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 4. The first official week of the NFL season where we have a representative sample of data to draw from to inform our predictions. It’s a glorious thing.
While there is plenty of season to go and we don’t know yet what to make of most of the teams, three weeks of data can provide actionable insights, which minimizes the unknowns and reduces the variability of our predictions.
Said another way, we’re building lineups with less “guesswork” involved, starting this week. You rarely want to draw a one-game prediction from a season’s worth of games, and you equally won’t feel great about making a one-game prediction based on just one game. Three to four games is the sweet spot, which makes Week 4 so appealing to me.
With this piece of information, you’d think my next sentence would be something along the lines of “trust the data this week,” and it is sort of along those lines, but not exactly. I’ll explain.
I’ve read about, and often written about, how it’s lazy to use the past to predict the future. And it is, because the cause and effect of the variables that produced past outcomes were different, and therefore not the same as what we’re analyzing for the future.
However, the right counterargument to this point is that historical data is the best we have in being able to frame and predict future outcomes. This is true, but the reason why only using the past to predict the future is lazy is because we have to account for variance. Variance, that annoying, unknown randomizer that dictates much of how results play out in real life.
If you did a word find across One Week Season, variance may be the most-used action word across all published content. Variance, leverage, and correlation would be the likely top three. And if you don’t believe me, or can prove this wrong, then I still would absolutely hammer the fact that variance is used more on OWS than any other fantasy site in the DFS space.
Why? Because all of the voices on this wonderful site are doing their best to preach the random outcomes each and every week. It’s not as easy as saying, “this tight end crushed against the Chargers last week, so the tight end facing them this week surely will do the same!” No, of course not. Because players are different, coaches make adjustments, and game environments are unique to each matchup. But when you blend thoughtful variance with actionable data, we are building for realistic outcomes.
Sometimes you’ll make the most sound predictions, variance won’t budge, and you will lose. Other times, you’ll make unfounded, irrational predictions but variance will swing your way and you’ll win. Then you’ll think the unfounded way to go is optimal, variance will sway away and you’ll lose. And on, and on, and on.
Ultimately, the point to drive home here is that we want the right mix. We should always leverage data. We should always infuse randomness. For this week, remember this simple equation: random + rational = perfection.
I wanted to go down this data and randomness path this week because the data is finally significant, and there’s one game the data is going to point to this week that we should be clearly targeting. That game is Washington at Arizona.
At risk of oversimplifying, if data and variance are the two primary elements we can lean on to build first-place lineups, and one of those elements is going to show a strong preference, then that makes this the week of embracing variance.
The point of the Angles email is to be a primer for the week. So as you start down your path toward getting ready for the Sunday slate, I wanted to make sure we are early on this rather than late. We’ll go more into the rest of the slate below, but keep in mind that this game will be the likely fulcrum of the week.
Washington at Arizona is the probable Golden Ticket this week. It’s carrying a 50.5 total currently (Thursday), already being bet up from its open at 45 combined points. These are two bad defenses. Through three weeks, these are two efficient offenses. Jayden Daniels and Kyler Murray are going to be the poster boys for optimizers on every site. And we can go on from there. (Quick note: Don’t scroll past The Workbook this week, put together by our very own Majesstik. So much data to love in here and this specific game is carrying a .800 combined DSR, which is the highest of any this season!)
So before you jump into the rest of the slate, recognize where the data points are. The sharpest way to be unique is to not be all in or all out. It’s to find the sweet spot of likely and unlikely outcomes and put together a lineup that goes down in history!
Well, I hope the intro here got you going a bit, because it may be hard for me to maintain my energy around the rest of this slate.
If the Commanders/Cardinals game is outshined by another this week it’s likely one of the following three games: CIN/CAR, NO/ATL, or PHI/TB.
The surprising 0-3 Bengals need to shore up their defense, but their offensive unit coming back to full strength with Tee Higgins and a three-down role for Zack Moss could pay dividends. Carolina got the classic bounce from former Bengals mainstay Andy Dalton last week. If he can duplicate the performance, these are two offensive-minded head coaches with defensive inefficiencies.
New Orleans and Atlanta square off to see who will be the frontrunner in the NFC South, a division that may be better than we thought if Tampa and Carolina can have a strong showing this weekend. The Saints need a bounce back for America to not think they were a two-week wonder, while the Falcons would like to reinstate the preseason public belief that they were the team to beat in this division.
All signs point to Saquon Barkley for the Eagles this week in a game they may potentially play without AJ Brown, Devonta Smith, and two of five starting offensive lineman. Meanwhile, the Bucs are anxiously awaiting the start of this game if for no other reason than to get the loss against Denver behind them as fast as possible.
And if it’s not one of these games which could upend WAS/ARI, the next place to look for points will be within individual offenses, as big favorites. Huge fantasy performances can always emerge from real blowouts, which brings team stacks (playing two offenses with multiple players from each in the same lineup, without bring-backs) fully into play.
Let’s look at the glass half-full first (heavy favorites):
Any of these offenses could be concentrated enough to win a blowout and produce a few fantasy-winning performances. For what it’s worth, the Texans/Jags likely has the best chance to emerge as a better-than-expected game environment simply based on the offensive talent on the field.
As for the glass-half-empty crowd, we have the emergence of the “short of 20” club this week with eight(!) teams projected to score less than 20. They are the Patriots (14.5), Chargers (15.5), Broncos (15.5), Browns (18), Raiders (19), Colts (19), Rams (19), and Jaguars (19). If there’s hope here, it’s that just a few nights ago the Commanders put up 38 on a 19-point implied team total.
So go forth, and build wisely this week. Think about the data + variance equation and where you want to be common and different.
And with that, I’m super excited for the on-site and off-site content coming your way this week, and as always, let’s go hang out at the top of the leaderboards on Sunday!
Hugs and hand pounds!
-Larejo
We’ve rolled out our first rest-of-season price drop on the Bink Machine.
Was :: $149 for the season.
Now :: $129 ($6.79/week).
Let’s go!
