Your guide to Sunday night’s Super Bowl Showdown slate on DraftKings. Ryan Clifford breaks down the top options at CAPT & FLEX, optimal stacking rules, and all of the slate-specific strategy you’ll need to get yourself atop the leaderboards!
I finally got around to recording my entire process for building MME Showdown lineups with the Elite Fantasy optimizer, which is now posted on the website under the main optimizer tutorials section. Here it is: Optimizer Tutorial for DK Showdown.
Setting Up the Optimizer
VIDEO: Super Bowl Showdown Optimizer Setup
You’ll want to jump into our optimizer, which has been preloaded with our projections for the entire week, and then you can set up your initial groups:
- At least 1 QB (Mahomes, Brady)
- At most 1 K (Butker, Succop)
- At most 1 DST (Chiefs, Buccaneers)
- In the position stacks tab, stack CAPT with at least 1 QB/RB/WR/TE/K/DST from the same team
Building the Punt Pool
Next up, we need to put our “punts” into the player pool, as we’ll be building a group with them.
You must pay attention to the inactive list that is announced 60-90 minutes before kickoff. Make sure none of these guys are on that list. Some of them will probably be, and you’ll need to adjust your pool at that point.
Here are the punts you should add to your player pool at this point.
Chiefs: Le’Veon Bell (RB), Byron Pringle (WR), Nick Keizer (TE)
Buccaneers: Scotty Miller (WR), Tyler Johnson (WR)
CAPT Pool
I am projecting Patrick Mahomes to have about 20% ownership as CAPT on Sunday. Going back to the 2018 playoffs, Mahomes has appeared in 21 optimal Showdown lineups, but was the perfect CAPT just three times. Furthermore, he has not been the optimal CAPT in any of the seven playoff games he’s started (Damien Williams x3, Travis Kelce 3x, Sammy Watkins 1x). 20% ownership is a lot. I’m not willing to match the field there, so I’ll be taking one final major stand on the season by leaving Mahomes out of my CAPT pool completely.
Tom Brady reads as a similar story. Since the 2018 playoffs, Brady has appeared in 24 optimal Showdown lineups, but just three times as the perfect CAPT. Brady is also 0-for-7 in playoff games since 2018. With projected combined ownership at about 35%, I’m going to fade QB CAPT in this game and hope to get more leverage on some of the playmakers.
Tampa Bay has the league’s top run defense in 2020, allowing just 3.41 yards per carry and just over 60 yards per game to opposing backs; and that was without having Vita Vea for 11 games. He’s back now. Edwards-Helaire and Williams won’t be going anywhere. With a likely carry split, I think it’s safe to remove both from our CAPT pool.
Now, this is where I’m struggling. I expect both Leonard Fournette and Ronald Jones to get a decent chunk of work on Sunday. I also expect them to have some success…but will either of them get enough work to make them CAPT viable? I think yes and no. I don’t expect either of these guys to have a monster game but…Fournette’s projected CAPT ownership sits at just 6-8%, while Jones comes in even lower. I think they are viable enough to match the field. Think of it like this: is there a 10% or better chance that a Tampa RB can score a couple of touchdowns, break of a big run or two, catch a few balls, etc? I think matching the field would be smart with these two.
Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce. What else is there to say about these guys? I want as much CAPT ownership possible between these two. Mahomes is likely to shred this defense once again. Even if Tampa comes up with a plan to shut one of these guys down, they can’t stop them both. I’m willing to match the field at about 2-3% on Mecole Hardman and Sammy Watkins – just in case – but I don’t want any more than that taking CAPT equity away from Hill and Kelce.
For the Buccaneers, this Kansas City secondary is legit. They allowed the second fewest catches and second fewest yards per game to opposing receivers in 2020. Do we want 20% of our lineups to have a Tampa pass catcher at CAPT?
That’s what it will take to match the field on Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, and Antonio Brown, and I think the answer is yes. While I don’t think these guys will make a huge impact throughout the course of the game when it matters, what happens if KC goes up big? I am not going to lose my million bucks by not having CAPT exposure to these guys that can pile up garbage time points if the situation presents itself.
It also won’t take much to match the field on Rob Gronkowski at CAPT. I’m seeing a lot of love for Cameron Brate this week. If you’ve been watching, yes, it appears Brate has taken over the pass-catching role because of the number of targets he saw against the Packers. What you might not have noticed is that Gronkowski was on the field for 57 snaps to Brate’s 23. You may not have realized that it was Gronk that ran 23 pass routes to Brate’s 13. The big man ain’t going nowhere. I want a few swings with him here just in case the Gronk of old shows up on Sunday.
Here’s a look at my approximate exposures at CAPT:
- Travis Kelce 35%
- Tyreek Hill 28%
- Leonard Fournette 8%
- Mike Evans 8%
- Chris Godwin 8%
- Ronald Jones 5%
- Antonio Brown 2%
- Rob Gronkowski 2%
- Sammy Watkins 2%
- Mecole Hardman 2%
Filling the FLEX Pool
The last step is to fill in the FLEX pool with all of the remaining players that will appear. Again, you may need to adjust when inactives are released, but for now, you should have 35 total players in your pool.
CAPT (10): Hill, Watkins, Hardman, Kelce, Fournette, Jones, Evans, Godwin, Brown, Gronkowski
QB (2): Mahomes, Brady
RB (5): Edwards-Helaire, Williams, Bell, Fournette, Jones
WR (10): Hill, Watkins, Hardman, Robinson, Pringle, Evans, Godwin, Brown, Miller, Johnson
TE (4): Kelce, Keizer, Gronkowski, Brate
K (2): Butker, Succop
DST (2): Chiefs, Buccaneers
Optimizer Settings
We’re ready to build! Head back into “Advanced Options” and use the following settings:
- 1-2 unique players
- $49,200 maximum salary
- max 3 offensive players vs. defense
- 15% randomness – MAKE SURE TO TURN ON & CLICK ON “CHANGE ALL PLAYERS” (see image below)
- 0.1 minimum projection included in calculation
Correlations
Notable Positive Correlations
Patrick Mahomes – Tyreek Hill 0.46
Tom Brady – Mike Evans 0.44
Patrick Mahomes – Travis Kelce 0.39
Tom Brady – Chris Godwin 0.38
Tom Brady – Antonio Brown 0.31
Tom Brady – Rob Gronkowski 0.29
Patrick Mahomes – Sammy Watkins 0.28
Patrick Mahomes – Tom Brady 0.22
Patrick Mahomes – Demarcus Robinson 0.20
Patrick Mahomes – Mecole Hardman 0.20
Tom Brady – Scotty Miller 0.18
Tom Brady – Cameron Brate 0.17
Tyreek Hill – Tom Brady 0.15
Notable Negative Correlations
Patrick Mahomes – Buccaneers DST -0.37
Clyde Edwards-Helaire – Buccaneers DST -0.17
Tyreek Hill – Buccaneers DST -0.16
Harrison Butker – Buccaneers DST -0.15
Darrel Williams – Buccaneers DST -0.14
Tom Brady – Buccaneers DST -0.12
Chiefs DST – Tom Brady -0.11
Travis Kelce – Buccaneers DST -0.10
Tyreek Hill – Travis Kelce -0.08
Tyreek Hill – Clyde Edwards-Helaire -0.08
Build!
We’re ready to go. Click on “Calculate 50 Lineups” (or less depending on how many you are building) and your first 50 lineups will be built. If you’re like me, and you’re building more than that, click that same button again and spit out 50 more. With the randomness set to 15% and 3 unique players, you shouldn’t get too many duplicate lineups.
When you have your second set of 50 lineups, click on “select lineups” and “move 50 selected” from the drop down menu, and it will move all of the non-duplicated lineups over to your first batch. Keep repeating the process until you have your desired number of lineups.
Click on “export lineups”, make sure to select to proper slate, and your lineups are ready to upload into DK!
Conclusion
Remember to keep an eye on inactives, I’ll be in chat once they’re out.
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