We’ve shared our favorite DFS stacks throughout the season, but single game Showdown contests are an entirely different beast than a Main Slate. Today, Peter Overzet shares some tips and tricks for those looking to make a lineup or two on DraftKings for their big Super Bowl contests…

Oh, you thought just because there is only one game left that we would be done with DFS? Au contraire, my friends.

DraftKings has blessed us with some absolutely monstrous contests for the Super Bowl, including two different Millionaire makers (a $15 and a $4,444 for the high rollers).

Whether you are playing Showdown for the first time or a veteran who is just curious about what the sims are spitting out, here’s everything you need to know to build a winning lineup…

Showdown 101: The Basics

Unlike with a classic slate where we fill nine roster spots and specific positions, for Showdown, we simply fill six position-agnostic slots from the entire player pool (including kickers and defense) within a $50,000 salary cap.

The only other wrinkle is that your captain spot selection will cost 1.5x their salary but also earn 1.5x their fantasy values. This means we want to find captain selections who have a big ceiling and a good chance to be the highest scoring player on the slate.

DFS Showdown

Here is the full set of Showdown rules and scoring if you are interested.

Don’t Dupe Me, Bro

Because there are only six spots in a lineup and because these Super Bowl contests are so big (the $15 Milly Maker has 470,500 entries!), it is very likely that you are going to have overlapping players (and sometimes fully duplicated lineups) with many other entries.

It may be tempting to just “play the best plays,” but in doing so, you will have a very difficult path to making any money if you share a similar lineup with hundreds of other users.

How To Make Smart, Unique Lineups

With that said, It’s our mission to make lineups that are unique but still logical. Here are a few tips on how to do this…

Leave some salary on the table

Whether you're hand-building or using an optimizer, it’s likely that most lineups will use the majority, if not all, of the provided salary cap. This is a good way to build the best possible lineup from a projected point standpoint, but it is not a good way to build unique lineups.

By leaving some salary on the table, you are more likely to land on a combination of players that the majority of the field will not be utilizing. 

It might feel weird to go down from A.J. Brown ($9,200) to Dallas Goedert ($6,400) on a lineup where you have the money for Brown, but that $2,800 you leave on the table will make your lineup less likely to be duplicated. And even though Brown projects for more points, it is not unlikely for Goedert to outscore him in a single game. 

Find some deep sleepers

It can often be tricky to find diamonds in the rough when everyone is picking players from the same two-team player pool, but if we only pick the popular plays (Jalen Hurts, Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, DeVonta Smith, etc.) then we will end up with the same “chalk” lineup as everyone else.

Normally the Chiefs' dysfunctional WR depth chart would be a source of frustration and fantasy headaches, but when it comes to Showdown, the plethora of “thin” options is actually a boon. 

We know that Mahomes can elevate any pass catcher and make them relevant in a single game scenario, so we should take advantage of that dynamic by taking fliers on the fringe Kansas City weapons:

  • Kadarius Toney ($4,400)
  • Skyy Moore ($3,800)
  • Justin Watson ($2,000)
  • Noah Gray ($1,200)

I know. You just threw up a little in your mouth. But that’s the name of the game when it comes to Showdown. None of those aforementioned players are likely to “smash” per se, but it’s also why none of them will be used by more than 15% of the field. 

If one of them scores a TD and ends up in the optimal lineup (best possible lineup), that means over 85% of the lineups in the entire field will be dead and you’ll only be competing with a much smaller cohort of rosters for first place. 

Utilize unique constructions

Most entries in Showdown contests will fall into a similar bucket:

  • Popular captains like Hurts, Kelce, or Mahomes
  • 3-4 players on one team and 2-3 players on the other team

One simple way we can break this mold is by deploying underutilized macro constructions like five Chiefs and one Eagle or vice versa.

This is where I love to lean on the simulations done by our friends over at Run The Sims. 

Don’t worry, it’s only nerdy and complicated on the backend, where they simulate every play from the game using their projections and inputs to spit out the winning lineups that appear the most frequently across thousands of simulations.

When I run the sims for the Super Bowl, I immediately notice an interesting trend where the most frequented lineups are all 5-1 Eagles onslaughts with only one Chief:

Run the sims

This immediately tells me that we should be willing to make teams with five Eagles. Not only is it optimal in these simulations, but it is unlikely to be a popular construction utilized by the field.

Winning a $1,000,000

I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It’s going to be hard to make a unique lineup that can also beat out 470,500 entries for first place. Even those lineups above are likely to be duplicated a few handfuls of times. 

It’s probably going to take a slightly funky lineup that wouldn’t make a ton of sense without the benefit of hindsight.

If you don’t have the stomach for getting weird with your lineups, I recommend playing in the smaller contests with fewer than 10,000 entries.

But if you’re willing to get weird with me, we at least now know the playbook on how to do so.

How To Bully The Sims

One of my favorite things about Run The Sims is that you can actually adjust the inputs yourself and re-run the sims for various usage scenarios that will spit out more unique lineups than with the baseline assumptions.

For example, if you think Kenneth Gainwell is going to outproduce Miles Sanders, you could go adjust their market share percentage of rushing yards (maybe you flip them and give 41% to Gainwell and 17% to Sanders) and then re-run the sims, so you end up with more Gainwell in your lineups.

run the sims

I also like to change the “points scored” input on the DIY Simulator to build out lineups for game flow scenarios that most people aren’t expecting. 

For example, if I project the Chiefs for only 9 points and the Eagles for 6 points, the top lineups unsurprisingly feature both defenses:

Run the sims

Of course, no one in their right mind would actually predict only fifteen total points being scored (the total is 49 at most sportsbooks), but outlier game flows do happen (just ask the Rams and Patriots about their 2019 Super Bowl matchup where only 16 points were scored). 

And when this does happen, contrarian players can capitalize on it. 

Similar to a lot of things in fantasy sports, it’s very simple to make a Showdown lineup. But building a lineup that is both smart and contrarian with a realistic path to first place requires more thought and strategy.

I highly recommend poking around at Run The Sims, which just so happens to be free this week for the Super Bowl. It’ll allow you to mess with various scenarios and, more naturally, land on unique lineups.

Here’s one lineup I found that I like a lot and that accomplishes a bunch of the goals we outlined today:

Eagles

  • High ceiling captain
  • 5-1 Eagles construction
  • $2,000 salary left on the table
  • Sleeper Chiefs pass catcher who won’t be popular

Just don’t dupe me, bro…

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