The NFL has a difficult act to follow for Conference Championships weekend, after the amazing four games from the Divisional Round. The two games on the Sunday slate provide a bounty of NFL DFS options for both Showdown slates and the combined two-game main slate across the industry. The games are differently shaped, with the early game between the Bengals and Chiefs carrying a huge 54-point total and the evening game between the 49ers and Rams dropping down to 46 points. The afternoon game, of course, has a larger point spread, with the hometown Chiefs favored by 7.5, while the Rams are just 3.5-point favorites in the evening game. With the expectation of a shootout and an abundance of premium skill player options, as well as two excellent quarterbacks and stout running games, in the early contest, the weight of public ownership leans slightly in that direction, but everyone will be popular on a two-game slate. Getting to a differentiated combination of viable players with upside and a lack of ownership is challenging on a slate such as this but utilizing groups can help structure lineups that will be more likely to avoid duplication while maintaining significant upside for NFL DFS point scoring on both DraftKings and FanDuel.
This article focuses on building lineups with a quality foundation by utilizing the powerful Groups and Rules/Limits tools within Fantasy Cruncher. All of the concepts and pairings included below can be applied to hand-building as well, the goal is to create lineups that have high scoring correlation and take advantage of combined outcomes within stacks while limiting the likelihood of building inefficient or negatively correlated entries for a full slate of NFL DFS lineups.
Fantasy Cruncher – New How-To Video
The uptick in questions related to the how-to aspects of Fantasy Cruncher along with several noteworthy new tools demanded a new how-to tutorial video. I put together the above review of all of Fantasy Cruncher’s advanced options with some basic how-to on the constructions, rules, limits, and groups that we use in this article. The tutorial also reviews all of Fantasy Cruncher’s new features and the important distinctions between the various sets of projections that are available.
Conference Championships DraftKings & FanDuel NFL DFS Optimizer Groups & Picks – Main Slate
Overview
The Week 1 article featured a deep dive into the general settings menu and various utilities within Fantasy Cruncher, it is still available for anyone who would like to refer back. We will maintain the list of rules and limits below throughout the season, with occasional tweaks, if needed. Each week sees yet another fresh crop of value plays as situations change and injuries create opportunities around the league. These changing roles and emergent value plays are accounted for in the process of creating these groups from week to week. After a large pool of lineups is created utilizing these groups, it is still of critical importance to filter them for factors including ceiling projections and leverage potential, as well as our optimal lineup rates and Boom/Bust potential. Getting to a strong mix of the most optimal positively leveraged plays will be a strong foundation for a large pool of tournament lineups.
DraftKings + FanDuel Stack Rules – Two-Game Main Slate
This set of rules will force Fantasy Cruncher to build lineups with certain combinations. We are looking to always stack at least one skill player, ideally a pass-catcher, with his quarterback while also playing a skill player from the opposing team in the lineup. The theory behind this build is that a high-scoring stack will require some response from the opposing team to truly deliver a ceiling score in most situations, otherwise the team that is ahead will simply slow down and run out the clock. These rules are applied by completing the sentences with selections from the drop-down menu, they follow a very straightforward logic. Exceptions can be made for teams at the bottom of the rule creation window. After a rule is set, click the blue bar to add it, it will appear at the bottom of the screen as a completed rule.
QB with at least one WR/TE from Same Team (note: It is fine to make this two or to utilize two of these, one with WR/TE and one with RB/WR/TE, but we can refine that and get it exactly how we want it for each team via Groups)
QB with at least one RB/WR/TE from Opposing Team
QB with at most zero DST from Same Team (this is more of a personal preference; high-scoring teams and quarterbacks tend to leave their defenses on the field exposing them to simple point-scoring negatives)
Limit Rules
Limit rules can be applied to restrict certain combinations from coming together. This is powerful for limiting multiple running backs from the same team or getting overweight to a certain stack within a lineup.
Limit QB/ RB/WR/TE from Same Team to three
Limit RB/WR/TE from Same Team to one unless paired with QB from Same Team OR Opposing Team
Limit RB from Same Team to one (one can also do this with WR in a separate rule that adds an “unless paired with QB or opposing QB,” but it is a personal preference for NFL DFS)
Note:Â Allow one (or more if desired) offensive player against team defense in Advanced Settings as well, or Fantasy Cruncher will not have enough elbow room in lineup constructions.
Construction
These groups are built by utilizing the quarterback as the KEY player (by clicking the key icon next to his name), with the thinking that the quarterback play is the driving factor in which stack is utilized in that lineup. Built to specification, each team will have two groups, a team group, and an opponent group, both of which utilize the same quarterback, so four groups per game. This is the best approach to truly capture the requirement of playing individual “run-back” plays from the opposing team. A more basic approach would be to include all of the skill players from a game in each quarterback’s group and rely on rules and limits to restrict any potential overflow. It is highly recommended to save the Week 1 groups as a foundation that will be updated for the rest of the season. The recommended groups will include skill players who have an active role in their offense and provide significant correlation with their quarterback’s scoring, quite often bell-cow running backs who do not specialize in the passing game will not be included in groups as they are projected highly and appear on their own in basically correct distributions, while also not always providing the strongest positive correlation plays. Stacking quarterbacks with pass-catchers and allowing running backs to fall into the lanes then crated by settings, available salary and randomness should create a well-distributed set of quality lineups. These groups are updated weekly to account for changes in utilization, schemes, injuries, target shares, and more.
Sunday Updates
Tomorrow will feature a Sunday-only slate article and any as-needed emergency updates to this article for late-swapping purposes. The groups below are based on news available as of Saturday morning, boosts and downgrades are based on the full combined slate.
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NFL DFS Optimizer Picks: Conference Championships Team Groups for DraftKings & FanDuel
The goal here is to create a large pool of well-built lineups that can be utilized in any large-field GPP contest. Crunch far more lineups than needed and utilize a sorting table in Excel to filter to the best set of lineups for entries. The lineups created in these crunches should provide a broad distribution that includes some of the lower-owned skill players from each stack. Applying boosts is critical in pushing and pulling ownership on individual players within their team’s stacked lineups.
The groups below are designed so that each quarterback will have two groups to create, one with his skill players and another with the opposing team. A more basic approach would be to add them all to one large group with an “at least three” and let rules and limits set things, but there is a more granular level of control in creating them separately.
Utilizing two groups also allows us to place running backs into the “run-back” position in certain teams while not including them in the primary stack for their team. This is useful when there is a situation with an extremely highly projected running back who does not necessarily fit into his team’s passing game. These players are threaded throughout the following construction recommendations.
Cincinnati Bengals
Key Player: Joe Burrow
Setting: At least one
Group: Ja’Marr Chase (+15%), Tee Higgins, Tyler Boyd (+10%), C.J. Uzomah (+10%)
Opposing Setting: At least one
Group: Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce, Byron Pringle (+15%), Mecole Hardman (+25%), Demarcus Robinson (+50%)
Kansas City Chiefs
Key Player: Patrick Mahomes
Setting: At least one
Group: Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce, Byron Pringle (+15%), Mecole Hardman (+25%), Demarcus Robinson (+50%), Jerick McKinnon (-10%)
Opposing Setting: At least one
Group: Ja’Marr Chase (+15%), Tee Higgins, Tyler Boyd (+15%), C.J. Uzomah (+15%)
Los Angeles Rams
Key Player: Matthew Stafford
Setting: At least one
Group: Cooper Kupp, Cam Akers (-25%), Odell Beckham Jr. (+15%), Van Jefferson Jr., Tyler Higbee (+15%)
Opposing Setting: At least one
Group: Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk, Jauan Jennings (+50%), Mohammed Sanu (+125%)
San Francisco 49ers
Key Player: Jimmy Garoppolo
Setting: At least one
Group: Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk (+15%), Jauan Jennings (+50%), Mohammed Sanu (+125%)
Opposing Setting: At least one
Group: Cooper Kupp, Cam Akers (-25%), Odell Beckham Jr. (+15%), Van Jefferson Jr., Tyler Higbee (+15%)
NFL DFS Optimizer Picks: Conference Championships Team Groups for DraftKings & FanDuel – Showdown Slates
Small Sample Central — Trends and Notes
Several of the primary lineup construction notes from previous versions of the Showdown article will continue to be listed in this space, but each week we will attempt to find parallels based on Vegas data and the general game environment from historical contests in the pool of DraftKings Showdown research from 2019 through this week’s contests. It is important to not get too focused on results-based thinking in such a small sample. Quality lineup construction is always the focus, but historical results can help inform some basic decisions in a pricing and ownership vacuum. A quick summary of that previous content:
- According to tracking data for DraftKings Showdown contests over 2019 and 2020, only 17 of 95 slates were won with a quarterback Captain.
- Across the same sample, wide receivers and running backs split the outcomes evenly, with 33 tournament-winning events each.
- Of the 38 times that a wide receiver or tight end was in the winning Captain position, only three of those builds did not include at least one quarterback in a Flex position.
- Thirty-five of 95 winning lineups featured at least one defense, but only two of those featured both defenses.
- Twenty-nine winning lineups featured at least one kicker, but only two of those included both.
- Only eight winning lineups included at least one defense and one kicker, while one person won a tournament with two defenses and a kicker in 2019.
The Sunday Showdown slates are differently shaped, with the early game between the Bengals and Chiefs looking like a shootout, while the later game is trending toward a lower score but potentially a more competitive situation. Both contests have an abundance of premium skill players and there are excellent options at every position, which should be expected at this level of competition.
The first game is carrying a 54-point total, our sample includes 10 games that carried a total within 2.5 points on either side, but if we extend to include any game totaled above 52, we get a more broad base of comparison with 19 games. That sample includes a quarterback in every winning lineup with the exception of just one, while seven of the 19 winners rostered both quarterbacks. Signal callers were rostered in the Captain role in only four of the 19 winning lineups, as usual we see the position with more value in the Flex role. Eight of the winning lineups featured a pass-catcher in the Captain role, while seven of them used a running back, a closer split than one might expect in such highly totaled games. The clear trend is toward utilizing skill players in the flex position in virtually all situations in Showdown formats, however. High-scoring games do not bode well for defense or kickers, even in flex roles. Team defenses were utilized in only two of the 19 winning lineups, while kickers came up successful four times. A mix of positively leveraged skill players and passers is the approach to lineup construction for this game in Showdown formats across the industry.
The later game comes in at just 46 points. This yields an 18-game sample between 45 and 47 points, in which we find just two quarterback Captain victories, but also just two lineups that failed to roster a quarterback in any spot. Once again, the value is in getting to passers in flex roles. In this sample, half of the winning lineups utilized a pass-catcher in the Captain role, while only five of them were winners with running back Captains. The sample also includes a pair of oddball kicker Captain winners. Defenses are more viable in this format, they were included in flex roles in eight of the 18 winning lineups, with kickers also gaining ground and landing in the winning lineup seven total times, five in the flex role. Getting to a more evenly constructed blend of skill players and quarterbacks, while mixing in a small smattering of the alternative plays is a strong approach to the evening game in Showdown formats.
DraftKings + FanDuel Stack Rules
QB with at least one RB/WR/TE from Opposing Team (this will happen naturally in most Showdown constructions, but including the rule will eliminate lineups that feature only an opposing kicker or quarterback)
QB with at least one WR/TE from Same Team (this will happen naturally in a large portion of lineups, but stacking quarterbacks with pass catchers is the easiest way to rack up NFL DFS points. It makes sense to include this rule to force the build, in most situations)
Limit Rules
Limit rules are slightly less important for Showdown slates as there are only two teams to choose from. They are still useful for preventing suboptimal constructions, however. Including the following will help prevent these less likely builds.
Limit QB/RB/WR/TE/DST/K from Same Team to three unless paired with Captain
Limit RB from Same Team to one (this is a rule that can be toggled on and off over multiple crunches, but the preference for this slate would be to use it)
Limit K from Same Game to one
Limit DEF from Same Game to one
Construction Basics
We will utilize Fantasy Cruncher’s Groups utility to create specific builds. The Groups feature includes the ability to designate players as the key to the group, or the player whose use in a position will trigger the group requirements. For Showdown slates this can be utilized to force specific sets of players or positions along with each type of designated Captain. The example below shows a group that utilizes Joe Mixon in the Captain role as the key player. It will then force all constructions featuring Mixon in the Captain role to include at least three of the players listed in the group including both quarterbacks and the positively leveraged flex players from both sides. The group leaves open spaces to be filled out by the popular and negatively leveraged Cincinnati receivers.
NFL DFS Optimizer Groups & Picks
Unlike multi-game slates, when attacking individual potential game scripts, these groups are better deployed individually for separate crunches that can then be combined into a single pool of lineups. Running them all at once is likely to create conflicting scenarios that will either prevent or limit a full crunch.
Quarterback Inclusion
The first wrinkle in utilizing Groups to create specific constructions is that the tool differentiates between a wide receiver or running back and the same player in the Captain or MVP spot. This requires the creation of a group that adds the Captain version of any likely skill player as the key player, with a rule setting that any lineup featuring any of these players must include one of the quarterbacks in a Flex position. The alternate approach to this problem is to remove all but the skill players from potential inclusion at the Captain spot then create a rule that will simply stack the quarterback with the Captain spot, but that approach is likely more flawed. This group does not currently force quarterbacks when defense or a kicker is used at Captain.
Key Players: All primary skill-players as Captain
Setting: At least one
Group: Joe Burrow & Patrick Mahomes – Standard versions
This group will result in getting one of the quarterbacks whenever any of the listed primary skill-players is utilized at Captain. To force the quarterback from the same team, multiple groups should be created for skill players from each team utilizing just the quarterback from that team. When quarterbacks appear in Flex positions, the rules and limit settings will kick in to force optimal constructions in the other Flex roles.
Note:Â Repeat this same concept for the quarterback inclusion group in the second game, grouping all relevant skill players in the Captain roles with the standard versions of quarterbacks Jimmy Garoppolo and Matthew Stafford as the group with a setting of at least one.
NFL DFS Concept – Chiefs Primary Weapons
Key Player(s): Tyreek Hill & Travis Kelce – Captain versions
Setting: At least 4
Group: Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Tyreek Hill (-15%), Travis Kelce (-15%), Tee Higgins, Tyler Boyd, Jerick McKinnon, Mecole Hardman, Joe Mixon, Demarcus Robinson
This group looks to capitalize on the extreme options from the Chiefs passing game, while separating them in a mix of lineups but not entirely excluding them from being rostered together. The group is triggered whenever either Travis Kelce or Tyreek Hill are utilized in the Captain role and it forces four players from a list that includes both quarterbacks and all of the positively leveraged or low-owned skill players, while slightly reducing the projection for the standard version of the star not selected in the Captain role.
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NFL DFS Lineup concept – Super Cooper
Key Player(s): Copper Kupp – Captain version
Setting: At least four
Group: Matthew Stafford, Jimmy Garoppolo, Tyler Higbee, Eli Mitchell, Sony Michel, Odell Beckham Jr., Van Jefferson Jr., Jauan Jennings, Brandon Aiyuk, Rams Defense, 49ers Defense, Matt Gay, Robbie Gould
You want to play Cooper Kupp at Captain, I want to play Cooper Kupp at Captain, everyone building NFL DFS Showdown lineups this weekend wants to play Cooper Kupp at Captain. This group strives to help differentiate the lineups in which the Rams superstar receiver lands in the Captain role. It forces a group of four players from a list of the more positively leveraged and lower-owned options from both sides, as well as the alternative pieces including both defenses and both kickers, which retain upside in this game format.
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