Levitan's Solo Pod: The $100k Buy-In Fantasy Football League, Week 2 Results, Listener Questions (Episode 1024)

Adam Levitan (0:15)

Hello, and welcome to episode 1024 of the official establishtherun.com podcast. My name is Adam Levitan. I am one of the co-founders here at ETR, and we are coming off of a we are allowed to run good sometimes kind of week. Yes, that's right. It's really easy to whine and bitch and complain about how bad you run. I literally do it all the time, you know? I hate that I do it. It's just pathetic, loser behavior. And I know that, but I still do it. And the worst part about that whining and bitching about running bad is that my brain literally just ignores all the times I ran like Usain Bolt. Which of course happens all the time. But when I sun run, when I Usain Bolt it, I don't go tell everyone how lucky I got. I tell everyone how great I played. And that brings me to Week 2 Cash on DraftKings. And I'm going on the record here saying, I probably deserve to lose. So next time when I whine about getting unlucky, remind me to listen back to this. And what I mean by running hot here in Week 2 Cash, I got a 99th percentile outcome from not one, but two cheap players at positions that just dominated the field in cash. Dalton Schultz at tight end goes off for 12 catches, 140 yards against the Bengals. You know, 29 draft king's points at tight end, even with Nico Collins out and a good spot, I legit did not think Schultz was capable of 12 catches for 140 yards. I guess I'll call it like a 97th percentile outcome since he didn't score a touchdown. But anyways, insane. And then I also played Panthers defense, which I thought was fine, but you know, I looked at teams with plenty of other defenses, Bucks, Ravens, ended up playing Panthers defense. They forced five turnovers, scored defensive touchdown, get three sacks, only give up three points. They scored 26 Draft Kings points, for sure a 99th percentile outcome.

And by the way, you know, outlier outcomes, speaking of defensive scoring, it's just so rarely aided by points allowed. You know, defensive scoring and fantasy in most scoring systems is about generating turnovers, generating sacks, and then getting lucky on special teams or defensive touchdowns. You know, on the points scored thing, last season, only seven NFL teams got shut out all year out of 272 games.

So 2.5 percent of the time did a game end in a shutout. Only 4 percent of the time did a team last season in 2025 hold another team to six points or fewer.

Anyway, you know, I made a bunch of mistakes in cash this week. You can read about it in the lineup review on the site that's free. But you know, I played B. John Robinson over Christian McCaffrey.

Okay, you know, not great probably. DK Metcalf, 5200 against the Patriots.

Aaron Rogers is just such toast. You know, that was a mistake. Not prioritizing 7300 CD Lamb against the commanders. You could say this stuff is results oriented, but you know, I just didn't feel great about it going in either. But it doesn't matter when you hit these stone cold nuts at tight end and defense, and they score so outrageously, it's going to be fine. So results wise, at least really, really good start to the season for me in cash. Again, you can read more about that on the site with the cash line of review.

As for week two DFS tournaments, obviously you needed Schultz and Panther's defense. It wasn't crazy to have that at all. They were in a lot of cash builds, as I noted, and Panther's defense was actually not that owned because so many optimals had Bucks, Ravens, etc. But the real edge for tournaments in week two was Fade Bijan Robinson play expensive wide receiver. Jackson Smith and Jigba had 41 fan duel points, most on the slate for any position. CD. Lamb, 34, second most. Devonta Smith, 25.7, third most among skill players. Jamar Chase, 23

And I saw that to some degree or tried to play that to some degree, at least to fade Bijan part. I played five tournament teams. I didn't play Bijan Robinson on any. Mention that on last minute live stream, just the way he produced in week one, it's a tough way to find the ceiling, relying on garbage time check downs and superhuman runs when the offense is so inept. And that was like the whole reasoning behind the Divine H hand fade. Now, I do think the difference between Malik Willis and guys like Cooper Rush or Kirk Cousins or these other horrible quarterbacks, they will and can check down a lot to their running back, whereas Malik Willis don't expect that as much. But anyways, on Bijan, like, yeah, I thought Bijan was a really good play. Obviously, I played him in cash, out the floor was good. I questioned the ceiling given his team environment when he's going to be 40% in tournaments. So I felt good about that fade. I really wanted to fade Bijan in tournaments, play Christian McCaffrey, and go with the stacks that I liked. Purdy, Dak Prescott, Carson Wentz, Baker Mayfield, Jordan Love. And establishing that, just a few things that I want to make sure my lineups reflect in tournaments, that's where I've really enjoyed playing around with the DFS Sims that we have through Solver. I cross out guys I don't want in tournaments. I lock guys that I do want. I lock the stack that I want. I boost and dock some guys that I have liens on. I generate 500 lineups based on ceiling. Then I see what the Sim or I's and cash R or I's, cash rates and finish position distributions look like. So my best team was on FanDuel. I wanted to play the Baker, Emeka, Egbuka stack, so I locked that. I also wanted Christian McCaffrey, locked him. I wanted the Parker Washington, Jalen Waddell mini correlation, locked that. Then I just ran a ton of lineups with my liens on players. Got Schultz and Panthers defense in there.