DraftKings Diary | Buys, Sells, and What to Look for on DraftKings Reignmakers for Week 14
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.
A thrilling Week 13 ended with a last-second victory spearheaded by the greatest of all time, Tom Brady. Beyond Brady's heroics, Week 13 provided some huge injuries and showcased the strength of San Francisco's defense. The 49ers will need it big time as they lost their second quarterback of the year due to an injury, and are now left in shambles at the position. In this edition of the DraftKings Diary, I'll cover what changes occurred in the market, how I'm taking advantage of it for Week 14 and beyond, and discuss my top targets for the upcoming week.
Week 13 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 1,400+ NFT card collection? Check it out here!
Week 13 Top Lineup Strategy/Tier & Contest
Contest: ELITE | Main Slate Fiat Frenzy, $100K to First
Lineup:
- QB: Jalen Hurts
- RB: Travis Etienne
- WR: A.J. Brown
- WR: Amon-Ra St. Brown
- Flex: Jaylen Waddle
Total Points: 125.5, 127th place
Near-misses and wrong combinations were the theme of Week 13 for my lineups. It started on Thursday night when deep in the game, a Mac Jones pass to Jakobi Meyers that would have been a touchdown was broken up by an illegal hit to the head. The pass was incomplete, ruining my chances at winning the RARE contest for the Showdown slate. Had he caught it, I would have won by two points.
The luck didn't get much better for the main slate, even with a solid start. It started extremely promising after I paired Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown and Amon-Ra St. Brown. However, I chose Travis Etienne over Josh Jacobs, and when Travis failed to get anything going, I knew I'd need a ceiling game from Jaylen Waddle to ship the slate. Those hopes ended quickly after San Francisco's defense turned it up a notch after Jimmy G's injury. Ultimately, the lineup settled for 127th place, a far cry from what it could have been if I had built a bit more optimally.
To close up the week, after a decent Sunday night slate, I scored my second top-five finish in the last three weeks, coming in third in the CORE contest for Monday's Showdown slate. I have a considerable investment in Chris Godwin and Raachad White and I knew I'd have a good chance at a big slate if those two had good games. Unfortunately, I had another miss. I put my best lineup in the CORE contest, but instead of replicating at ELITE, I made slight tweaks that cost me nearly $2,000 in the process.
In all, the slate yielded just shy of $2,000, just shy of a 10 percent weekly return. A change here or there, and it's a big week. While it's a tad unnerving not to get a win, it's encouraging that my portfolio continues to compete in almost every slate without major additions.
Week 13 Buys & Sells
I had one hypothesis about lineup building this season. I expected that when more teams had completed their byes and were back on the main slate, it would be more challenging to build. That came to fruition this week, at least for me, and finally led to me offloading some cards from my portfolio.
After entering about 130 CORE lineups, I still had about 20 leftover SuperStar and quarterback cards each. Yet, everything beyond those cards was dreadful and far from optimally projected. Therefore, I decided to sell any other leftovers with decent marketplace value - $5.00 or higher from teams that are unlikely to make the playoffs. Those players included Aaron Rodgers, Nick Chubb, Jared Goff (I kinda regret this), and a few more RARE and CORE cards. It was a solid boost to the yield prior to the slate starting, especially for cards that likely would not have gotten anywhere close to a similar return had I played them. I foresee a similar situation this week.
I made no major additions this week but did pick up a few Mac Jones and Davante Adams cards.
Week 14 Lookahead
Week 14 has four notable Reignmakers slates:
- Slate #1: Las Vegas vs. Los Angeles Rams
- Slate #2: Main Slate
- Slate #3: Miami vs. Los Angeles Chargers
- Slate #4: New England vs. Arizona
Week 14 Targets
If you haven't had the chance to look at the slate, specifically for Reignmakers, let me be the first to share, it's a great one.
I'll start with the running backs, as all the dominoes will fall from here. Josh Jacobs and Rhamondre Stevenson are not on the main slate this week, and Derrick Henry and Aaron Jones are on bye. That's four of the top 12 scoring running backs and three of the top five non-SuperStar running backs.
The quarterback position is already pretty thin outside of SuperStars and Tua, Derek Carr, Kyler Murray, Marcus Mariota, Justin Fields and Aaron Rodgers are all unavailable for the main slate as well. That's six of the top 15 scoring QBs this year not available, leaving only four non-SuperStar options on the main slate. So, of the top 25 projected players in those two positions, only seven are not SuperStars.
This creates a situation where a larger pool of players is open to being included in the optimal lineup, creating more variance at these two positions specifically.
D'Andre Swift is a fantastic candidate to outperform his average and is a growing part of a hot Detroit team. Suddenly the Lions are right back in the playoff picture, just two games out of the final playoff spot. On top of that, Swift finally saw 50 percent of the snaps last week, the first time doing so since Week 7. s.
It goes without saying that over the last few years, Swift has been one of the most dynamic backs in the league, showcasing slate-breaking ability when given the ability to produce. He'll take on a struggling Minessota defense, providing an excellent spot for a ceiling game. Lastly, on top of all this, Swift's prices have trended down all year and sitting at just $179.99 at the ELITE, he's the best buy of the week at this position. This week you can pair him up in a full game stack with St. Brown, Justin Jefferson, and/or Dalvin Cook, or play him solo with some of the other SuperStar quarterbacks.
A few other RB targets this week are the duo in Kansas City. KC should be able to make a deep run into the playoffs, providing plenty of utility for Isiah Pacheco and Jerick McKinnon's cards. Their ELITE prices are still reasonable, trading at $170 and $90, respectively.
Now, onto the quarterbacks. Admittedly it's harder to find a standout quarterback other than Geno Smith. Most would have easily slotted in Deshaun Watson here, but after his terrible performance last week, there might be a low level of trust in him. So instead, a few others to look at are Jared Goff and Dak Prescott, who faces the worst defense when he takes on Houston.
Wide receiver and flex are relatively unchanged this week, with many of the top producers not having SuperStar status. Finding the right mixture of Travis Kelce, Stefon Diggs, Amon-Ra St. Brown, A.J. Brown, Ja'Marr Chase and CeeDee Lamb will likely prove to be a winning formula yet again.
