The Best Kind Of Sweat

In this week's P.O. Box:

Another big Sunday
Stream roundup & Pick ‘Ems
On Tap: DFS After Dark & Week 10 DFS Cram

The best kind of sweat is having any sweat at all, but I’ve been extremely fortunate this past year to experience a few different types of sweats.

The most agonizing version is the one where your team is on fire early and has soared to the top of the leaderboards.

You then get to spend the rest of the slate in a constant state of panic and fear, hoping for some kind of force majeure event that would immediately halt the games and pay out the standings as is.

This dynamic is exactly what I experienced last year when I had my first really big day on Underdog with two teams finishing in the Top 10 of the Week 9 Battle Royale contest.

The issue, though, was that those teams were originally in 1st and 4th.

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I was grappling with the psychological effect of loss aversion in real time—the pain of watching first slip away was way more dominant than the excitement of winning $10,000.

My Dark, Twisted Fantasy Sweat

I mentioned in that piece that if the order of the games had been flipped and my teams were charging late as opposed to holding late, I would have been “bouncing off the walls” with excitement.

Well, exactly one year later in Week 9 of the 2024 season, I got the best version of a sweat—a sweat you never saw coming…

I thought I was dusted on Sunday. My Top 3 WR exposures on the slate—Drake London, Malik Nabers, and Tyreek Hill—all scored 10 points or less. I was toast.

I ejected from the action altogether when the late games started to go outside and play with April. When we came in for dinner an hour later, I quickly scrolled through my teams to see if I could manufacture any kind of sweat to salvage the day.

I did notice one Geno & JSN team that had some decent PMR (player minutes remaining), but it was still 20+ points out of making any serious noise. I tossed the game on while I did the dishes. Lauren noticed me getting excited about another JSN catch and asked me if I wanted to watch. I said, nah, I was just being delusional and sweating a min-cash.

After Geno threw an INT deep into the 4th quarter, I threw in the towel on the fake sweat. I took April up for her bedtime routine—gave her a bath, got her dressed, and started reading her some books. And then I see this text pop up on my watch from Lauren:

I legit thought she was bullshitting me. I started doing the math in my head. 6 points from JSN. 4 points from Geno. Depending on the yardage, I could have just rocketed up the BR leaderboard.

I did my best to not finish reading those books on 2x speed. I think I landed in the 1.5x range. CuriousGeorgewasacuriouslittlemonkeytheEND! I said goodnight to April and came downstairs to watch OT. I had a team in the Top 10 and we still had football to play. I couldn’t believe it.

The Seahawks got the ball first. On third down, Geno connected with JSN for a 31-yard gain. There were multiple flags on the play. At this point I was freaking out. I knew I was duped with JSN by a team ahead of me, but I was the only Geno team. The penalties were both on the defense. I refreshed the app. I was in second place for $20K:

I was live for the $40K bink. All I needed was 20 more Geno passing yards or a TD. The drive stalled out with four straight Kenneth Walker runs. The Rams got the ball back and quickly scored a TD to end the game.

Despite falling short of first, I was ecstatic. I don’t know what the opposite of “loss aversion” is in this instance, but I fully experienced it.

I never thought this team had a chance for a Top 50 finish, much less a Top 2. I simply refused to tilt being fractions of a point away from first. This team emerged from the graveyard of my Week 9 teams to give me my all-time best DFS finish.

Adding to the absurdity of this heater was the fact that I drafted that team on camera for the Week 9 Deposit Kingdom video (and then got a huge assist from a Zay Flowers late swap).

To keep the positive heater vibes rolling, I’m doing a $700 giveaway this weekend so someone else can put 100 entries into the Week 11 BR contest (If I had 100 entries, I would have won too, bro).

Enter the giveaway here

The details can all be found in this week’s Deposit Kingdom video. You must be subscribed and leave a qualifying comment before the slate locks at 1pm ET. I’ll announce the winner on Monday’s Pourtfolio Review.

Good luck.

💎 Week 10 hidden gems (5 DFS sleepers & 3 draft angles). We got five DFS sleepers, a couple pick 'ems, and three angles to attack in Battle Royale drafts. Check it out on the Deposit Kingdom channel.