DraftKings Diary | Buys, Sells, and What to Look for on DraftKings Reignmakers for Week 18

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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 New Year! While Week 17 ended with a horrific scene, it comes with genuine acts of heroism by the medical personnel on the field. Hopefully, it was enough to save an astounding young man.

I'll do my best to preview what's expected to be a somber and nerve-wracking NFL Week 18 and also do some planning for the playoffs, which feature $1 million in prizes each week on DraftKings Reignmakers. While the matchups are not yet determined, or the prizing structure in them, I will take a look at the prospective matchups and try and find some of the best buys for the next two weeks.

Week 17 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 17 Top Lineup Strategy/Tier & Contest

Contest: ELITE | Fiat Frenzy, Main Slate

Lineup:

QB: Deshaun Watson
RB: Josh Jacobs
WR: Jakobi Meyers
WR: Jaylen Waddle
Flex: Austin Ekeler

Total Points: 101.46, 285th

It was a difficult start to the week with Tony Pollard not playing, as he's one of my portfolio's highest-owned players. It didn't get much better as I watched my hometown Tampa Bay Buccaneers finally connect on the stack most had been waiting for all year. I had all the pieces of the winning ELITE tier lineup within my portfolio but didn't put them all together.

However, I was successfully able to use the late swap feature putting both Austin Ekeler and Christian McCaffrey into higher-producing lineups, earning to get a second cash level with each lineup because of the switches.

After the main slate, I wasn't all too excited about the Sunday night game, especially with Lamar Jackson still nursing a knee injury. My portfolio just didn't yield a solid enough lineup to get into the cash during the day, and it was more or less a dead slate.

Then came the slate everyone had been waiting for, the Monday night slate featuring Cincinnati and Buffalo. Like many of us, not only did I enter plenty of Showdown lineups, but I also had four Deep Roster lineups that all had a chance to cash with good games from Stefon Diggs, Ja'Marr Chase, or Tee Higgins.

On the other hand, I had at least one lineup that would have likely fallen out of the cash, and given that both of these teams will make the playoffs, the cards I purchased for the slate, which included a James Cook and a Higgins will go to good use in the playoffs. Last note on this game, if you haven't seen the message, DraftKings announced that $100,000 will be distributed between Buffalo and Cincy's first playoff game in a Showdown format for Reignmakers.

In all, I earned about $1,300 for the week, just shy of a seven percent ROI, bringing my total return on investment to around 91 percent for the year, just shy of a breakeven heading into Week 18.

Week 17 Buys & Sells

I didn't make many additions to the portfolio this week. I figured in order to have two competitive lineups, I'd need a few purchases for the Monday night slate, and I was correct. Outside of the Cooks and Higgins cards, I also purchased a few Drake London cards and a couple of RARE playoff team cards, including Mike Williams and Keenan Allen.

I didn't sell any player cards this week.

Week 18 Lookahead

Week 18 has three notable Reignmakers slates:

Slate #1: Saturday Slate (3 Games)
Slate #2: Deep Roster
Slate #3: Main Slate (13 Games)

Week 18 Targets & Strategy

Outside of Week 1 when teams and players are just starting to define their roles on their respected teams, Week 18 is always known as the wonkiest, craziest week in the NFL. With starters resting up for the playoffs, and other teams out of the playoffs and not playing their stars in preparation for next year, there's a whole litany of reasons that make this slate a weird one. So, instead of a sole focus on this slate, I will go over a few playoff scenarios and, from there, a few targets for this week and, more importantly, next week and beyond.

First, let's start off with my assumptions:

Kansas City gets the No. 1 seed in the AFC if the Cincinnati/Buffalo game isn't played/
Philadelphia gets the No. 1 seed in the NFC as the Giants rest their starters at some point in Week 18 and Hurts plays half the game for Philly.
Cincy gets the No. 2 seed, with Buffalo getting the No. 3 seed.
Either Green Bay or Detroit gets the No. 7 seed in the NFC after Seattle loses to LAR.
New England is the No. 7 seed in the AFC after beating Buffalo in Week 18.
Jacksonville beats Tennessee to get the No. 4 seed and win the AFC South.
The Los Angeles Chargers get the No. 5 seed in the AFC and will travel to Jacksonville for the Wild Card matchup.
Baltimore gets the No. 6 seed in the AFC after a loss to Cincinnati.
San Franciso is the No. 2 Seed in the NFC with Minnesota getting the No. 3 seed.

If those come true, the expected matchups would be as follows:

AFC:

New England at Cincinnati
Baltimore at Buffalo
Los Angeles Chargers at Jacksonville
Bye: Kansas City

NFC:

Detroit or Green Bay at San Francisco
New York Giants at Minnesota
Dallas at Tampa Bay
Bye: Philadelphia

It goes without saying, but there are a ton of assumptions above, and some of them, maybe many of them, won't come true. However, the assumptions are just a general starting point when researching potential targets for the entire playoffs, not just Wild Card Weekend. There are a variety of ways in which one could go about assigning value to each player expected to compete in the playoffs, and one that I like is using expected fantasy output (which takes into account projected points per game multiplied by the expected number of games played calculation) divided by their current price.

Now that we have a basis to work off of, it's about creating an algorithm that best represents the information one is trying to obtain.

In my model, the top 3 quarterback values at the ELITE level, where prizes are expected to remain the highest among the five tiers, are Brock Prudy ($256), Tom Brady ($175) and Daniel Jones ($169).

At running back, where the dataset contained 30 total players, the top 4 value-rated running backs are Devin Singletary ($109, James Cook ($100), and a pair of RB 2s that have shown high upside this year, Samaje Perine ($49) and Kenneth Gainwell ($52).

Lastly, onto the WR/T position, there were 65 players evaluated for this dataset. Some of the best values are Mecole Hardman ($30– if he comes back from injury), Isaiah McKenzie ($49), Hayden Hurst ($41), Gabriel Davis ($160), and Dalton Schultz ($67).

That's it for now! Good luck in Week 18 with all your DraftKings Reignmakers lineups!

Author Bio

Jason Rouslin

Hailing from the great, but little, state of Rhode Island, Jason decided that year-round golf was too hard to pass up. So, after 29 years of bitter cold, and only being able to play golf 4 months a year (comfortably), upended those roots and moved to the sunshine state, Florida. 5 years later Jason is the proud Dad of two young boys and a black lab Bella. . In his professional time he can be found diving into the DraftKings Reignmaker game, researching PGA Tour stats, and investing, with a heavy focus on equity markets. In his spare time, playing golf is likely on the docket. If not that, then it's likely something to do with Disney, as he enjoys just about everything, from the theme parks to the Marvel movies. Shoot him a message on Twitter @dfsgolfer23, he'd love to chat!

Disclaimer: The author or members of the Lucky Trader staff may own NFTs discussed in this post. Furthermore, the information contained on this website or the Lucky Trader mobile application is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as financial advice. AI may have assisted in the creation of this content.