DraftKings Diary | Buys, Sells, and What to Look for on DraftKings Reignmakers for Week 16
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.
Happy Holidays, everyone! A holiday weekend filled with NFL Football for the first time since 2017 also gives us our third-largest Reignmaker slate of the season. Two contests feature a top prize of $100,000 and there are 23 different contests across all rarities paying $5,000 or more to first place.
The entire holiday week, starting on Thursday has six different slates on it, and in this edition of the DraftKings Diary, I’ll walk you through the strategies and options I'm deploying with my portfolio.
Week 15 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!
Week 15 Top Lineup Strategy/Tier & Contest
Contest: ELITE | Monday Night Showdown
Lineup:
- Captain: Aaron Jones
- Flex: AJ Dillon
- Flex: Green Bay Defense
- Flex: Van Jefferson
Total Points: 70.81, 6th place
About two weeks after Christian McCaffrey was traded to San Francisco, it was clear to most that the team was positioning itself for a deep run into the playoffs. At that time, my portfolio had a relatively weak position on the entire team, not just McCaffrey, so I knew we had to add a few cards. I decided to go with Deebo Samuel and George Kittle. I added them instead of McCaffrey because I already had two ELITE SuperStar running backs and four other SuperStar quarterbacks with two wide receivers. There just wasn’t enough depth in my portfolio to add another running back into the rotation. However, then the injury to Samuel happens, and I’m left with just an ELITE Kittle, not nearly enough to compete with optimally built lineups in a Thursday Showdown and thus a rather dud of a slate to start the week.
However, it got better on Saturday as my portfolio yielded three top 40 lineups across RARE and ELITE.
The Main Slate provided a relatively high cash rate across ELITE, RARE, and CORE, with the top showing being a 47th-place finish in the Main Slate ELITE Fiat Frenzy contest. The lineup was Jalen Hurts, Tony Pollard, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Ja’Marr Chase.
Lastly, there were two primetime slates last week. The first one, New York vs. Washington, provided a solid return thanks to my substantial investment in Saquon Barkley.
Then the Monday night game featuring the Green Bay Packers and the Los Angeles Rams provided the best finish of the week, a 6th place finish in the ELITE Showdown contest. It was the first time in memory that I finally made a few great swaps, taking out Randall Cobb and putting in Adrian Amos (Green Bay Defense), while using AJ Dillon’s RARE card instead of Aaron Rodgers. It allowed me to enter a solidly projected lineup without having to do any buying or selling in the marketplace and cemented a great end to the week.
The slate yielded around $1,800 or an eight percent return on investment.
Week 15 Buys & Sells
This week, I made a few additions to my portfolio, starting with Brock Purdy. I also added another Stefon Diggs RARE card with a very low serial at a reasonable price. Lastly, with the deal DraftKings offered for the Holiday promotional packs, I ripped two of them, with one containing another ELITE Travis Kelce card. The Kelce ELITE has a marketplace value of around $600, making it easily worth the $300 spent; plus, the packs also featured three other “Sweater” edition cards that will help build a few lineups for this week’s contest.
Lastly, on that Holiday contest, I added a low serial Tua Tagovailoa Sweater edition as I look to build my strongest lineup with him at the helm. In all, I spent around $650, or three percent of the total portfolio investment.
Week 16 Lookahead
Week 16 has six notable Reignmakers slates:
- Slate #1: Jacksonville vs. New York
- Slate #2: Deep Roster
- Slate #3: Main Slate
- Slate #4: Las Vegas vs. Pittsburgh
- Slate #5: Christmas Day Slate
- Slate #6: Los Angeles Chargers vs. Indianapolis
Week 16 Targets
Week 16 starts with a banger of a game with huge playoff implications. Jacksonville, winners of three out of their last four games, sit just one back of Tennessee for the lead in the AFC South Division. One of those wins came against Tennessee, which means, if they win their next two games, it’ll set up a winner take all Week 18 matchup for the division title and the No. 4 seed in the playoffs.
Even if Tennessee were to win their next two games, Jacksonville would hold the tie-breaker against them, having beaten them twice (including the projected Week 18 win), and would hold the same record as the Titans. They each play Houston in one of their two remaining games, but Jacksonville has the easier third opponent playing against the New York Jets this week, while Tennessee must play against Dallas in Week 17.
With all that being said, investing in this slate and, subsequently, any Jacksonville players that aren’t a part of my portfolio could prove to be fruitful, given the prospects of them making the playoffs. I already have solid ELITE Jacksonville pieces, but I don't have any Trevor Lawrence, so I'll be adding at least one of his RARE cards this week.
This week’s Main Slate will be determined by the status of Jalen Hurts. Hurts has been the No. 1 quarterback in each of the last two weeks so, with him out, inevitably, Philadelphia stacks are wiped from optimal projections, opening up a wide range of potential lineup combinations. If Hurts can't go it leaves just one SuperStar for the afternoon slate, Christian McCaffrey.
Because of the scheduling, it’ll take a bit of the late swap function out of the game this week, but with Tony Pollard, CeeDee Lamb, Terry McLaurin and a handful of others competing in those afternoon games, building around them could prove to be an optimal strategy.
Pollard and Lamb hold very high upsides and given the prospects of their team and given the potential for Dallas to make a deep playoff run, it makes them intriguing targets for this week and beyond.
This week also holds a Holiday Reignmakers tournament, paying $100K for a standard five-player lineup of Sweater edition player cards of any rarity.
Before we break it down, let’s first discuss the optics of the slate. First, it's possible only three starters are available at the quarterback position thanks to season-ending injuries to Matthew Stafford and Kyler Murray. Russell Wilson does look like he will suit up this week for Denver, but many questions surround him and his performance.
At running back, Melvin Gordon and Darrell Henderson no longer play for either of the teams that are on this slate; thus, the editions are void. Chase Edmonds is also lost for the season, leaving no Denver running back as part of the set. In addition, both A.J. Dillon and Jeff Wilson are battling injuries and may not be able to play. Lastly, Rachaad White was also never a part of this Holiday set. Outside of the aforementioned players, it leaves just six running backs on the slate.
At wide receiver and tight end, there are more injuries. Cooper Kupp will not play and injuries to Zach Ertz, Allen Robinson, and Rondale Moore limit the pool even further. Then we turn to Courtland Sutton and Julio Jones, who are both injured but might end up playing. Lastly, add in another big name Marquise Brown who isn’t a part of the set as it looked like he might miss the rest of the season when this set was released.
The slate's two top projected quarterbacks are Tagovailoa and Rodgers, who pair well with two of the top projected wide receivers in Jaylen Waddle and Tyreek Hill, and the second-highest projected running back in Aaron Jones. This sets up perfectly for those that like to use the late swap function of the Reignmakers game, especially in a situation where a few of these highly projected players underperform. The scheduling could really boost the expected value of players going in the later games. A few of those targets include Chris Godwin, Mike Evans, Jerry Jeudy, Greg Dulcich, and James Conner.
