Angles hits inboxes on Thursday mornings throughout the regular season; you can also find Angles in The Scroll Thursday afternoons
Angles, Week 1
And so, it begins.
I’m not talking about the Eric Bieniemy // Sam Howell era (well…I am; but not ONLY about that). I’m talking about the journey into the 2023 NFL season — the first step into the unknown.
Put it on repeat:
The unknown.
That’s the key this week. That’s the most important thing to remember.
I’ll drill into this more deeply in a podcast later today (“The Week 1 Special” — a blend of Winner Circle and Angles to kick off the season), but it’s worth hammering here as well :: in Week 1, certainty is at its highest, and knowledge is at its lowest. This is a good position for sharp DFS players to find themselves, but it’s a bit like riding a wave. You can’t be too early on it; can’t be too late. On this week, you can’t be too aggressive about it; you can’t be too passive. (Again: see today’s podcast for a deeper exploration of how we can handle this balance. The pod will go onto both the One Week Season feed and the Inner Circle feed.)
With that said, however, we do have macro knowledge that has been constructed through the push-and-pull of bets placed across several weeks, giving a still-solid sense of what’s likeliest to happen (even if it’s a bit less likely than usual, and even if the players who ultimately take advantage of available production might be a bit different in certain spots than expected).
Out of 13 games on the Main Slate, only six have an Over/Under of 44.5 or higher, and only two games have a total north of 46.0. With the Lions, Chiefs, Cowboys, Bills, and Jets all missing from the Main Slate and six divisional matchups on the Main Slate (where the teams know each other well, and true fireworks are tougher to come by), we have a setup that’s expected to yield a slew of middling games.
The exceptions are unsurprising :: Joe Burrow visiting Deshaun Watson in his potential bounce-back season (48.5), and Tua and his weapons visiting Justin Herbert, Austin Ekeler, and the debut of the Kellen Moore offense (51.0). But even those games have clear opportunities to the downside. The Browns brought in Jim Schwartz and have continued to add pieces to their defense, while Burrow is coming off a calf strain to face the pressure of Myles Garrett; and Lou Anarumo’s opponent-specific approach and ability to adjust in-game rarely allow for opponents to explode. Out in L.A., we have a lot of weapons on the offenses, but we also have Vic Fangio and Brandon Staley squaring off with good defenses behind them. This creates something of a wide-open slate — one in which a decent amount of ‘certainly’ (in the form of ownership) will likely settle onto these two higher-total games.
Now, to be clear, I’m not speaking out against those two games, and I’ll have some rosters this week that attack those games in unique ways; but I’ll also have rosters that go in very different directions, embracing the fact that there is a lot that we don’t know.
I’ll also, of course, be embracing the fact that there might be some things I do “know” that the majority of others don’t.
I’ll cover plenty of thoughts here in both The Week 1 Special and my Player Grid.
But for now, I’ll get out of your inbox.
I’ll see you on the site all weekend.
Hopefully I’ll see you at the kickoff party tonight.
And I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards soon!
-JM
