NFL Strategy Breakdown - DraftKings Week 13 Main Slate Milly Maker Recap

The chalk hits again, the Browns DST balls out, and the field continues struggling to play the right tight ends. Here's a recap of the DraftKings Week 13 NFL millionaire maker.

177,803 entries were submitted. The contest has an expected value of ($3.00) per lineup, with 21.84% of lineups cashing.

Winning Lineup

amhunt2178 submitted just 3 lineups into this week's millionaire maker contest. Two had top-5 finishes, with one taking down the million-dollar top prize.

Here's a look at this week's winning lineup:

The winning lineup

• Had a Seahawks primary stack without a bring-back, stacking quarterback Geno Smith with wide receiver Tyler Lockett.
• Played two Washington Commanders: running back Brian Robinson Jr. and tight end Logan Thomas.
• Paid up at wide receiver. The lineup had 4 receivers averaging a $6,775 salary per receiver.
• Paid down for running backs. Just $9,900 was spent on running backs, averaging $4,950 salary per.
• Paid up for the Browns defense.

The winning lineup used $49,900 of total salary and had total ownership of 107%, which was average for the contest.

Player Pool

Quarterbacks

Jalen Hurts had a massive game, passing for 380 yards and 3 touchdowns, and scoring another touchdown on the ground. His 37.4-point performance made him the highest-scoring quarterback this week.

Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson left the game early with a leg injury, but the field faded him, with his 1.34 only tanking 1.4% of lineups.

Running Backs

Running back performance was underwhelming this week. Samaje Perine was the only back to eclipse 4x value, scoring 24.5 points on a $6k salary.

Several 10+% owned running backs busted. Nick Chubb, Austin Ekeler, Aaron Jones, and Travis Etienne Jr. were all drafted in more than 10% of lineups but failed to hit 2x value.

Wide Receivers

Davante Adams was the highest scorer of the slate, scoring 40.7 points and hitting 4.7x value despite his massive $8700 price tag.

Amon-Ra St. Brown and Garrett Wilson were the most-drafted receivers, and both had great games, each hitting 5x value.

Tight Ends

With the tight end position being so unpredictable, you may expect paying up for elite tight ends to be a viable strategy. That wasn't the case this week, as the 4 tight ends costing more than $5k failed to score double digits.

The top-performing tight ends were all value plays. 7 tight ends scored more than 10 points and were all in the $3-4K salary range.

Defense

The Browns defense completely obliterated the slate, scoring three touchdowns and 30 fantasy points. Their 7.69x value was the most of any player of the slate.

Flexed Positions

The field must have seen value at wide receiver this week. Wide receivers were flexed in 55% of lineups this week, up roughly 15% from last week. That shift paid off, as wide receiver flexers made an average of $4 per lineup in the contest.

Stacking Strategies

Stacks

There was a pretty even split between lineups that only primary-stacked compared to those that also added a bring-back stack. Lineups with only a primary stack had the best day, with 23% of those lineups cashing and earning an average of $7.46 per entry.

Game Stacking

Game stacking was a suboptimal strategy again this week. Stacking 2-3 players from the same game continues to be the sweet spot. More lineups cashed that stacked 3 players from the same game, but lineups that only stacked 2 players had more earnings per entry.

Salary Utilization

• 52.10% of lineups used all $50,000 of salary
• 96.95% of lineups used at least $49,500 of salary.
• The winning lineup used $49,900 of salary.
• The top 10 lineups used between $49,700 and $50,000 of salary

Entry Ownership

The chalk hit again, making it 7 out of the last 8 weeks when there was a positive correlation between entry ownership and the likelihood that a lineup cashed. Over the past 8 weeks, only week 11 had a negative correlation between ownership and cash rate.

This week's million-dollar winner had 107% total ownership. The top 10 lineups had total ownership ranging from 77-147%.

Players who Made or Broke the Bank

Amon-Ra St. Brown was the second most-drafted player of the slate, with 27.7% ownership. His huge 37.6-point performance made the most money of any player on the day, netting contestants just over $1.25M in the contest.

Five other players earned more than $1M on Sunday: Davante Adams, the Browns defense, Garrett Wilson, Tyler Lockett, and Geno Smith.

Nick Chubb was one of the biggest busts of the week. He had a great matchup against the Texans, the Browns were favored by a touchdown, and the Browns were expected to lean on the running game while Deshaun Watson kicks off the rust of not playing an NFL game in well over a year. Chubb had a decent football day, rushing for 80 yards and averaging 4.7 yards per carry. But the fantasy production wasn't there, and his 8 points lost millionaire maker contestants just over $700K.