Every week, some lucky person takes home $1 million by winning the DraftKings 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 on DraftKings and see if it aligns with prior trends, or if there are new ways to take down the contest.
NFL DFS Week 2 DraftKings Millionaire Maker Lineup Review and Strategy
The Winning Lineup
The winning lineup in Week 2 was a double stack of the Cowboys and a bring-back of Calvin Ridley in the same game. Dak Prescott was the winning quarterback and was played with his apparent top two receivers of Amari Cooper and CeeDee Lamb. The game closed with a 53.5-point total. Dallas was favored by four points after opening as 7-point favorites. The total also jumped 3 points after opening at 50.5. No game closed within a field goal of this game’s total.
It did not feature a secondary stack or any other correlation. In the last two seasons of Milly Maker winners, 34.4% of featured a second stack of teammates. Others also featured two players on opposite teams within the same game. The biggest signal here is that a quarterback stacked with multiple weapons and a receiving option on the opposing team isn’t simply a solid strategy. It’s mandatory. In the set of winning lineups, 65.6% of the rosters featured a minimum of two players on the team of their chosen quarterback. Double stacks are 2-for-2 this season as well.
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Ownership Notes
The ownership spread of the winning lineup was flipped versus the standard Millionaire Maker winning build. It featured chalky receivers and a popular quarterback with two running backs that were more unique than all three receivers.
Both top running backs averaged more ownership in the winning builds than all other positions. The Week 2 slate was unique in a number of ways that could have caused the strange flipping of the ownership script.
Running Back Chalk
Running back chalk hits at a higher rate than any other positions, but it isn’t infallible. Jonathan Taylor and Derrick Henry had ownership rates projected to be over 25% heading into the week. Henry busted hard with a catch-less, 84-yard performance. Taylor performed almost identically to Miles Sanders at a similar cost. Kenyan Drake, another chalky back, went scoreless and didn’t hit 100 total yards. Finding popular players that will bust was the key to this lineup’s success.
Receiver Hits
Conversely, receiver chalk busts more often, but that wasn’t the case in Week 2. All of the Cowboys wideouts were projected as immense values heading into Week 2, but their ownership projections reflected that. The projections gave the public too much credit in their ability to take the layups of the slate. Cooper clocked in with a roster rate that was 4.6% below his projection and Lamb was 5.2% lower upon lock. With the knowledge of hindsight available to us, the real ownerships of the Cowboys receivers made them much more palatable for even the largest and most coveted tournament DraftKings has to offer.
One other factor in these receivers hitting was the alternative options at wideout failing in spectacular fashion. Davante Adams caught three passes before sitting out most of the second half with a hamstring injury. The Packers were rolling over the Lions and could afford to rest Adams. Parris Campbell was one of the best cheap values on the slate and suffered a serious knee injury in the first quarter. Breshad Perriman suffered an ankle injury that forced him out of the Jets’ matchup versus the 49ers.
The Cowboys and Falcons receivers also made for good pivots off of … the Cowboys and Falcons receivers. Michael Gallup and Julio Jones each caught two passes. Ridley and Lamb had big days at the expense of their fellow wideouts. The receivers in the winning lineup were more popular than most weeks but they ultimately provided great leverage over some unfortunate busts.
Two Tight Ends
The obvious oddity in the winning lineup is two tight ends. A Millionaire Maker winner has not used a tight end in the Flex in the past two seasons, but it makes sense in the context of the slate. The much of the cheap chalk busted at receiver, and with Lamb at $4,700 already in the lineup, this roster needed another punt play to get up to the good receivers, Prescott and Travis Kelce.
Jordan Reed was $100 over DraftKings’ minimum salary of $2,500 for tight ends. He was projected to start with George Kittle out. Rookie receiver Brandon Aiyuk was coming off a hamstring issue that held him out of Week 1 so Kendrick Bourne was his biggest threat for targets. Reed ultimately found the end zone twice versus a terrible Jets defense. He had an incredible point-per-dollar projection and opened this roster up to getting Kelce in at tight end. Double tight end is normally something to shy away from, but the value was worth going off the board, and it gave this roster a wildly unique approach that also helped counteract the mainstream picks at receiver.
Note: This lineup won with a player who locked at 1 p.m. in the Flex. They could have put Kelce in the Flex to give themselves more late swap options for the 4 p.m. games. This minor strategy critique should be applied whenever possible.Â
This lineup shows that you don’t have to roll with all 1% plays and game stacks of the 39-point totals for the reduced ownership. Heavily correlate your lineup. Look for leverage over potential busts. Score a ton of fantasy points.
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