DraftKings Millionaire Maker Strategy: What Winning Lineups Have in Common
Everyone wants to win the DraftKings Millionaire Maker. Over the last two NFL regular seasons, 36 people actually did it, and their lineups have far more in common than you would guess: better than 80% of them stacked a team or a full game, two thirds carried at least four players below 10% ownership, and the positions they punted were not the ones most of us punt.
We can stare at those lineups in hateful envy, or we can use them to sharpen our own NFL DFS process. I went with the second option and pulled every winning roster from the 2024 and 2025 regular seasons, week by week, from DraftKings’ own weekly winning-lineup breakdowns.
I can tell you right now that looking back at the last 36 winners changed how I approach big NFL DFS contests. There is a real difference between your frame of mind in a normal tournament and in something obscenely large and competitive like the Milly Maker.
Even so, I was always of the mind to punt quarterback, target the top studs I liked regardless of position, and punt defense. If we judge just off the last two years, specifically as it relates to trying to win $1 million, my strategy was not great.
The findings suggest you do not need to auto-stack expensive studs, nor should you consistently pay up for tight end. You can and should pay for a more reliable quarterback, while punting tight end and spending money on a strong defense have been the better routes, on average.
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The Short Version
Across 36 DraftKings Millionaire Maker winners from 2024 and 2025, four patterns repeat. Around 81% carried a team or full game stack. Two thirds rostered four or more players below 10% ownership, while roughly half still ate two or more plays above 20%. Stud salary went to one of running back or wide receiver rather than both, with only 36% paying up at each. And the cheap position was tight end, not defense or quarterback, which is the reverse of how most of us instinctively build.
Any given Sunday is an expression (and a movie) for a good reason. Each week and each year can look different. That said, here is what the data actually said, one season at a time.
2024 Milly Maker Winning Lineups
The 2024 winners averaged 228.4 DraftKings points, and the shape of those rosters was consistent: 14 of the 18 paired their quarterback with at least one teammate, 13 paid up at wide receiver, 13 paid up on defense, and only four spent above $5K at tight end. Nobody cracked 300 points, but all but three winners cleared 200, and three lineups got past 250.
Before I mesh both years together, here is what stood out for 2024 on its own.
Stacking
If you were ever curious whether stacking matters in NFL DFS, the 2024 Milly Maker data alone says it does. Of the 18 winning lineups, 14 of them (77.8%) used at least a team stack, if not a full game stack of some sort.
The 2024 season did show that you can get a little weird with your stacks. One odd lineup rode Michael Penix Jr. to seven fantasy points in his first career start with no stack at all, which is the kind of outcome you can point to but not plan around. The vast majority of these rosters had some type of stack, so correlating your lineup remains the first thing to get right.
Paying Up
The other big question when mapping out a Milly Maker plan is deciding when and where to spend salary. In 2024, at least half of the winning lineups rostered a stud running back above $7K, while more than 72% paid for a wide receiver north of $7K.
Because DraftKings uses full-point PPR scoring, the heavier investment belongs at wide receiver more often than not. Even so, just one winning lineup that year stacked multiple receivers priced above $7K.
For further context, a small number of winners invested in both a premium back and a premium receiver in 2024. Only six of 18 paid for both, which is 33%.
Winning lineups did not need a stud tight end either, since just 22% carried one priced above $5K. They did pay up for defense above $3K in 13 of 18 lineups (72%). Going cheaper at tight end and paying for a steady defense tended to be the better approach.
It is a common belief that you need to punt quarterback in NFL DFS, but that has not really been the case in this contest. In 2024, 12 winning lineups carried a quarterback priced at $6K or higher.
Contrarian vs. Chalk
Stacking and salary allocation clearly matter, but what about ownership? The 2024 winners were a mixed bag. Half of the lineups had two or more players above 20% ownership, and 14 of 18 (77.8%) carried at least four players below 10%.
Translation: you can definitely eat some chalk, but you should be making a concerted effort to build a lineup that will not be popular. If you are not sure how to read those numbers on a given slate, our guide to reading DFS ownership projections covers how to use them without letting them build the roster for you.
2025 Milly Maker Winning Lineups
The 2025 winners scored a little higher on average at 236.7 DraftKings points, and they stacked even more often: 15 of 18 correlated their quarterback with a teammate, and eight ran a full game stack. The salary split flipped, though, with 14 winners paying up at running back and only nine at wide receiver.
The season was more up and down when it came to generating high-octane rosters. It got off to a slow start just like the year before, held below 200 points in Week 1, but it did still clear 260 three different times. Here is what stood out for 2025 specifically.
Stacking
We know stacking is a thing, but would you believe 15 of 18 Milly Maker winners from last year required some level of it? A couple of winners got there with no stacking at all, but more than 83% needed at least a QB and WR pairing, and eight had full game stacks.
The exact type of stacking varies week to week. It is also worth noting that some of these lineups could have been correlated better, at least technically. You can get away with no stack (though usually not) or with the bare minimum, but the best way to correlate and tap into real upside appears to be stacking a full game.
Paying Up
In 2025, paying up was a mixed bag. Winning lineups had a stud running back priced over $7K in 14 of 18 rosters (77%), but they oddly enough did not pay for receivers nearly as often (50%).
Part of that comes down to a handful of running backs taking over the league. Bijan Robinson, Jahmyr Gibbs and Christian McCaffrey were all monsters, with McCaffrey leading the NFL in touches and Gibbs finishing as the RB3 in PPR scoring, while Jonathan Taylor carried that same value through the first half of the season before Indianapolis’ quarterback injuries slowed him down. Meanwhile CeeDee Lamb missed time with a high ankle sprain, and Justin Jefferson played all 17 games but posted career lows in yards and touchdowns behind Minnesota’s quarterback play.
On top of that, cheaper wide receivers dominated for stretches. Michael Wilson went for 1,006 yards and seven scores from a low salary base, and Parker Washington caught 19 of 29 targets for 347 yards over Jacksonville’s final three regular-season games, both before their prices caught up.
Tight end was again not a great spot to invest serious cash. Trey McBride and Brock Bowers took turns making people look silly, but as a whole, winners only paid above $5K at the position about 38% of the time.
Paying for a strong defense remained a winning approach last year, though the rate did drop from over 70% to 55.6%. Spending major cash at both running back and receiver was not popular either, showing up in only 38% of winning lineups. It was clearly a path you could consider, but more often than not it was better to build around one pricey stud.
Contrarian vs. Chalk
In terms of ownership, 55% of winning lineups ate some level of chalk, with at least two players at 20% ownership or higher. It was similar on the other end, where ten of 18 lineups rostered at least four players at sub-10% ownership.
Combining the Data: What Goes Into a Milly Maker Winner
Put both seasons together and the picture gets clearer. Across all 36 winners, the average score was 232.6 DraftKings points, and eight roster traits separate cleanly into things that showed up in most winners and things that were the exception.
Step one when trying to take down this contest is to stack and correlate. The level of stacking is not an exact science, and rogue lineups do win with none at all, but the data says targeting one team or one full game to start with makes good sense.
Over 80% of winners in the last two years had a team or full game stack. You can keep it as chill as a quarterback with one of his skill players, or go as hard as a QB, RB and WR with a bring-back RB and WR. The choice is yours, and history indicates some level of stacking, assuming you hit on the right team or game environment, improves your odds of a big score.
Step two is to eat some chalk, but keep it light. If a player is too good to fade, play him. Just make sure you do not play too many popular options, since the majority of winners (66.7%) rostered at least four players below 10% ownership, and roughly half carried more than two chalky players above 20%.
Three other highlights are worth pulling out:
- Target RB or WR for your spends. Stud backs or receivers appeared in over 60% of winning lineups individually. Only 36% paid for both a stud RB and a stud WR in the same week.
- Pass on pricey tight ends. Tight end was targeted in the stud salary range only 30% of the time. That does not mean you always fade Bowers or McBride, but on average those funds are better used at another position.
- Trust a safe defense. This may surprise some people, but punting defense was not the norm for Milly Maker winners. It does save cash and is a beautiful thing when it delivers, and almost 64% of winning rosters still paid for a stable unit.
What Does the Average DraftKings Milly Maker Winner Look Like?
The average winner pays for a stable quarterback in a stack, spends up at one of running back or wide receiver rather than both, punts tight end, and buys a real defense. Any concrete draft plan for a given week needs to be taken with a grain of salt, because the data clearly moves week to week, as do total points and roster ownership.
Still, based on the last two seasons, this is the construction worth starting from:
QB
Pay for stability
$6K or higher, ideally in a game with a high total, and paired with at least one of his own pass catchers. The punt-quarterback reflex is the single biggest gap between how most of us build and how these lineups actually won.
RB
One stud, not two
Pay up for at most one reliable back above $7K. Roughly 64% of winners had one. Only about a third had a premium back and a premium receiver in the same lineup.
WR
One stud, then value
Same rule, one back above $7K or one receiver above $7K, rarely both. Full-point PPR scoring is why the receiver is usually the better place to spend when you have to choose.
TE
Punt it
Under $5K in nearly 70% of winning lineups. Bowers and McBride are not automatic fades, but the money is normally better spent somewhere else on the roster.
DST
Do not punt it
Over $3K in almost 64% of winners. The expensive defenses are expensive because they drew the best matchup on the board, and that has been worth paying for.
Remember, no Milly Maker is exactly the same. You can switch things up based on your stacking strategy, how you allocate funds and how you split up your ownership. You can still win with a cheap quarterback, a punt defense, stacked studs at RB and WR, or an expensive tight end.
On average, though, the results show that the framework above has been more consistently productive when the goal is taking down a massive NFL DFS tournament. Starting there is a good idea, because the average winner in this contest has been built in that image.
You Do Not Need to Fade Every Chalky NFL DFS Pick
You can get away with a fair amount of chalk in the Milly Maker, and the winners prove it. Most winning lineups do refrain from eating too much of it, but they still play some of the best plays on the slate regardless of field exposure.
The trick is not to fade chalk blindly. It comes down to identifying which high-owned plays your lineup probably cannot win without.
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The Chalk Test
If Christian McCaffrey projects for 30 fantasy points at high ownership, that is very likely a stud you just play and move along. But if a different player is chalky despite a weak projection, or there is a comparable option at a similar price with a similar projection, that is where you can deviate from the field.
Those are some of the toughest decisions when building NFL DFS lineups. Play the right chalk, then make successful pivots everywhere else, and you are well on your way. The same discipline separates a tournament build from a safe one, which is the whole point of the cash game versus GPP split.
How Much Contrarian Value Does a Milly Maker Lineup Need?
Four or more players below 10% projected ownership is the number the data points to, which means you do not need to get as different as most people assume. It still pays to hit on those 5% plays, and even though they give you enormous leverage, you can play it safer with a handful of sub-10% options.
The point is two-fold when trying to get unique:
- Target four or more players below 10% projected ownership.
- Make sure every one of them has a firm foundation to stand on.
Yes, you want a unique overall lineup, and yes, you want individual players who can break the slate. But you should not be swinging for the fences just because a guy has a high ceiling or projects to go unowned.
Every single player you click should project decently, have a favorable matchup, sit in a good game environment, offer a real ceiling, or give you leverage. Ideally you combine most of those factors, and the fewer you have, the riskier the play becomes. Our breakdown of DFS ceiling versus floor is a useful way to sort which low-owned names actually have the range you need.
A very unique lineup is not worth much if it does not score a ton of points, after all.
NFL DFS Stacking Is Still the Foundation of Winning GPP Lineups
Stacking is the single most repeated trait among Milly Maker winners, showing up in roughly four out of every five. How far you take it is up to you, and the more you can positively correlate your roster, the better.
You still need to stack properly, consider game flow and target players in positive situations. In general, that means first identifying players in good game environments with solid matchups, decent projections and considerable ceilings. Once you find the key players you want, you can decide what level of stacking you will do.
With that in mind, here are the most popular stacking combinations:
QB + WRQB + TEQB + WR + WRQB + WR + TEQB + RB + WRQB + WR + WR + TEQB + WR, plus a bring-back
The most basic stack in NFL DFS is a quarterback with his top wide receiver. That top pass catcher can also be a tight end, and you can extend the stack to include an additional receiver, tight end or even a running back.
Milly Maker winners did include running backs several times, but the best way to stack a quarterback is typically with his pass catchers. Backs can still be part of a successful game stack, especially if they catch passes regularly, and if a quarterback is going to hit his ceiling, it stands to reason he will either steal rushing production from his own back or connect with his receivers through the air.
Naturally, that may leave the running back out of your best stack. However, marquee backs like Christian McCaffrey and Bijan Robinson will always be viable because of their volume and ceiling.
The Comeback
A bring-back is a player from the other side of your stack’s game, and it is the next step if you choose to correlate to that magnitude. You do not always have to do this.
Typically it means assessing the game flow that gets your stack the points it needs, then choosing the player most likely to benefit on the other side. That could be the opposing running back, receiver or tight end, and you can go deeper by stacking multiple players to complete a true full game stack.
Should You Double Stack Your Quarterback?
It depends, and the answer is a mash-up of matchup, game total, player roles, projected ownership and projections. This is a big question every time you piece together a lineup.
For instance, if Josh Allen projects for 23 fantasy points and Dalton Kincaid projects for 13, that has the makings of a pretty good QB and TE stack. But should you also force Khalil Shakir if he comes in at an 8.9-point projection? Perhaps not.
Now, that weak projection could curb Shakir’s ownership and make him a low-owned tournament option who completes a killer stack. It is up to you to decide whether that deep a stack is worth it.
If you do decide to double stack, know that there is a hefty risk and reward combination attached. On one hand you are forcing a player who may simply not be a great play, just in the name of a correlation boost. On the other, if he blows past his projection, your initial read was right and you get a huge boost against the field.
RB, WR or TE: What Should Go in the FLEX?
Running back and wide receiver are the safer FLEX options, and the last 36 winners switched between them constantly. This is a debate as old as time, or at least as old as the Milly Maker, and there is no single clean answer.
What we do know is that tight end is the least popular option in the FLEX. It has still helped some people take this contest down, and it can save cash, but it simply has not been the way to win $1 million on a consistent basis.
You can absolutely go that route. Just keep in mind that backs and receivers are more trustworthy from a volume and projection standpoint, and receivers tend to see more targets and receptions, so in theory they look like the best fit on average.
How to Build a Milly Maker Lineup Each Week
Start with the game environments, build a stack inside one of them, then decide your chalk and your leverage in that order. Every week of this contest looks and feels different, but a repeatable process keeps you from rebuilding your approach from scratch every Sunday.
Here is the quick-hitting checklist I run:
1
Identify the best game environments
Start with the betting board. Circle the games with the highest totals and the tightest spreads, because those are the projected shootouts you want the most exposure to.
2
Establish an initial correlated stack
Begin with a simple QB and pass catcher pairing from one of those games, then test whether extending it raises your lineup’s ceiling or just eats salary.
3
Decide which one to three chalky plays you have to roster
Name the popular players your lineup realistically cannot win without, and cap the list. Everything past that number is where the field lives.
4
Assess which low-owned plays stand out
Find the sub-10% players who still project decently, have a real role and sit in a good game environment. That is where the separation comes from.
Start by using Vegas to do some of the work for you. Look over the odds for that particular week and circle the games with the highest totals and the tightest spreads, because the games projected to be high-scoring and competitive are the ones you want the most exposure to.
Once you know which games you like, refer to projections and start looking at which environments you want to stack. Begin with a simple QB and pass catcher pairing and see whether a more complete stack helps your ceiling. Next, assess which low-owned game environments and individual plays could give you a high ceiling with little competition from the field. Our free DFS lineup optimizer is a fast way to pressure-test whether the build you have in mind actually fits under the cap.
Crafting a Winning DraftKings Millionaire Maker Strategy
DraftKings Milly Maker winners historically share common ground. They tend to score well over 200 fantasy points, they do not eat a ton of chalk (though never none), they target low-owned players, and they have strong correlation.
The exact path is not the same from one week to the next, but most of the winning lineups share that core framework. And over the last two years, you usually give yourself a better chance if you pay for a good defense, save money with a value tight end, and pay for a stable quarterback.
That does not mean you cannot win in other ways, but the logic checks out. The top-priced defenses have the most mouth-watering matchups, the more expensive passers are among the most reliable quarterbacks in the league, and tight end is inherently a volatile position.
Overall, you should not take any one piece of evidence as gospel. However, the last 36 Milly Maker lineups that won did tell a story. It is now up to you how you parlay that information into your builds moving forward, and our full DFS strategy guide covers the rest of the framework, from bankroll to slate research. If you are running these builds on DraftKings, the roster rules above are the ones you will be working inside all season.
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DraftKings Milly Maker FAQ
A handful of questions come up every time someone starts studying winning lineups instead of just firing off their own. Here are the ones worth answering directly.
What is the DraftKings Milly Maker?
The DraftKings Milly Maker, commonly called the Millionaire Maker or the NFL Millionaire, is a large-field NFL DFS tournament that carries a massive guaranteed prize pool and, in many versions, a $1 million first-place prize. In 2025 the Sunday main-slate version ran as the NFL $2.25M Fantasy Football Millionaire with $1 million to first.
How do you win the DraftKings Milly Maker?
You win the Milly Maker by building the highest-scoring lineup in the contest. Because you are competing against tens of thousands of entries, simply projecting for the most fantasy points is not enough on its own. Winning tournament lineups tend to combine ceiling, correlation and ownership leverage to create a roster capable of separating from a very large field.
What is the salary cap for the DraftKings Milly Maker?
DraftKings NFL Classic contests use a $50,000 salary cap. A standard lineup is one QB, two RBs, three WRs, one TE, one FLEX and one defense/special teams unit, and the FLEX can be filled by an RB, a WR or a TE.
Do you need to use all $50,000 to win the Milly Maker?
No. A valid DraftKings lineup only needs to stay at or below the $50,000 salary cap. Leaving salary unused can even help create a more unique roster, which has value in a tournament where a lot of entries end up using similar combinations of players.
Should you stack your quarterback in the Milly Maker?
Generally, yes. Pairing a quarterback with one or more of his pass catchers takes advantage of the correlation between their fantasy production, since a QB to WR touchdown scores for both players on the same play. Better than 80% of the last 36 Milly Maker winners carried a team or full game stack.
What is a bring-back in NFL DFS?
A bring-back, sometimes called a comeback, is a player from the opposing team included alongside your primary game stack. A QB and WR pairing might be matched with an opposing receiver, for example. The idea is that if the game turns into a shootout, players on both sides benefit.
Do you need low-owned players to win the Milly Maker?
You do not need an entire lineup of contrarian players, but some differentiation is usually necessary in a field this size. Two thirds of the last 36 winners rostered at least four players below 10% ownership. The goal is not to avoid every popular play, it is to build a roster that has both ceiling and a realistic path to being unique.
Is the DraftKings Milly Maker a cash game or a GPP?
The Milly Maker is a GPP, or guaranteed prize pool tournament. Unlike cash games, where the objective is simply finishing above a certain percentage of the field, large GPPs use top-heavy payouts that place far more value on ceiling and first-place upside.
How many Milly Maker lineups should you enter?
There is no single correct number. It depends on your bankroll, the contest entry limit and your own DFS strategy. Entering more lineups does not automatically make the contest profitable, and every additional entry increases the amount of money you have at risk.
What makes a good DraftKings Milly Maker lineup?
A strong Milly Maker lineup combines upside, correlation and leverage. In practice that means stacking a quarterback with his pass catchers, considering a bring-back from the opposing team, targeting players with realistic ceiling outcomes, and finding ways to differentiate from popular roster constructions without giving up too many projected points.
How hard is it to win the DraftKings Milly Maker?
Extremely hard. The Week 17 contest in 2025 drew more than 132,000 entries, and the payout structure heavily rewards the very top of the leaderboard. That is why Milly Maker strategy should focus less on building a lineup that merely looks safe and more on constructing one with a plausible path to an outlier first-place score.
