DraftKings Diary | Buys, Sells, and What to Look for on DraftKings Reignmakers for Divisional Round Weekend
In the DraftKings Diary, each week Lucky Trader's Jason Rouslin will walk through his buys, sells, and team lookahead to give you insights from an experienced DraftKings Reignmakers player.
Check out Jason's full portfolio with the Lucky Trader Reignmakers Portfolio Tool.
The playoffs started with a bang! Only one game was “out of reach" when Dallas absolutely dismantled Tom Brady and the rest of Tampa Bay, setting up a thrilling matching up vs. San Francisco this weekend. While there are only four teams left, there’s still plenty to discuss and multiple strategies to explore. In this diary, I'll do a little bit of strategizing for this week and planning for next week and beyond. But first, a look into how my portfolio performed last week.
Wild Card Weekend Diary
If you missed last week's article, where I discussed my strategy up to this point in the season, check it out here. Interested in seeing what makes up the 1,500+ NFT card collection? Check it out here!
Wild Card Weekend Top Lineup & Contest
Contest: ELITE Fiat Frenzy | Saturday Slate
Lineup:
- QB: Trevor Lawrence
- RB: Austin Ekeler
- WR: Zay Jones
- WR: DK Metcalf
- Flex: Keenan Allen
Sometimes the coin falls the way you want it and sometimes, it doesn’t. For my portfolio, the draw of the four teams playing on Saturday was rough, as I didn’t have an ELITE quarterback to use. It handcuffed me a bit, forcing me to rely on Justin Herbert and Trevor Lawrence RARE cards. Even though I had the highest-producing players of the slate at every position. unfortunately, I didn’t put them in the right combination. The Lawerence RARE with Christian McCaffrey, Deebo Samuel, DK Metcalf, and Zay Jones would have produced a 4th place finish had I gone that way.
Onto the Sunday slate, where I just couldn’t get away from stacking Jaylen Waddle with my Buffalo cards. I expected production to drop quite a bit with Skylar Thompson as the starting QB, but I couldn’t pull the trigger when it came time to do so. Leaving Waddle with my Buffalo stack, instead of swapping in Ja’Marr Chase and leaving Saquon Barkley cost me the top spot in the ELITE tournament. Instead, after Waddle’s underperformance, I tried to hit the nuts with the remaining games, stacking Daniel Jones with the unused Barkley card. But Justin Jefferson’s second straight bad playoff performance gave that lineup no chance. All three of my competing lineups did cash, but nothing inside the top 100.
Lastly, the Monday Showdown slate came, and given how many cards I had of each team, I was rather excited about the slate. It seemed like a really fun game was ahead, but that was not to be as Dallas dominated and my investment in Brady over Dak Prescott was one of the worst I made all year.
the entire slate yielded just shy of $,1000 for a total return of around five percent for the week. Anything over a seven percent return this week will provide the breakeven point for my portfolio.
Wild Card Weekend Buys & Sells
The only buy this week of real note was the aforementioned Tom Brady cards for the Monday Night Slate. Gross.
Divisional Round Lookahead
Slate No. 1: Jacksonville at Kansas City, New York Giants at Philadelphia Eagles
Slate No. 2: Deep Roster
Slate No. 3: Cincinnati Bengals at Buffalo Bills, Dallas Cowboys at San Francisco 49ers
Divisional Round Targets & Strategy
The first matchup will bring one of the hottest teams in the league right now (Jacksonville) up against one of the best teams all year in Kansas City. These two teams met earlier in the season when Kansas City won 27-17, and since that game, Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars are 8-1. On paper, these teams match up similarly in many fashions, with one difference being KC’s use of two running backs - Isiah Pacheco and Jerrick McKinnon.
For Jacksonville though, it’s really the Travis Etienne show. Both have standout tight ends in Travis Kelce and Evan Engram, and both teams have solid playmaking ability at the WR position, with players like Christian Kirk, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Zay Jones, and Kadarius Toney. Neither defense is extraordinary, but both are prone to making big plays. The game will likely be won in the turnover department. If Lawrence can clean up his play, the Jaguars can certainly stay in the game.
Now the strategy part comes in. In this instance, I’ll be separating Etienne and Pacheco from their quarterbacks, as neither has produced ceiling games when their QB has. The same goes for the nightcap game with Miles Sanders and Jalen Hurts. In most cases, I’d like to leave two open spots available to add in players like Barkley and A.J. Brown from the second game.
In most early builds, It’s been 2 KC and 1 JAX, or 2 JAX and 1 KC, with a few 2/2 mixed in. Just one step further on those builds, favoring a Jacksonville WR or Engram has been a much better way for me to build optimally when including the next game’s players. If I had to pick one, I’d lean toward Christian Kirk, then Engram and Jones are relatively equal.
Last thing on this game, in the case of my portfolio, I own a decent amount of RARE Jaguars' cards, so I’ll be using a few stacks of them in the ELITE Deep Roster contests still being offered this week.
Onto the nightcap, where division rivals will faceoff for the third time this season. In each of the first two games, the Eagles were able to secure a win, but maybe the third is a charm? Daniel Jones is quickly becoming one of the best fantasy quarterbacks, and on a slate with two SuperStars at that position, he could be the lowest owned.
While that hasn’t mattered much in Reignmakers up to this point, he does provide a chance to be slightly different around optimal builds that include Barkley, Brown, Kelce, etc. Unfortunately, no Isaiah Hodgins cards are available, which takes away Jones’ primary option at the WR position. Instead, if one wants to add wide receiver to pair, using either Darius Slayton or Richie James Jr. will have to do. Both of them are undoubtedly viable in a shootout game, as shown last week, with each receiving at least six targets.
Hodgins also injured his ankle in the game and is expected to play, but it is a situation worth monitoring. For Philadelphia, things are not so questionable. It’s likely to come down to a Mahomes vs. Jalen Hurts in terms of what build wins the slate, as the optimal build outside of these two guys is on the more obvious side. However, if you own both builds with solid tie-breakers, then it’s worth a shot.
For reference, on the two-game slate last week, the average tie-breaker for the top 10 teams was around 250 at the ELITE tier with the lowest being 66. Given the popularity of both Kansas City and Philadelphia, I’d expect that number to be much lower this week.
I'd only choose two from the Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Dallas Godert trio given the small likelihood of all three outscoring others on the slate.
Moving onto Sunday, where a rematch of the canceled game will start the two-game slate. One of the biggest issues right now is the health of Cincinnati’s offensive line, suffering two key injuries in the game against Baltimore. If Buffalo can take advantage of that and protect the ball on offense, they should win.
One of the standouts from the Wild Card game was Kahlil Shakir. Shakir was mentioned in this article last week as a potential flyer for the playoffs. Also stepping up was Cole Beasley. I’d prioritize Shakir over Beasly, given Beasly’s role diminishing much more than Shakir’s if McKenzie does come back. The issue now is what to do with their running backs. Neither is likely to outproduce Joe Mixon on the other side of the ball, and neither is likely to come close to the production of Christian McCaffrey in the late game. Instead, I’ll use them on the Deep Roster slate.
The last game of the weekend is a heavyweight bout between Dallas and San Francisco. The teams look almost identical on paper in every facet, including great quarterbacks that can do it with both arms and legs, a playmaker and a bruiser at running back, a reliable pass-catching tight end, and playmakers at wide receiver.
Add the two best defenses, maybe in the league and certainly left in this playoffs, and it sets up for a phenomenal matchup. Using McCaffrey with Joe Burrow might provide a bit of uniqueness, getting away from this game stack as a whole. Going slightly against the grain with a double tight end stack from this game using both George Kittle and Dalton Schultz may also help provide a unique build on a two-game slate. Lastly, both T.Y. Hilton and Michael Gallup seem to be coming into their own, and while Hilton doesn’t have any cards, Gallup does and is on the cheaper side of wide receivers on this slate.
This slate is a little bit more difficult to build optimally because Josh Allen and McCaffrey are SuperStars at different positions. It changes the entire builds around them and likely will come down to either Mixon or Tony Pollard scoring near the number of points McCaffrey gets or a different quarterback outscoring Allen. I’m looking to play four players in the Allen lineup from the Buffalo game and roll out a Burrow/Chase lineup in another, hoping that a CeeDee Lamb, Deebo Samuel combination can outproduce Diggs and Gabriel Davis.
That’s it for now! Good luck this week!
