Sunday, Feb 11th — Late
Bye Week:
Bears
Bengals
Bills
Broncos
Browns
Buccaneers
Cardinals
Chargers
Colts
Commanders
Cowboys
Dolphins
Eagles
Falcons
Giants
Jaguars
Jets
Lions
Packers
Panthers
Patriots
Raiders
Rams
Ravens
Saints
Seahawks
Steelers
Texans
Titans
Vikings

Above The Field. 7.21.

Tilt and the Law of Attraction

Every Sunday, many of our OWS family of Milly-sweating degenerates gather in the gameday-chat channel on Discord to cheer, support, and hope to sweat some lineups to the top of leaderboards. Of course, we often end up tilting our faces off and showing the absolute worst sides of ourselves as the day unfolds, and 95% of our lineups inevitably end up in the shitter. It’s cathartic, therapeutic, and sometimes amusing as hell. 

I usually begin the day with this friendly reminder:

Xandamere is often hovering, supplying us with data that supports how ridiculous variance can be in NFL DFS and how injuries can impact our rosters in such a brutal way. 

Which leads me to this week’s leading cause of tilt. The 1st quarter injury to Kadarius Toney. Toney had been dinged a little at the end of last week’s breakout game, but he was able to shed his questionable tag and suit up for Week 6. His smash last week was clearly not an anomaly. The sharpest minds that One Week Season has to offer pegged Toney as a sharp play this week or as a “one-off” (also known as a “stand-alone” or, as Xandamere’s puts it in his latest contribution to the DFS lexicon, a “floater”) or as the preferred bring-back in Rams stacks that had a high smash probability. His questionable status only aided to lower his ownership, making him a very attractive tournament option…and things started beautifully. 

Toney was clearly the focal point of the Giants offensive plan, and we got him at 6.53% ownership. Life is good!

But things don’t always go as planned. 

We were pretty heavily invested, and our moods were darkening early. 

There’s always a Zen approach to remedying a situation. 

The thing about tilt is that once it begins, it rarely subsides in a timely manner. 

Thankfully for my genitalia, it was the dust-ridden Le’Veon Bell and Devonta Freeman that scored the next rushing TDs.

Seriously though. Marquise Brown was in such a smash spot this week. The Chargers were a red-hot offense that would certainly put up points early and take the Baltimore Ravens out of a run-only game script. Except, oh yeah…humans do human things. 

I’ve done plenty of reading on The Law of Attraction and its various branches. The basic premise is that the universe takes everything we say literally, so we should always be speaking in terms of what we want…and speaking them in such a way that you’d think we’d received all that we desire already. However, putting this into practice essentially involves lying and may end up making you look like a total dick in chat. I mean, imagine if I responded to the above with “I only play Hollywood when he smashes” or “I always get Marquise Brown right.” 

Maybe “The Secret” is to keep your positive thoughts to yourself and avoid getting your ass kicked. 

Putting a substantial amount of money in play after a weeks-worth of intense study places us in a precarious position. Losing money in tournaments is a likely outcome, and when things don’t work out, it’s easy to feel as if that hard work during the week was just wasted time. But this is why we reflect and refine. We can’t let one unsuccessful slate affect the next one. 

There you go, bstreich…let it out! 

I play DFS for two reasons. The chance to win a million dollars and the sweat of trying to win a million dollars. That’s it. I should be playing smaller tourneys, cash games, etc., but I rarely do. So, most weeks, when I fall short, I have moments of doubt concerning my future in this space.

It’s very important to reflect upon your process for the week and come to an accurate assessment of where you were right, wrong, or simply unlucky. 

A Sonic Oversight

OK, I wasn’t alone here. 99.15% of the field also managed to avoid rostering Donovan Peoples-Jones this week. Having said that, I pride myself on identifying upward trends involving cheap wide receivers and micro projected ownership. DPJ had six targets in Week 5 and converted those into a 5/70/0 line with a long of 42 yards and did so at the minimum salary of $3000. With all of the hubbub surrounding Kareem Hunt as the chalkiest player of the year, we looked at Odell Beckham, Baker Mayfield, and even the Cardinals DST as potential leverage. Not sure how I managed to avoid digging in and considering DPJ, who should have been easy to see since he was priced up from the min-priced pack to $3500. I rostered him on a ton of Best Ball teams and played a decent amount in DFS when the other Browns pass catchers were initially dinged up, but this week I simply fanned. A clear oversight by yours truly. 

One person that didn’t miss Peoples-Jones was Gary Guttenberg, aka @1manpurimshpiel, on Twitter. As a result of his awesomeness, Gary won access to my MME Training Course, which, by the way, is available in the Marketplace now for your consumption. Worth every penny IMO, if only to hear my goofy impressions in the audio portions. 

Of Ownership and Content Absorption

Tee Higgins this week was a study in the imperfect nature of ownership projections. One trusted source had him at around 21% all week while another had him 5% early in the week, 11% from Friday-Saturday night, and then goosed him to 17% by Sunday morning. He ended up landing at 9.9% in the Milly, which came as a surprise to many. 

This scenario is one reason why I like to keep my finger on the pulse of all of the chatter around the DFS industry all week. It helps me assess ownership projections independently. The other reason is that I take my dog on long walks, so I listen to a lot of podcasts…but that isn’t important right now. What’s important is that you make a conscious decision about how much content is right for you. I’m on record as saying that I enjoy being a sponge and taking in all the data and viewpoints I can get my hands on. I believe I have cultivated an ability to sift through the noise and arrive at my own conclusions. Paralysis by analysis is a thing, however. If listening and reading too much content is only serving to muddy the waters, then narrow your content choices to involve fewer voices (hey, that rhymed!). Much like your player pool, it will feel much cleaner and even liberating to keep everything tight and concise. Plus, I think joining Inner Circle here, reading all of the sharp content, and listening to all of the pods should be enough of an edge to keep you above the field in terms of actionable knowledge. After that, I suggest simply adding seasonings to your tastes. Just avoid getting to that point where it feels like too many cooks are ruining the meal. More clichés! Sweet!

A Rare Managed League Note

As we learned during Best Ball draft season, Week 7 is the nuttiest bye week ever. An unusual amount of starting-caliber position players will be watching from the couch like us. It does present some opportunity, however. If you’re fortunate enough to possess enough depth to make it through this week, you can use waivers to beat your opponents to the best Week 8 matchups. While everyone else is franticly plugging holes to field a lineup, you’ll be looking ahead and gaining an advantage. One example for folks that stream defenses would be the Steelers DST. Headed to a bye and therefore likely to be available, Pittsburgh will play the Browns in Week 8, who may or may not have a healthy Nick Chubb. Also, some fantasy teams in your league will be forced to make some tough drops. If you can save your FAB this week, you will be positioned nicely to outbid your opponents on some outcasts that never should have seen the waiver wire. Go ahead and use your extra roster spot to grab that 2022 prospect that your dynasty opponent is trying to sneak through waivers for one week. 

Focusing some of your energies on your season-long squads is also a great way to look ahead and shake off that tilt from Week 6. 

Go forth and prosper, my friends. See you in the trenches again in a few days. 

LFG!