the choices we should be looking to make when creating tournament lineups.

The Fade of the Century

Mike Davis was owned in over 40% of lineups in the Milly Maker. He was also projected as one of the best DraftKings picks and values of the entire season. Squaring these two circles was the key to winning in Week 10 and the Davis faders took home an easy win. Was it the right call before seeing the outcome of his week? It’s impossible to say without a perfect (and nonexistent) projection of his overall range of outcomes and his ownership at the least.

However, what this lineup did do was fade Davis and then eat the chalk with its quarterback/receiver stack. That may be the most important part of the decision-making process. It didn’t forgo all of the good plays for the sake of being contrarian. It really faded two popular running back plays in order to be able to play the good stacking option. Aaron Jones at an absurd 43% ownership was the other chalk RB. Duke Johnson at 22% also drew considerable ownership.

Building a winning tournament lineup isn’t about fading the best plays and hoping every popular option on the slate busts. It’s about choosing which plays are worth eating the chalk on and balancing that with finding spots to be different from the field. This lineup got to play two home-favored running backs with high team totals because it faded the two cheap runners. Both backs were underdogs by at least 4.5 points when the lines closed. Between removing those two players and taking a stand on Alvin Kamara versus Jones, this lineup had ample leverage to surpass the field and coast into first place.

Late Swap in DraftKings DFS

This was a unique slate with more games in the late group of matches than the early group. That won’t be the case on every slate (it hasn’t happened in the history of NFL DFS main slates). The lessons learned from it still apply. With this lineup fading all of the running back chalk from the early slate of games, by 3:45 p.m. EST, it was clear that it would be in play to take down tournaments. If it had an unpopular stack as the centerpiece, it would have made sense to move to Murray or Josh Allen build. The fades had already hit. Over half the field was drawing dead with a busted running back in their lineups.

Instead of a field of 207,352 entrants, it was now down a quarter of that at most. This lineup could afford to play it like a smaller tournament instead of the Milly Maker. Playing a Hopkins/Murray stack makes sense when much of the field is already done for the day. Had Davis gone for 25 points, this lineup would have needed to play an absurd stack just to have a chance of hitting the cash line.

The Next Opportunity

There won’t be slates with this obvious of a skew toward late games in the future but there can still be modest edges in knowing all of the options for when your fades work out or fail. We get a three-game slate on Thanksgiving next week. That means the slate will be chopped into thirds and similar late-swap strategy and DraftKings lineup advice will be available once again.


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Author
If you like fantasy football and care about data, there's a 50/50 chance I've written for your favorite site. In a few short years I've covered, season-long, dynasty, best ball, and DFS for football. I used to be watching games and pretend to know what I was talking about but now I just spew numbers that forecast outcomes better than any scout. Come for the numbers, stay for the bad jokes and Zach Zenner references. RIP XFL.

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