
Welcome to this edition of the NFL DFS Showdown SZN breakdown. The aim of this post is to look at the best players to build around and constructions to focus on for the night's NFL DFS showdown contests on Draftkings. We run the new Showdown Contest simulations to see what differences we can find in projected ownership and likely exposure. Likewise, we take into account the whole lineup's projection and ownership.
Main Points:
- The biggest situation today is avoiding Noah Gray ownership and using the Patrick Mahomes free square
- The highest projected ownership on contest sims comes from cheap captains and a combo of Mahomes/Goff/Amon-Ra in the FLEX, so avoid that combo to lower duplications
- FOOTBALLLLLLLLLLLLLL
For conversation and game theory on the charts with updated ownership distributions as well as the top ownership lineups, jump in the Paydirt discord! Free with this link: https://discord.gg/mQ6u5dfawF
Captain ownership distributions

When it comes to Captain ownerships, there are a couple spots worth avoiding to find leverage. The largest negative leverage goes to Noah Gray, who projects for around 9% ownership at captain and is only in the winning lineups .30% of the time. Kadarius Toney and Isiah Pacheco are both negative values as well. The highest positive leverage belongs to Amon-Ra St. Brown, who has a projected ownership at CPT of 12.33% and an exposure in the contest sims of 19.60%.
FLEX ownership distributions

As far as FLEX ownership and exposure goes, the biggest edge again belongs to Amon-Ra St. Brown, with the largest negative leverage belonging to Noah gray. In fact, simply fading Noah gray in most formats is going to be enough to give you the leverage necessary to build freely.
Some other notes on optimization exposures and projected ownership:
- It's worth noting that Patrick Mahomes has a combined exposure of 99.80% in the simulations, meaning he is essentially a free square outside of injury.
- Defenses are almost perfectly valued, with both within around 1% of the projected ownership in terms of exposure, so there's not much value in predicting a low scoring game.
- While you can gain a lot of leverage with the expensive players, you can also gain a lot of value on Skyy Moore who is looking well undervalued across the industry.
Duplication projections and DFS lineups to avoid
Here is a sample of the lineups in terms of highest ownership from the contest simulations. To clarify, you should avoid playing these lineups in large field GPPs tonight:

Surprisingly, we don't see as many highly projected ownerships on Patrick Mahomes captain lineups. Instead, we see a lot of the cheaper position players at captain with combos of Mahomes/Goff/ARSB in the flex. It's worth noting that there are no DST lineups showing up in the highly projected ownership lineups, and minimal kickers involved. Likewise, outside of ARSB and LaPorta, we see very few DET wideouts involved.
All this considered, there are two main routes to avoiding duplications tonight:
- Avoid the combination of Mahomes/Goff/Amon-Ra in the FLEX
- Include kickers, DST, or secondary DET wideouts
DFS Showdown SZN: Final Thoughts
NFL SEASON IS BACK BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Some players that look overvalued:
- Noah Gray
- Isiah Pacheco
- Jahmyr Gibbs
Some players that look undervalued:
- Skyy Moore
- Marquez Valdes-Scantling (CPT)
- Amon-Ra St. Brown (CPT)
Good luck and bink a unique!
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