Angles 3.24

Angles hits inboxes on Thursday mornings throughout the regular season; you can also find Angles in The Scroll on Thursday afternoons.

OWS Fam!!!

There’s nothing like the NFL. 

Sure, there’s American bias in the collective affinity for the NFL over other sports, but there’s just something about each and every game meaning that much more. It’s some combination of the higher stakes at hand along with the collective ritual of Sunday afternoon gatherings that seemingly becomes more meaningful every year. Media coverage grows, revenues continue to explode, and the players and stories become bigger and better every season.

I was thinking about this dynamic this past Sunday evening, with the relative conclusion of Week 2. My thought was “wow, I can’t believe the season is only two weeks in!” I’m sure you feel the same. 

Think about what a roller coaster this season has already been through two weeks. It was just about 14 days ago when we sent out the first Angles email prior to opening kickoff, and since then, we’ve had no shortage of news and information that changes our outlook for the short- and long-term. For instance (this won’t be exhaustive, stay with me…):

• NFL teams don’t pass as much anymore. The average passing yards per team per game sits just above 190 yards per game — the lowest mark in over 25 years.
• Related to passing being down, the rookie quarterbacks with starting gigs don’t look all that impressive among the likes of Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, and Bo Nix.
• We have a team like the Rams completely decimated with injuries, with Cooper Kupp specifically going from seemingly a league winner after Week 1 to a sunk cost and IR trip after Week 2.
• The 49ers either lied to themselves or the media and fans about Christian McCaffrey, who is now also on IR, this immediately after playing a game of chicken with both Brandon Aiyuk and Trent Williams on contract negotiations right up until the last week of the offseason. Nobody should be surprised they are 1-1.
• The Baltimore Ravens are among the many 0-2 teams who look vulnerable, while the Dallas Cowboys’ offense and defense looked great in Week 1, but short of league average in Week 2.
• The Cardinals were undermanned and talent-deficient after one game in Buffalo, but now are flying high after a beatdown of the Rams in Marvin Harrison Jr.’s “welcome to the NFL” game.
• We have QBs getting hurt (Tua) or benched (Bryce), coaches already losing control (Brian Callahan, Doug Pederson, Gus Bradley – and that’s just the AFC South).
• And more, and more, and more….

I bring you down this non-DFS path because it’s important to remember that A) these are a TON of happenings to track and understand, B) we’ll have more of this chaos in Week 3, and C) this is just another typical NFL season.

If we are supposed to struggle to keep up with trends, injuries, adjustments, and everything else across the NFL, it’s even more of a challenge to carve through predictions each week and put together cohesive, correlated lineups that can dominate contests in fantasyland. But here we are.

The point of stopping to think and reflect for a minute here is to empower. For anything to make sense, we have to work hard to slow it down. Recognize the complexities, interpret action and inaction, and keep things simple in our own unique ways. It’s how we’ll predict the present better than our counterparts and it’s how we’ll have some fun and make some profits along the way.

Speaking of profits, there is a saying we have at OWS that “our users win” (for real, you can see it on the site). It’s not a humblebrag, or outward arrogance, but rather the truth of what we’ve seen in growing this community and flying the flag together for years now. It’s pretty cool. I can only speak for myself here, but as incredible as it is when any contributor wins, it’s just as rewarding to see a subscriber take down a massive tournament. Those shoutouts mean everything, and help grow this site and the OWS family in more ways than one.

One of the reasons why I came to OWS in 2018 as a subscriber (other than my sicko mentality of liking to read longer-form DFS analysis) was because I wanted to build and think for myself. I loved that a core tenet of OWS from the outset was the contributors working to teach, guide, and coach, rather than select, urge, and tell community members what to do. You have to play the long game in everything, and when I signed up, I told myself I’d learn a bit each season and work to sharpen my approach every week. Results or no results, I knew I would know when I was getting my money’s worth for my subscription when I felt confident in my process. Here we are six seasons later, and as I am continuing to hone my process, OWS is as well from the content side…

DFS LAB

We talk a lot about limiting the voices and input you gather across this industry, but if you aren’t at least tuning in for some of the DFS Labs shows on the regular, you’re missing out on some great content from even better people. 

Cheeseman is one of the most natural podcast hosts you’ll come across and nearly every weekday he’s bringing on the OWS heavy hitters like Xandamere, Hilow, and StatATL to look back and look ahead in DFS Lab sessions. 

We also brought back the FanDuel strategy session with Mike Johnson and Maximus, which honestly, if you are playing FanDuel, it’s likely you see both of these guys ahead of you in the standings all the time, which tells you all you need to know about why you should tune in. 

The lab sessions are incredible primers for the week, and they are short and digestible. We know time is limited for most of the weekdays, so head over to X, YouTube, or your public podcast feed to access this content for free each week. 

In addition to the Labs, we have JM, Hilow, and StatATL jumping into weekly shows like roster reviews, Winner Circle, Searching for Ceiling, and the Angles podcast to have you covered even more so every week. 

As always, you can find any OWS off-site content at the bottom of The Scroll (we’re big on this, we bring the content load, but we want to make it simple to find). And all of this is all before The Scroll even populates prior to the weekend…

Survivor Pools :: Part II!

Through two weeks, we’ve lost 69% of entrants in our 3-max $10 Survivor pool, and 77% of entrants in our single-entry $100 Survivor pool. (Gotta love the NFL!)

If you got knocked out early, or if you missed the first pools and want to compete with the OWS Fam, we have a couple new contests set up this week(!). The deadline for entries is Sunday’s kickoff, so if you don’t have an account on Splash, carve out thirty seconds to set that up, and hop in with us. Pick a team you think will win this week…and see how long you can survive.

Week 3

We want to take this opportunity to welcome Week 3 with open arms. Say it with me…THERE WILL BE POINTS!

After two weeks of unders seemingly hitting often, and one truly memorable DFS performance (Kamara, Alvin in Week 2), the view for Week 3 looks prosperous. For one, we have three games with projected totals above 48 points with implied spreads of a field goal or less (PHI/NO, DET/ARI, BAL/DAL) and a whopping (relatively speaking) five teams with projected totals above 24 points (NO, DET, ARI, BAL, SF).

• Lions (27.25) at Cardinals (24.25) :: The obvious game of the week with a 51.5 total and the aforementioned three-point spread (DET -3). The Lions did not lose two games in a row all season in 2023. Coming off a home loss and with a banged up Amon-Ra St. Brown, we’d expect Dan Campbell to lean on the run early to see which version of the Cardinals shows up: The defense that couldn’t stop the Bills and Josh Allen, or the one that put the clamps on a banged-up Matt Stafford and Co. last week? With talent on both sides, and the Cardinals offense oozing with confidence, this game could underwhelm if Detroit decides to pound the rock early and often, or it could over-deliver if Arizona pushes the scoreboard early and often as it did in Week 2.
• Eagles (23.5) at Saints (26) :: This one looks ripe for points as well. It seems OC Klint Kubiak may want to run for Mayor of New Orleans in November (no idea if that election is coming up, but he’d win) with how this Saints offense has been firing in the early going. The Eagles’ defense (so far) has proved incapable in many ways of covering wide receivers or stopping the run, but after getting burned by the Falcons late on Monday night, expect adjustments. If the Saints’ offense can be slowed down, we know Philadelphia will prefer to win on the ground with Saquon Barkley and Jalen Hurts. But if the Saints keep the beat going, we could see another shootout emerge.
• Ravens (24.75) at Cowboys (23.75) :: Two teams desperate to right the ship, but who comes out with more desperation? You’d think winless Baltimore, but they’ll almost always be more efficient as an offense when playing with a lead. The Cowboys could be the catalyst in this one. What is the real 2024 Cowboys defense going to look like? Week 1 or Week 2? Was the Saints matchup just a snowball rolling downhill? With nary a running game, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Dak Prescott throw the ball over 45 times in this one.
• And beyond these premier games that will soak up the attention of many lineup builds, what will the 49ers look like without both Deebo and CMC? We saw how Jordan Mason chalk week played out; how about Brandon Aiyuk chalk week? // Will Anthony Richardson bounce back hosting the Bears, who look stout against the run? // Baker and Bucs in another soft matchup (think Week 1) against Denver’s defense // The Seahawks going for 3-0 hosting Miami led by Skylar Thompson. How will the post-Tua experience water down the outlook for Tyreek Hill and De’Von Achane? Does either still have a chance to completely wreck the slate this week? 

Be smart about your contest selection this week. Last week was a chalky one, and most of the chalk failed. How will that alter perceptions for this week? There are plenty of bounce-back opportunities, plenty of underappreciated game environments, and who knows, maybe we’ll even see a 300-yard passer this week.

As always, looking forward to seeing you on the site, in the Bink Machine, in Discord, and looking up at your entries on the leaderboards on Sunday evening!

Hugs and handpounds!
~Larejo