Borg’s DFS Cash Lineup Review for Week 8 (Fantasy Football)

Sometimes it is valuable to take a step back and get some clarity.

I went camping this weekend with three generations of Borgognonis (my dad, brother, myself, and my two sons) and was completely unplugged from DFS world for 36 hours.

I missed a ton of news related to the slate but fortunately, it actually helped me…

The goal of this article is neither to boast nor wallow in “shoulda, woulda, couldas” but rather give a transparent look at my thought process for the week. Hopefully, this will help DFS & Betting Podcast listeners and DFS Pass subscribers get a deeper window into the ups and downs of playing DFS and help you in your selections each week. On Tuesdays, Betz and I review our cash lineups, and this week we’ll give some common overreactions we see and hear.

For cash, I specifically play 50/50s, Double-Ups, and H2Hs on DraftKings. I’ll share my unfiltered gut reaction, and the thought process behind this lineup construction, and at the bottom, I will post my weekly results including the cash line and H2H record to stay accountable with you.

If you want to go back to the drawing board, we did an overview podcast before the season on DFS Cash Game Strategy + Creating Player Pools. I also published an article on DFS Strategy for Beginners and another entitled: How to Approach Each Position in DFS & Gain an Edge.

Week 8 Cash Lineup

Draft % and cash lines each week will be from DraftKings’ $10 Single-Entry Double-Up with roughly 5,000 entries. This is a slightly elevated price point from the $1, and $5 double-ups and I think gives a solid idea each week of double-up roster percentages.

The Thought Process

Cash Locks (In My Opinion)

• In our Week 8 DFS Best Plays (which comes out on Saturdays for DFS Pass subscribers only), I shared the pool of players and this week was blatantly obvious who the top plays were.
• Yes, Bijan Robinson was my lock of the week. You and your mama were playing him because the matchup seemed too juicy. (Narrator: but it was not juicy that day in Atlanta.)
• I also knew I wanted a 3RB build this week so locking in my top-3 guys was almost automatic. I marked Henry early in the week in the First Look article and White’s weighted opportunities per $ were popping.

• With the news of A.J. Brown being out, it became all too easy to click DeVonta Smith.
• I also never wavered from Bo Nix as the perfect mix of salary + game environment.
• As much as I want to say I looked Dalton Schultz‘s way, inspite I ran the other direction. Colston Loveland was eye-balled for most of the week and it was reflected in my Best Plays. A $3K talented TE who would be given the full allotment of snaps was enough for me > the slow-footed Schultz.
• The Bengals also were going to be the cash game DST of choice. I figured I would click and move on cancelling out a majority of other who felt the same.
• Wow, it seems like I already knew where I was going with this lineup by Friday.

Gut-Wrenching Decisions

My goal in this section is to discuss the pool of players I considered for cash and how I arrived at my final lineup.

• I need to be transparent here. There was not as much “projection” comparison this weekend. I did not have cell service from early Saturday AM until about 11:30 PM Sunday. With SEVEN plays locked into my lineup and limited time, I did not go back-and-forth about too many decisions.
• The WR position beyond Smith was the only decisions I had to make. Ja’Marr Chase‘s salary seemed prohibitive at first but possible if I was able to mix-and-match the punt options.
• The middle $5K tier (Chris Olave, Zay Flowers) were on the board along with $4K guys (Darnell Mooney, Tez Johnson, and Rashid Shaheed). However, I found that paying for two middle range guys was not giving me the firepower I wanted while also being 1000% fearful that I would get buried by Chase.
• Tyler Johnson?! You might be asking yourself how that gem of a punt play landed in my lineup? Betz said the same thing to me:

• The combination of Chase + Johnson put me right under the $50K threshold. It built in some in-game correlation while also a “what the heck”, why not? It was a fortunate outcome from an extremely thin play but it brings me to a larger discussion point:

Here is where I’d like to go on a rant for a minute about “cash game formats” in 2025. In the past, we used to talk about cash (50/50s & H2Hs) as simply “being better than half the field”. We preached letting others make mistakes when it comes down to roster construction. However, IF cash lineups are being copied left-and-right and each week comes down to 2v2 decisions, is this really considered a 50/50 format anymore?

If 80+ % of the field played Bijan and the decision tree of the rest of the lineup led people down a path of differentiating their cash lineups in a couple of small ways, let’s concede what this DFS game is now: a heads up of 2-3 players. There is a lot more weekly volatility than we realize and it has led me to rethink how I approach cash games. The ole strategy of “play the best plays” does not necessarily fit the present day strategy of cash. Part of me wants to approach this as a “small field” tournament where I know what 60-70% of the field is going to do. I will try to talk this out a bit further with Betz on Tuesday’s podcast where he can give me some pushback. I know it is the contrarian in me that wants to zig if everyone is zagging but I also want to rightly understand the context of cash. It is NOT the same game we played 5-6 years ago.

Some people might shy away from playing under this new context but perhaps it is instead a chance to reinvent how we play cash. I love that challenge and perhaps that’s why I keep coming back.

What Did the Field Do

My goal in this section is to discuss the pool of players used the most in cash style contests. You can compare the roster percentage, DK outputs, and how much of their salary they X’ed this week.

Mistakes Were Made …

Every week I’ll highlight my biggest mistakes which range from not weighing low-end outcomes to assuming, to not thinking, and ultimately moving away from plays I started with. We’ve all been there… stay water. Don’t try to justify yourself or make things sound better than they were. You made a decision, now deal with it.

• Honestly, I somehow avoided the truly rough plays (Schultz + Mooney) which would’ve sunk this lineup.
• Looking into combinations with Jonathan Taylor > Henry and Chase probably was a better practice in hindsight.

2025 Results

Each week I’ll post my head-to-head (H2H) win percentage here to give you an idea of what type of week I had. Keep in mind there are varying price points, competition, and players who take my H2Hs in the lobby that have no rhyme or reason. The volume of my H2Hs differs each week due to my feeling of the slate and my weekend activities with my family. Every week I will also post the “cash line” from the $25 Double-Up from DraftKings.

LOL Tyler Johnson for the win! Ps I did NOT set my H2H contests before the weekend camping trip and therefore, I thought it was not valuable to simply click on a bunch of random contests before lock.