OWS Fam!!!
This season, Larejo has been writing the Angles Email — but with this being Thanksgiving week, we have me (JM) on task here, for two main reasons:
1) I wanted to take a moment to express how grateful I am that I get to do this job, with this community. I’m grateful to all the awesome contributors who make OWS what it is. I’m grateful to all the partners we work with who help elevate us in so many ways. And I’m grateful to the OWS Fam — on-site, in Discord, and dominating the leaderboards — who are such a unique and special group of players/humans in this space. Football season is a grind; but the opportunity to “grind” alongside all of you makes this all worth it.
2) Each year at Thanksgiving, we like to express our gratitude to you with a handful of once-a-year deals on-site.
You can find all our discounts/codes on the Thanksgiving Special page (you’ll also find this link at the top of the home page, and throughout the site this week). But to summarize what we’re rolling out this week:
Get in there, and get some discounts!
We’ll have you covered for the Thanksgiving slate (as always) with NFL Edge writeups and a special Thanksgiving Scroll (one of the best Scrolls of the year, in my opinion!).
The NFL Edge for the Main Slate will be mostly published on Friday this week, while expectations for content in The Scroll will be “roughly normal schedule.” (Obviously, there’s some room for delays, given that Thursday is both work and — more importantly — family for the OWS team; but we usually see The Scroll for the Main Slate go off with its normal rhythm.)
Per usual, there will be no NFL Edge audio this week. (NFL Edge audio will return next week.)
There will also be no Solo Ship podcast this week (Squirrel Patrol is traveling), but Searching For Ceiling, the Block Party, the Angles Pod, and The Slate are all scheduled as normal.
I believe that’s everything.
And now, let’s take an early look at the Thanksgiving Slate.
Let’s take a few trips down memory lane.
Thanksgiving Day, 2018. The 7-3 Bears were playing the 4-6 Lions. Teams had a hard time running against the Bears, and had found it nearly impossible to score touchdowns on the ground against Chicago. The Lions were also underdogs, which made LeGarrette Blount look wildly unattractive. Blount proceeded to rush for 88 yards and score two touchdowns — on a slate that saw no Bears running back top 15 yards, no Falcons running back top six yards, and Adrian Peterson rush for 35 yards. In the night game, Alvin Kamara rushed for 89 yards, but caught only one pass and didn’t score a touchdown. On a slate with Tevin Coleman (and no Devonta Freeman!), Adrian Peterson, Ezekiel Elliott, and Alvin Kamara, Zeke was the top producer at the position, and Blount was far and away the second best raw producer on the slate. If you didn’t have him, you had an uphill battle to tourney wins.
Thanksgiving Day, 2020. The Thursday night game was postponed due to Covid, leaving us with a two-game slate. The Texans beat the Lions 41-25, with a semi-popular Will Fuller going 6-171-2 and becoming a piece you had to have in order to win. But more importantly, in the second game on the slate — Washington at Dallas — Ezekiel Elliott was mega chalk, while the Washington side of the game went overlooked. The game played out differently than expected, with the Washington defense dominating, and with Antonio Gibson scoring three touchdowns at low ownership in a 41-16 Washington romp. If you weren’t building with a different approach than the field, you weren’t winning tourneys.
Thanksgiving Day, 2023. The Lions were 8-2, while the Packers — with an erratic and inconsistent quarterback in Jordan Love — were 4-6. All the attention in DFS was on the Lions’ side, where we ended up with no skill position player cracking 19 DK points, and only one skill position player cracking 15 DK points. Meanwhile, an overlooked Jordan Love threw for 268 yards and three scores, while connecting with an overlooked Christian Watson for 5-94-1. This was the first game of the day, and if you built through the Lions — as many did — you were out of the running for a tourney win before the day had really even started.
And listen: this is not an exhaustive list of “unexpected things that have happened on Thanksgiving slates.” This is just three specific instances that I still remember off the top of my head.
I remember where I was in 2018 when Blount scored his second touchdown after I had spent the whole week talking about what an awful matchup he had.
I remember where I was in 2020 when I made the decision to build my Game Changer roster through Antonio Gibson and the Washington defense, and I remember where I was when Gibson scored his third touchdown and gave me a clear pathway to a win.
And I remember where I was when the Lions fell behind in 2023 and I told my dad, “Watch, the Lions will come back. This is a different Lions team this year.” I had built my rosters through Detroit, and I suffered as a result.
In my DFS Interpretations for this week, I spent some time looking at the matchups for this week’s Thanksgiving games, and I spent some time exploring the highest-confidence bets on the slate.
But I also spent some time looking through some alternate ways things could play out on this slate — because really, that’s what is most important.
On a three-game slate, ownership becomes that much more concentrated.
On a three-game slate, it also becomes that much more valuable when something goes differently than expected. On a 13-game slate, if something goes differently than expected, it might not really matter. Who cares if 2018 LeGarrette Blount puts up 22 DK points on the Main Slate? — you don’t have to hit that, because plenty of other (more popular) running backs will put up a similar score. Maybe some people save salary on Blount in that situation, but they don’t gain a serious, significant edge.
But on a three-game slate, that 22-pointer from Blount might separate.
On a three-game slate, that 20-pointer from Christian Watson might separate.
On a small slate, the little things matter so much more.
So yes — think about what’s likeliest to happen on this slate.
But more than any other “main slate” on the year: also look at ownership. Think about where the field is expressing certainty. And think about how you might be able to build for a scenario in which they might be wrong.
Do that — and some of you will absolutely be at the top of the leaderboards on Thursday night.
I’ll see you there!
-JM
