The Greatest “Cheat Sheet” In DFS
Each week in The Oracle, OWS team members will take on the key strategy questions from that week’s slate :: sharing their thoughts on how they plan to approach these critical elements from a roster-construction, game theory, and leverage perspective.
A weekly staple of The Oracle, what makes this slate particularly unique?
Quite a bit is unique about this slate.
Given a variety of macro factors (explored throughout the weekend), it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that none of the high-priced quarterbacks put the slate out of reach, and that none of the mid-range quarterbacks post anything approaching a “had to have it” score. This is making “cheap QB” an unusually popular approach this week.
Similarly, we don’t have many high-priced wide receivers who look like strong bets to put the slate out of reach, but the $5k/$6k range at the position is absolutely full of viable, high-upside options.
Add in the fact that there are a number of very attractive high-priced running backs, and the general approach to the slate is pretty clear :: pay down at quarterback, load up on mid-range wideouts, and stock your running back spots with a couple of studs. The funny thing: I’ve purposely attacked some practice builds forcing approaches different than this, and even on those, I find myself settling into a build that looks somewhat similar to the structure laid out above.
On top of this, it seems common this week to have a fairly large RB pool, a fairly large WR pool, and a lack of clear direction on where to go at quarterback. This week is pretty wide-open.
In the Angles Pod and my Player Grid, I examine exactly how I’m handling all this — but it’s definitely a unique week, in distinctly unique ways.
Hmm, how about…weird ownership week? We have several cheap but legitimately bad (and known to be bad) plays attracting ownership, like Dorian Thompson-Robinson. We have what looks like people chasing last week’s outcomes (hi, Brenton Strange), which is something we generally see less of in modern DFS vs. in years past. We have chalk low-ceiling guys like Wan’dale robinson. We have high-ceiling elite plays like Saquon Barkley appearing to go completely overlooked.
There’s a LOT of injury-related (and benching-related) stuff on this slate, primarily at quarterback but a bit at other positions (such as Patrick Taylor being the next guy up for a 49ers offense that has consistently produced strong running back scores…and he looks like he’s going somewhat overlooked). I think that’s causing some confusion about how to approach this slate – we have bad backup QBs who are, however, in elite matchups and that’s throwing a wrench in projection systems (what’s more important? The talent of the QB or the matchup?), which drives ownership to strange places.
This slate has three unique elements from a top-level viewpoint: (1) Jahmyr Gibbs is going to be overwhelmingly chalky but it probably won’t get to the levels he should be at, (2) Saquon Barkley gets a pristine matchup and is trending to garner lower than 5% ownership, and (3) there is no shortage of poor quarterback situations. The secondary aspect of the third point above is that there are no clear top game environments, which is likely to throw the field for a loop this week. The one spot we were all looking forward to, Jameis Winston squaring off with Joe Burrow, was unceremoniously stripped away from us. That said, this is still an 11-game slate and we still have game environments that could truly take off. We still have the Lions against a now pass-heavy Bears team, we still have the Rams against a Jets team suddenly allowing massive passing production while tilting more pass-heavy themselves, we still have a divisional matchup between the Eagles and Commanders with both teams needing a win for playoff seeding, we still have the Vikings and Seahawks, and we still have the Vikings and 49ers.
The unique thing about this slate to me is how the aspects of each position seem to align a bit and it feels fairly clear to see the macro level of “how” things are likely to play out. What I mean by that is if we start at the QB and TE positions we can see two clear dynamics, with great value at low salaries who could reasonably put up scores that open up the rest of your roster. Specifically I am looking at Michael Penix Jr. at QB and Brenton Strange at TE. They are a combined $8k, but Penix going for 20+ wouldn’t be surprising at all against the Giants and Strange could see double digit targets again, with a touchdown likely putting him near 20 points as well. There are some other viable cheap plays at those positions as well, but the two main ones open everything else up.
Then we get to the RB position, where there are several expensive RB’s that seem to be in great spots. There are five of them priced over $7k that I am entering the week feeling confident we will see at least 2 or 3 of them score 25+. While that may not blow us away from a salary multiplier standpoint, the value at QB and TE allows us to take those great raw scores.
The final piece to this puzzle is the RB position, where as always there are some elite guys with high salaries but perhaps more importantly in the context of everything else we have the $5k to $7k range littered with good to great options of varying confidence. There are so many WRs in that range that could feasibly post a good score that it is impossible for me to ignore. Again, from a macro level it feels like we will have a dozen scores of 18+, a handful in the 25 range, and a couple of 30+. Putting it all together, cheap QB and TE with two expensive RBs and four mid-range WR’s (could include McBride, Bowers, and Jonnu in that group) is the roster construction I expect to take down GPPs this week.
In the spirit of the season, let’s talk about “belief”. In this instance we are talking about belief in a player or team that may go beyond what we see on a spreadsheet. One thing that is often said around the industry is that a certain player “doesn’t have much of a ceiling”, which is usually backed up by stats showing that they haven’t posted a score of a certain level yet. Along those same lines we can see players whose inability to turn opportunities and good matchups into big scores wears down on people and eventually it gets to a point where most of the field is just ready to be done with them. However, one thing we know from history and zooming out is just because something hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it can’t. Taking that a step further…..over time, talented players tend to be more likely to eventually regress in a positive way than just being unusable again. Who can forget Week 17 a couple of years ago when Mike Evans dropped a 50-burger after a year of frustration?
Who are a couple of players that perception is low on right now but you still believe in and think could give us a difference making performance at some point over the next three weeks as we close the 2024 season?
