Five Tips for Building Better DraftKings Showdown NFL DFS Lineups ahead of TNF Chiefs vs. Texans

DraftKings Showdown slates have quickly become one of the most popular formats on the site. It takes place in just one game and allows you to play five players of any positions plus one extra player at captain. The captain scores 1.5x the points but has his cost increased by the same factor. Because the format is so new and positionless, it’s one of the best ways to find an edge in today’s NFL DFS landscape. Nolan Kelly created a sheet of trends from all showdown winners in 2019 that can be found HERE. It will be updated throughout the 2020 season. Using his work and extra data for ownership and salary, I’ve created five rules of thumb for DraftKings Showdown.


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NFL DFS Showdown Strategy  for DraftKings | Chiefs vs. Texans TNF

Bonus: The Optimal Roster Construction

Based on Nolan Kelly’s original piece on DraftKings Showdown, this was the breakdown of winning constructions:

  • 5-1 (CPT, 4 FLEX, 1 OPP): 11 times
  • 4-2 (CPT, 3 FLEX, 2 OPP): 13 times
  • 3-3: 19 Times
  • 2-4: (CPT, 1 FLEX, 3 OPP): 4 times
  • 1-5 (CPT, 5 OPP FLEX): 0 times

He added that 5-1 was 10-15% more frequent in winning builds than the field as a whole. The 4-2 and 3-3 builds were the most common ways to get a winning lineup but not as underrepresented in the field as 5-1. There’s almost no reason to deviate from these three constructions.

5. Position Allocation

Playing one quarterback was the most common approach to the position. Exactly half of the winning teams rostered one QB. There were five teams without any quarterback. Three featured a total under 43.5. All five hit the under and none saw more than 40 points scored.

No kickers was the most common build with 69% of winning lineups taking that approach. Only one two-ticker team took down a tournament. There was no difference in game total based on kicker.

Over half of the lineups used a single defense. Final game total was a massive decider here. The single-defense builds finished with an average of 36.6 points on the board. No-defense was at  49.9.

Play a quarterback and a defense if the total is low. Then load up on receivers and running backs. Two tight ends from the same team as exceedingly rare but tight ends generally fall into the same category as receivers and backs.

4. Who to Play at Captain in Draftkings Showdown

Also using Nolan’s original DraftKings Showdown deconstruction, here were the four most popular options at captain:

  • RB: 16
  • WR1: 12
  • QB: 10
  • DST: 4

No other position appeared more than twice. Focus on these four options for your premium selection. Defenses were only used in games with low totals that hit the under. They make sense in that situation and no other.

Quarterbacks were always paired with at least one tight end or receiver. Of the ten, 60% were paired with two pass-catchers.

3. Don’t Use All of the Cap in your NFL DFS lineups

Casual players have a tendency to use every last dollar of the cap given to them. This immediately confines your number of possible rosters exponentially and ensures that you’ll have a lineup that is duplicated with someone else’s. The average salary spent in winning lineups was $48,500. Only 24% of the lineups spent more than $49,700. The overall spend was slightly correlated to the final game total (r squared of .065). When a game features a lot of points, it’s important to get access to as many great plays as possible without spending all of the cap.

2. Budgeting

DraftKings Showdown

Budgeting is fairly straight forward. Spend in a linear fashion with the first flex costing about $10,700 on average. Most winning teams didn’t go too far down the salary list for their final spot. The average cost of the fifth flex player was $3,100. Winning teams have used a player who cost less than $1,000 in 17% of their lineups. If there’s an egregious price on a backup who got promoted or a role-player going overlooked, feel free to get them in. Otherwise, spread out the money a bit more evenly.

The most interesting finding here is how cheap the captained player is (once reducing their salary by 1.5x to normalize to flex pricing). Before their salary increase, captains are the third-most-expensive player on the average winning roster. They averaged $8,700 as a flex play ($13,000 as in the captain spot). Captain cost was not related to the final total. Playing a mid-priced captain gives your roster access to a high-upside player up top while not sacrificing on getting multiple studs in at flex.

1. DraftKings Showdown Ownership

DraftKings Showdown

Just like salary, ownership is distributed in a linear fashion. The first flex spot features an average ownership of 48.2% while the final flex sits at 13.5%. One out of every five winning lineups included a player under 5% ownership. The lineups averaged exactly two players under 25% owned. The cumulative ownership has been 164.9%.

Captain ownership didn’t change based on the end total fo the game. Scoring appears to affect what positions you roster and how much you spend in total but not where it is spent or how chalky you should be going.

The captain ownership did vary by position slightly. All of the typical fantasy flex positions (WR/RB/TE) averaged between 8.8% and 10.9% ownership when used at the captain. Defenses were more popular when used but only by a few percent. The lineups with a quarterback at captain rostered him at 17.1% ownership and a cost of $16,500.

Despite going extra chalky at captain, all four QB lineups came in below the average cumulative ownership. Sinking so much money into the top spot forced these lineups to get unique across the board, more than making up for their common choice of captain.


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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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