Angles hits inboxes on Thursday mornings throughout the regular season; you can also find Angles in The Scroll on Thursday afternoons.
OWS Fam!!!
Welcome to Week 10! The officially unofficial start of the second half of the NFL season.
With an 18-game schedule, the NFL season is a grind. Other than the actual playing of the games (kind of big difference…), DFS is no different.
Just like each week in the NFL could write its own story, each of you could likely write chapters about each week of your daily fantasy slates. You could write about how you prepared, built, and deployed lineups into your contests, and how you rode the waves over a few hours. You could tell tales of your wins or your ‘what could have beens’.
Going further, these chapters would encompass narratives around each NFL game within a given week. “I expected X to happen…and then Y happened instead”…or “I saw the field was going a certain way, and I zagged the other way instead”…or, the best, “I identified what was likeliest to happen, and leaned into this in my own unique way.”
Looking back at any slate in hindsight can be an exciting or painful exercise. Stating the obvious, but when you do reflect, it’s always interesting to see where your thoughts lined up pre-slate, whether those thoughts were popular or even grounded, and of course, how the results played out. This is why DFS is a game of human psychology, as much as it’s a game of skill, and a game of chance. Each week presents a unique blend, where we are all vying to find the right ingredients. We will rarely be perfect, which is why playing single entry/3-max can be frustrating. But we won’t be wrong all the time either.
There’s a popular saying: Life is a journey, not a destination. With each week and each new slate, remember to grow and try new things. Remember that using the past week(s) to predict the next one is lazy, and remember to separate yourself from the outcomes. Whether you binked, got close, or didn’t cash a single entry last week, the important thing is we are back!
Bring that same energy this week. With the trade deadline passing, we have some new faces in new places, along with the possible returns of injured stars. Excitement abounds! Let’s dive in.
A manageable 10-game slate returns this week, with the Raiders, Browns, Packers, and Seahawks resting up, and the NFL (kindly) sending the Giants and Panthers to Munich, Germany. We’re getting later into the season now, so the primetime island games will get a bit more interesting with the NFL deciding to flex a few. This week the Bengals and Ravens will play on Thursday night, Sunday night is the Lions and Texans, and Monday night features the Dolphins and Rams. This may be the biggest impact to the player pool on the Sunday Main Slate since Week 1. But hey, we may get Christian McCaffrey back this week!
Before going into the slate here, I want to highlight why we start the week at the top. There are really two kinds of high confidence or “+EV” plays if we look at either the quarterback position (where we can only play one) or stacking an offense. The QB is either cheap (i.e. high point-per-dollar outcome) or the QB has a compelling implied team total. Over the long haul, committing to playing QBs under either of these scenarios will make you the most money. It’s not to say that we can’t see a team implied to score 18 put up more than 28 points, it’s just that it won’t happen enough, or you won’t be on the spot when it does line up to make you profit.
Simply looking at Week 9 is a great example of this, where Joe Burrow, Jalen Hurts, and Geno Smith were the top three QB scorers on DK. All three of these QBs had a favorable implied team total (24+ points) and soft matchups. Additionally, in terms of a tournament-winning pace, we also had rosters built around cheap guys like Daniel Jones (fourth-best QB last week) and Justin Herbert, who performed above expectations and put your lineups right there with your competition. I could go into other previous weeks, but the point remains…don’t swim upstream. Let the data show us the paths and then use your mind to navigate to where you want to go…
I love when I get a chance to look at The Workbook before writing the Angles email, because it’s such a simple tool that gives such powerful results. And whenever we get the highest Vegas total game in sync as the top game environment in The Workbook, it’s probably worth paying attention to.
That game this week is the 49ers (28.25) at the Buccaneers (22.25). The obvious factor here in play is the rest advantage. San Francisco just had its bye week, while the Bucs lost an overtime thriller in Kansas City on Monday night. CMC could return, while Deebo Samuel and George Kittle should be past their nagging injuries/illnesses, Jauan Jennings should be back in the lineup, and Ricky Pearsall should continue to get more integrated into the game plan. And now you know what it feels like to be Kyle Shanahan this week. The 28.25 implied total is the highest on the slate. Tampa Bay will still be down Mike Evans but has formed a nice running back committee and will want to play through them. But their defense has still yielded 30, 31, 41, 27, and 36 points in the last five weeks. Pricing aside, getting Brock Purdy and the Niners right in this game seems critical.
It seems like the Colts (22) will stick with Joe Flacco as they host the Bills, who are projected to score 26 points this week on the road. The public will be conflicted with what to expect from Flacco in this game after his poor performance in a loss on Sunday night. Remember, the Vikings defense ranks first in pressure rate in the NFL, while Buffalo is 24th. Even better, the Vikings rank first in blitz rate, while Buffalo ranks 31st. Flacco quite literally could not ask for a more different matchup this week. On the other side of this game, Josh Allen should have no problem moving the ball on Indianapolis and its bottom-five unit in terms of total yards allowed.
After the 49ers and Bills, the Eagles, Falcons, Vikings, and Chiefs are all hovering around 25 expected points. Dak Prescott’s injury brings down the overall game environment, but the Eagles are now a team committed to the run (with a banged up A.J. Brown) matching up with Dallas, who has a hard time stopping the run. Hurts has really gotten going the last few weeks, but maybe this is the week Saquon gets more turns at the goal line? // Atlanta is rolling into New Orleans where a home game and a new head coach may give the Saints the bump they need. We’ll have to see if Drake London plays, but the Falcons are feeling good at the moment after rolling through the Cowboys last week.
Coming off a Sunday night win, Minnesota is traveling to Jacksonville with a questionable Trevor Lawrence and questionable team motivation for the Jaguars. Nobody has stopped Justin Jefferson yet this season, and that likely won’t change against a Jags team that ranks 31st in passing yards allowed // And finally, the Chiefs will look to continue their historic run (haven’t lost a game since Christmas 2023) against the Broncos at home. Last season, the Chiefs scored nine and 19 points in their two games against Denver, one of which was a loss. Before that loss, the Broncos had not beaten KC since 2015. They play in the same division. Mahomes and DeAndre Hopkins may be more popular than they should be this week, but the KC train isn’t showing many signs of slowing down right now.
The Commanders (24) and Steelers (21) match up in another decent game expectation, with the total sitting at 45 points. Jayden Daniels has seen better matchups than the Pittsburgh defense coming off a week of rest, but they still play fast (highest no-huddle rate on the season). You have to believe in Russell Wilson to think this game can take off, but it won’t garner much attention with the actually good Steelers defense and the coming-on-of-late Commanders defense.
The Jets (23) and Cardinals (23) sit at nearly a pick’em and is a game already drawing sneaky discussion. The Jets are condensed in their approach on offense, with Davante Adams now in town and Mike Williams out of town (and Allen Lazard on IR). The Cardinals looked better than expected at home vs. the Bears last week. There will always be something about the dome in Arizona that seems inviting for DFS players, but remember this is still Aaron Rodgers at the line of scrimmage.
We didn’t mention the Titans // Chargers or Patriots // Bears because, well…but if you want to get frisky, go right ahead. From the eight discussed above, there is always the case to flip the game on its head. Those are the angles after all, right?!
Could the Bucs show up as the sharper team on shorter rest, and the Niners are slow to integrate CMC (if he even plays)?
Could the Colts choose a pass-heavy game plan against a passive defense and march the field time and time again with Flacco?
What will this new version of the Saints look like under Darren Rizzi, who wants to change everything?
And what about Jacksonville, potentially led by former Pro Bowler Mac Jones, or Denver playing at a fast pace against a tired Chiefs team, pulling an upset?
As always, there are many lanes to explore. And we’ll do just that in depth on the site this weekend. We’re looking forward to seeing you on the site, in Discord, and at the top of the leaderboards in Week 10!
~Larejo
