Papy is a full-time DFS player, with a focus on high-stakes tourneys, and with hundreds of thousands in lifetime profit
Welcome OWS fam to Papy’s pieces! I’m extremely excited to share a whole slate article with you guys and hopefully provide a useful tool in lineup building. My background in strategy games comes from chess, and building off that, I’m going to talk about “pieces” that like in chess, create a team. The player I highlight as each “piece” will make my condensed builds, with a real chance to make my single-entry lineup (where most of my money is bet each week). They’ll be categorized into pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, queens, and kings (the pieces on a chess board). I’m not going to create ridged standards (like a salary bracket for each piece) but pawns will generally be the cheapest, with pieces working their way up in price to Queens/Kings. The article will start with “The Board” where I’ll give a brief overview of a way to think about the slate, before going into Pieces.
Welcome to Week 2 DFS! Week 2, like Week 1, is typically still abundant in value, and this week is no different. Players who were clearly mispriced in Week 1 still haven’t increased enough in salary, and players who had a tough Week 1 have been decreased in salary in what looks like an overreaction in many cases. There are also several lead backs (Joshua Kelley // Kenneth Walker // Rachaad White // Gus Edwards // Zach Moss // Brian Robinson) either due to injury or low valuations who are grossly underpriced for their projected workloads. While they’re all “correct” plays, they won’t be featured here, as I suspect all the RB value and relative lack of WR value will lead to builds spending more at RB being unique. With that idea in mind, let’s check out the pieces for Week 2!
Kincaid falls into the category of a player whose price hasn’t adjusted to the usage we saw in Week 1. The Bills hardly ever ran two TE packages last year but decided to use 12-personnel the most in the league to open the season. That is a telling change in philosophy, and it seems directly linked to Kincaid who they traded up for in the draft. Kincaid was in almost every route, but the part of his week one usage that really stood out was that he took 59% of the snaps from the slot. That means Kincaid is closer to being the Bills slot WR, rather than a traditional in-line TE. It’s tough to fade a TE with a large team total, priced like a punt, who is seeing slot WR usage in a potent passing game. As a bonus, the Bills are likely to try and “get right” this week and will have no qualms about hanging 40 on the Raiders.
I hate recommending an expensive defense (especially one everyone just watched look incredible on primetime), but the truth is that sometimes the “donkey” plays are correct. I have never been on team Zach “Frightened Child” Wilson and my evaluation of him hasn’t changed because he looked okay coming off the bench Monday night. I’d rather bet on the Dallas defense being as ferocious as it looked Sunday night. The Cowboys are the second most expensive defense, but to me, they’re by far the best play. Early ownership projections have them around 13%, but people tend to be allergic to pricey defenses, and I could see it being lower. I could also see them being the type of play that is more owned in lower stakes tournaments, whereas high stakes players “know better” than to pay $4,000 for a defense. It’s generally correct to pay down at defense, but if a defense explodes, you still need to have them to win. The Cowboys could run the Jets out of the gym, and I’ll be looking to fit Dallas into my lineups. As a bonus, they are a nice pairing with Tony Pollard ($7,500).
