Garett Thomas walks you through his thinking behind his Week 4 cash game lineup and offers lessons learned.
Week 4 was not kind to me and this was the first week I did not hit the cash line in my DU. This lineup was entered into 151 entries and finished with an ROI of -51%.
Looking at this lineup, what did we do right? We protected ourselves with the chalk to give ourselves a chance at cashing. We want the lineup to be extremely similar to other people for cash games, this protects us from a total dud. Josh Allen, Trey Sermon, Chuba Hubbard, Devante Adams, Travis Kelce, and the Jets-D all had at least 30% ownership, some as high as 65%, these are considered cash pieces that protected us from complete failure.
What ultimately caused us to not cash though? While we want lineups to be similar to the field in cash, we must get the last 1-to-3 picks right in order to get in the green. The players I chose in my final few spots did not perform and it didn’t help that my studs (Kelce and Adams) dudded as well. On top of that, I also did not have Robert Woods or Deebo Samuel, both players outscored OBJ – who was a similar price point – which propelled the field towards cashing over my lineup.
Biggest Lineup Decision? The first was fading Henry. While that matchup was solid on paper, the absence of A.J. Brown and Julio Jones scared me off of Henry since he was a pricey $10,200. Ultimately I failed because of my choice to play OBJ over Robert Woods. Additionally, I could have come down from Devante Adams and played more middling WR’s like Calvin Ridley, Deebo Samuel, or Terry McLaurin.
What would have improved this lineup? In hindsight, the simple switch of playing Robert Woods over OBJ would have put me in the green this week – and it is that simple. A finer deconstruction would show that I could have played Calvin Ridley and Deebo Samuel instead of utilizing the combination of Devante Adams and OBJ (all players I was heavily considering).
What have we learned from Week 4?
Sometimes the chalk fails, and that is exactly what you can see this week. Cashing is never easy. Even when you follow the field and have similar lineups, it all comes down to the last 1-to-3 players – I chose wrong and in the end, I can’t wait until Week 5 to get back in the green. We know we are not going to win every week, and this was an unfortunate week. It is weeks like this you work that much harder and grind that much further.
Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter, @GarettThomas, to talk further cash-game analysis, lineup construction, and everything DFS strategy.
