DFS Payline Analysis: NFL Week 17 Review

As this column goes live, we have officially finished the daily fantasy slate for the 2016 NFL regular season, which is tough to believe. It was an interesting season on the whole with plenty of ups and downs, breakout performances, and millions of dollars won, and Week 17 might have been one of the most interesting weeks of the season due to many teams having nothing to play for.

At the top of the heap for fantasy performances were studs like Aaron Rodgers, Matt, Ryan, and Tom Brady but after these three MVP candidates the scoring leaders were truly unpredictable as Rex Burkhead and Zach Ertz both lead their respective positions in scoring. Other notable performances came from Shaun Draughn, Jerick McKinnon, Charcandrick West, Devontae Booker, DeAngelo Williams, Brock Osweiler, and Landry Jones who all ended up scoring over 20 Draftkings points.

Rather than trying to make sense out of random one-off performances, we’ll hop right into the breakdown of Week 17’s daily fantasy slate. Altogether the top scores posted on FanDuel and Draftkings rose an average of one percent from Week 16, while the paylines in the GPP tournaments on both sites rose about two percent.

FanDuel

First up on the FanDuel side of things, we’ll be looking at the low buy-in tournaments which include the $1 Dive, $2 Snap, and the $5 Sling TV Rush. All three of the winners in this buy-in level used two-man Green Bay Packers stacks, with two players utilizing Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams while the winner of the Sling TV Rush used Rodgers and Jordy Nelson. All three lineups were conducted remarkably similar as each winner utilized Rodgers, Devonta Freeman, Mark Ingram, Michael Thomas, Zach Ertz, and the Cardinals defense. The aforementioned players combined to put up over 167 FanDuel points and ensured that players who used them all together ended up finishing in the money. This is the first week in recent memory where the low buy-in tournament rosters ended up being noticeably homogenized past the point of the same two or three-man stacks.

For the medium buy-in portion of the slate, we’ll examine the $12 Kickoff and the $25 Sunday Million tournaments. User jhoosier1 was able to take down the first prize of $30,000 in the Kickoff by submitting a lineup that contained a three-man Falcons stack of Matt Ryan, Devonta Freeman, and Julio Jones. The three Falcons combined to put up almost 75 points, and they were able to bolster their lineup by solid performances from Mark Ingram, Davante Adams, Michael Thomas, and Zach Ertz who all posted point totals that exceeded 20 points. Despite only selecting one player that had sub 13 percent ownership, jhoosier1 was able to outscore the number two finisher by almost 10 points, so kudos to them! In the Sunday Million, user bfriedman171 was able to put up the second highest score that we’ve seen in this tournament since Week 7, posting a total of 218.54 on the back of a Matt Ryan and Devonta Freeman stack. They were able to pivot from the field at the wide receiver position when they opted to go with Julian Edelman, who had just 4.8 percent ownership and went off for a 27.7-point day. When combined with other popular plays such as Mark Ingram and Michael Thomas, it’s easy to see how bfriedman171 finished 11 points higher than the number two finisher in the Sunday Million.

In order to figure out how the high buy-in slate went down on Sunday, we’ll take a quick look at the $100 Blitz, $300 Monster, and $1,000 Gunslinger. In the Blitz, user jeremyc1524 was able to win $50,000 dollars by putting together a lineup that scored 203.34 points, which is more than 10 points higher than the previous top score in this tournament since Week 7. Despite utilizing Jordy Nelson and Stephen Gostkowski, jeremyc1524 was able to secure the win thanks to a three-man Falcons stack and solid performances from DeAngelo Williams, Zach Ertz, and Julian Edelman who were all less than 18 percent owned. User kbarnhill was able to win the $100,000 first prize in the Monster despite using Drew Brees, who finished the day with a respectable but unspectacular 21 FanDuel points. One fantastic call that kbarnhill made was starting Rex Burkhead, who despite his $4,500 salary and 7.9 percent ownership, went off for over 27.4 points. For the $1,000 buy-in Gunslinger, user notorious was able to win the tournament despite utilizing three players (David Johnson, Jordy Nelson, and Caleb Sturgis) who scored less than 10 FanDuel points. Notrious was able to secure 30-plus point performances from Aaron Rodgers and Zach Ertz, and rounded into form on the back of 20-plus point performances from Mark Ingram, Davante Adams, Zach Ertz, and the Cardinals defense.

Shifting gears quickly, we’ll take a look at the paylines for the Week 17 GPP slate on FanDuel. In the lower buy-in tournaments, you needed to score at least 130.8 points in order to cash, and in some cases you needed to score upwards of 133 points in order to finish in the money. The NFL Kickoff tournament was surprisingly hard to cash this week, as it took at least 138.5 points in order to see profit, which is the second highest payline posted for that particular tournament since Week 7. In the high buy-in offerings, you needed to crack at least 141.5 points, and if you were playing in the $1,000 Gunslinger, you needed to put up 148 points to finish in the money. The gap between the easiest and hardest tournaments to cash in Week 17 was just over 17 points, which is significantly higher than the 3.76 points that separated the slate in Week 16. This shows us that Week 17’s lower and medium buy-in contests were significantly less competitive than they were just a week ago.

Finishing off the FanDuel slate, we’ll briefly look at the Big $5 Double Up, which will give us some insight into how cash games went this week. There were a total of 5,615 entries in the contest, and the payline eventually settled at 123.4, which is the second lowest payline in this tournament since the column started. The low payline can be almost fully accounted for by looking at some of the highest owned players, as David Johnson, Jordy Nelson, and Travis Kelce all received over 70 percent ownership and none of them had more than 10 FanDuel points. When players that have immensely high ownerships put up duds, especially more than one in the same week, the payline tends to drop, and we saw that in Week 17.

DraftKings

Leading off on the Draftkings side of things for Week 17, we’ll examine the lower buy-in tournaments, which includes the $3 Play Action and the $9 Slant. In the Play Action, user dcskins021 outperformed over 400,000 other lineups and took home the first place prize of $50,000 by putting together a lineup that scored 258.64 points. This is the second highest score we’ve seen in this tournament, and it was achieved by dcskins021 using just three players that had over 10 percent ownership, and getting stellar performances from Rex Burkhead, Julian Edelman, Rishard Matthews, Michael Thomas, and Zach Ertz. When it was all said and done, six out of their lineup selections scored over 29 Draftkings points, and two other picks scored over 22 points, which is quite an accomplishment. In the $9 Slant, user Kingmegatron81 posted a winning score of 252 points, which is the high watermark that we’ve seen in the Slant since Week 7. Kingmegatron81 used a two-man stack of Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson, and was able to make great calls by playing Shaun Draughn, DeAngelo Williams, and Julian Edelman, all of whom had less than nine percent ownership.

For the medium buy-in portion of the slate, we’ll take a closer look at the Millionaire Championship, which was $20 to enter and featured 211,094 submitted lineups. User jrveurink outscored the previous high score in the Millionaire tournament by over 16 points, which is an insane accomplishment when you consider the sheer number of talented players that enter this contest en masse. Jrveurink found himself a million dollars richer after playing a three-man Falcons stack which included Matt Ryan, Devonta Freeman, and Julio Jones. After hitting big on his three-man stack, he got at least 19 points from every other player that he selected, and went way off the board and hit on selections of Geronimo Allison and Charcandrick West. After things went final this week, jrveurink’s score is the second highest total that we’ve seen in any GPP contest since Week 7, and he couldn’t have picked a better contest to enter his best lineup in.

For the high buy-in selection from Week 17, we’ll dive deeper into the $333 Wildcat Championship and the $1,500 Luxury Box, which were both offered on Sunday. User Rpolster was able to take home the top prize of a whopping $250,000 by topping the leaderboards in the Wildcat Championship with a lineup that scored 252.8 points. Scoring over 250 points is a monumental accomplishment when you consider that it took less than 210 points to win this high buy-in tournament on three separate occasions this season. Rpolster rolled with a two-man stack of Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams and supplemented his scoring with choices of Rex Burkhead, Michael Thomas, Zach Ertz, and Charcandrick West. They were even able to win comfortably despite Thomas Rawls putting up 7.4 points. One thing worth noting about this particular tournament is that Rex Burkhead was 20.9 percent owned in the Wildcat, and in most GPP tournaments he was under eight percent owned. This just goes to show you how much sharper players are at this buy-in level. The $1,500 Luxury Box was dominated by DraftCheat, who ended up winning over $60,000 thanks to two of his entries coming in first and fourth place respectively. DraftCheat was able to vault up the leaderboard despite playing Adam Thielen and Jordy Nelson, who both came off of huge weeks to throw up duds as they combined for just 14.3 points. DraftCheat’s cheap running back combo of Rex Burkhead and Zach Zenner combined for 52.4 Draftkings points and only cost a total of $6,900 in salary and when you’re able to hit on such cheap players, you have a shot at winning any tournament.

As far as the paylines are concerned for the GPP tournaments on Draftkings, it took at least 148 points to cash in the $3 buy-in Play Action and this number shot up to 151.5 for the Slant. In the high buy-in contests, you needed at least 165.2 to cash, which is a tall task, seeing that the payline in high buy-in tournaments had reached this number just twice prior to Week 17. There were a large number of high profile busts but enough tournament players on Draftkings pivoted away from them and onto cheaper options with high upside. When enough players pivoted away from the likes of David Johnson and Jordy Nelson, their lineups scored much higher and caused the payline to soar.

Wrapping things up for the Draftkings slate, we’ll take a quick gander at the Massive $25 Double Up, which will give us some intel on how cash games went down in Week 17. There were a total of 13,742 entries in the Massive $25 Double Up and the payline ultimately settled at 147.02, which is 13 points higher than it was for Week 16. Despite high owned players like Travis Kelce and David Johnson being busts, many players in this tournament put up huge point totals due to smart plays of Jerick McKinnon and Rex Burkhead, who both were over 24 percent owned. There were plenty of solid under-the-radar plays to be made this week, and if you were able to hit on a couple of them you likely were in good shape.

In Review

Week 17 was an unpredictable, and ultimately exciting week that had a number of breakout games come seemingly out of nowhere but unfortunately the winning rosters were all similarly constructed which happens from time to time. All-in-all, it was a fantastic NFL regular season for DFS players, and I took great pleasure in breaking down each week’s slate for the site. Hopefully you picked up some valuable information somewhere along the way, and good luck to you if you continue playing in the shortened slate playoff contests!