The Greatest “Cheat Sheet” In DFS
Each week in The Oracle, OWS team members will take on the key strategy questions from that week’s slate :: sharing their thoughts on how they plan to approach these critical elements from a roster-construction, game theory, and leverage perspective.
A weekly staple of The Oracle :: What makes this slate particularly unique?
The answer to this question this week is fairly obvious – it’s Week 1!!
With all of those things as common and clear factors about the “uniqueness” of Week 1 NFL DFS, we will change course from the “standard” tone of this question we have on a weekly basis and instead ask a more philosophical question: Are there any ways in which you approach Week 1 differently or have different expectations than that of a “typical” DFS week? Bankroll management, contest selection, player selection, etc.
So…a programming note.
We ask this same question at the top of the Oracle in Week 1 each year. This year, Mike (who comes up with the Oracle questions) left our 2023 answers in place, in case we wanted to reference those, or just use them — given that they are fairly evergreen answers, with sharp thinking/takes behind them.
After reading through my 2023 answer to this question, I felt it was no longer “totally my answer” to this question this week…but I also felt it had some really valuable thoughts/insights, so I’m leaving that answer (labeled as my 2023 answer) below.
As to fresh thoughts for this year:
I’m answering this question on Friday morning, fresh off last night’s Ravens/Chiefs game. In that game, both offenses had to open things up, we had lots of back-and-forth momentum, and we were a shoe tip away from a game total of 53 to 55 (the Ravens were set to go for two, rather than sending the game to overtime, so the game total would have landed in one of those two buckets). And yet, Derrick Henry had only 43 yards, Travis Kelce had only 34 yards, Mark Andrews was invisible all game, Zay Flowers finished under 40 receiving yards on 10 targets, Lamar Jackson ran for 122 yards(!) and still failed to top 30 DraftKings points, and Patrick Mahomes threw only one touchdown pass. Rashee Rice went for 100 yards, but failed to score a touchdown (a solid but unspectacular 20.3 DraftKings points). Which means that in a game that featured both offenses opening things up, and some back-and-forth-momentum, and “a shoe tip away from a game total of 53 or 55,” Lamar’s strong price-considered effort and Isaiah Likely’s 29.1 DraftKings points were the only scores that would have really mattered if this game had been on the Main Slate. (And if this game had been on the Main Slate, Likely’s ownership surely would have been under 3%.)
NFL games are very complex. The way scoring and fantasy production develop and pile up are complex. And yet, we come out of a game like that, and on Friday can still hear people talking about the upcoming games this weekend as if they are all being played on a piece of paper.
Most of the expectations people have for players heading into Week 1 will be wrong!!! Among running backs playing on the Main Slate, only De’Von Achane (in 10 games no less) posted more than three elite DraftKings scores all season last year (and among RBs on this week’s Main Slate, there were about 10 scores, all season, among all the RBs on this slate combined, that would have “buried you for not having played that guy at his salary” last year). And yet, people are going to flock to certain running backs, and will feel confident that running back will return a high-end score (and then will be surprised and disappointed when they don’t!).
Same goes for wideouts, and tight ends, and even quarterbacks.
Remember: most players are priced in such a way that they will hit 4x their salary roughly 25% of the time(!). Most of these games are not going to go the optimistic/high-upside way people see them going on paper, and most of the production will not be distributed as cleanly as it will be on paper.
Furthermore, guys like Rico Dowdle, Austin Ekeler, Tony Pollard, and J.K. Dobbins (just as a few examples) may have much bigger roles than anyone is anticipating.
Things are going to be a bit funky this week — because every NFL week is like that.
The more we can put our minds in this mid-season space, the more we can benefit. Think about what NFL games actually look like. Play out some of these games in your minds. Most of these games will be close and somewhat low-scoring in the first half, and it will be the decisions and aggressiveness (or lack of aggressiveness) at the end of the first half that sets the tone for the rest of the game. How can you best benefit from what might happen?
Finally — as we move into that 2023 writeup (for any of you who want to read it) — I’ll note that, if memory serves, I finally grabbed a profitable Week 1 last year. But I also took Puka Nacua ($3k DraftKings price tag; 0% owned in the $1500 single-entry contest) off my Main roster on Sunday morning last year — failing to follow through on my conviction there, and costing me somewhere around $100,000 in profit. Which serves as a reminder that we sometimes have to guess in Week 1, and it’s sometimes uncomfortable to do so…but that’s where the biggest edges often lie. That’s where there’s money to be made.
My 2023 answer::
Personally, I have to recognize that my greatest edge in DFS is the way I am able to combine my understanding of DFS strategy/theory with my understanding of teams, players, and coaches across the NFL. There’s a balance between these two strengths that begins to really hit its stride around Week 3 or 4, and my best weeks of the season typically come in Week 6 and beyond. Obviously, there is a way to move closer to one point (the strategy/theory side), shifting the balance in that direction in the early going and gradually moving to my natural balance as we get deeper into the season, but I recognize that this is easier said than done.
I have actually not had a profitable Week 1 since OWS was started (in 2018!), which on the one hand is still a small sample size (five slates), but on the other hand…this results-based fact can be added into the bucket of knowledge regarding potential opportunities for shortcomings in my play early in the season to push me toward the conclusion that “this is not the week in which I’m likeliest to have my biggest edge.”
I want to pause there and zoom out for a moment to note that this is not to say that the edge is smaller in Week 1! I haven’t read answers from anyone else yet, beyond reading the very top of Xandamere’s answer where he said he tends to go heavier in Week 1. Xandamere’s strengths as a DFS player are different from mine, and the setup we have in Week 1 very much aligns with what he does best. It benefits each DFS player to identify and define what their own edge is — what their strengths are as a DFS player (or what the strengths are that they are developing) — as this allows for honest assessment of unique situations such as this.
With all that said, I also recognize A) that Week 1 used to be a banger of a week for me each year, and that B) my Week 1 prep has been hampered since OWS was launched by how busy August and early September are from a business/work standpoint. While others have MORE time to prepare for Week 1, I have had less time to prepare over the last five years.
This year, I carved out space to treat Week 1 the way I was able to from 2014 to 2017, and while I don’t know the teams, players, and coaches as well as I will in Week 6, for example, I know them far better — from a “Week 1” perspective — than I did the last few years, and I know them far better than most of my competition does. This has me A) moving a bit closer to my typical “balance of strengths” in my approach than I would have felt comfortable with the last few years, and B) playing my normal weekly buy-in amount.
While the majority of that exploration is specific to my own strengths and weaknesses as a DFS player, I think there is value in “watching someone else” work through their thoughts in an area such as this, as it can help you (the reader) to do the same thing. What is your edge as a DFS player? What are you good at? What are you still working to improve? This can guide you in your decisions with regards to “How I want to approach Week 1.”
While my 2023 answer is still valid, I want to expand on the variance/chalk piece. I say this every year in some format, generally on a show somewhere, but I want to write it down as well: we know very, very little in Week 1. We THINK we know things, but as JM noted, there are players whose roles may be very different than we think they’re going to be. Offenses may feature players differently, they may be more pass or run heavy, and defense consistency from year to year is very low (i.e. defenses we think are attackable may be good, defenses we think are good may be attackable). We know very little!
When the field is extremely confident but we don’t actually know things, that’s the time to embrace more variance. Recognize how little we actually know and play into spots where if the variance swings our way, it benefits us in big ways. Always remember “what do you win when you win?”
My 2023 answer::
I tend to go heavier in Week 1 because it’s a week where the edge is larger than normal. We have the most casual players (the players who will drain their bankrolls early in the year and then stop), we have a smattering of new DFS players in the ecosystem (even though DFS isn’t growing like it used to, there are still new players every year), and we have the most uncertainty around how teams will use their players and how good they will be (but the field sees perceived certainty in, say, games like MIA/LAC). All of that adds up to edge, and so I tend to go heavy in Week 1 to try and capture it.
I’m also more willing to embrace variance in Week 1. As the season goes on, chalk tends to become “better,” because we gain more knowledge about how teams operate. In Week 1, chalk tends to be more fragile because we’re operating off of a lot of assumptions, but assumptions are not the same as knowledge.
Bankroll – I do generally go a little higher in the amount I play Week 1 for a couple of reasons. First, I play more entries of the super large field stuff (Milly Makers on both sites and the large contest on Yahoo) this week than a normal week because overlay is likely, price points of those contests are lower, and such a large chunk of rosters are basically dead from being very inexperienced players and/or rosters made days/weeks in advance. Second, there is a ton of value in being early on players/teams and Week 1 provides the best chance to get paid off for having unique thoughts and seeing things for yourself – which I believe is a strength of mine.
Contest Selection – As noted above, I adjust slightly to leverage opportunities in the larger field contests.
Player Selection – I want to get in early on guys I think are going to pop and leverage teams who have different outlooks than the last time we saw them – as most people are in a “see it to believe it” mindsets even when they know situations are different.
From a theoretical perspective regarding game plan development, I typically align with Mikey as far as bankroll management goes in Week 1. The amount of variance present early in the season lends itself well to my style of play in GPPs so I typically go a bit harder through the first month of play. But everybody’s gameplan generation is going to be different so we need to be honest with ourselves before we can devise an optimal plan of attack.
As far as contest selection goes, no massive changes for me early in the season outside of some shots in the early season specialty contests like the $100 Milly.
When considering players in the first month of play, I’m typically keeping an extra eye on game environments over the individual players themselves. Because we know so little in the early goings, I want to be able to minimize the things I need to get right in order to succeed.
The final note here is that we tend to think we know more about these teams entering the season that we actually do. There are so many changes during an NFL offseason – coaching turnover, personnel turnover, injuries, contract disputes, etc. It’s difficult to break the mental block of thinking we know more than we do about these teams, so I challenge everyone to ditch all the biases that were created over the previous six months and view Week 1 through the lens of a new, one-week situation.
“Vegas lines” are the basis for so many projections, predictions, and rankings in DFS. Every week, you can have a pretty good idea what the popular games/players are going to be and which games are most likely to score a lot of points by looking at the spreads and totals and doing a little digging. It is a critical part of the process in most weeks and those numbers can help you find value and a starting point for figuring out how games are likely to play out.
That being said, those lines are – by far – the least efficient they are ever going to be in Week 1 of the NFL season. Every team has personnel and scheme changes from one season to the next, some bigger than others, and players are changing as well – getting older, recovering from injuries, sustaining injuries, training/practicing to improve. There are just so many variables that are extremely hard to account for heading into the season, which is part of what makes it unpredictable and fun.
The interesting thing is that the field generally treats the lines in a very similar manner this week as they do for other weeks – with a great deal of certainty. Knowing those two things – 1) the lines are relatively inefficient and 2) the field will not treat them as such – leaves us with a huge opportunity. With that in mind, there are 12 games on this week’s main slate and a whopping SEVEN of them have totals under 44 points. We know the field will gravitate towards the higher total games, so there is great value in finding the “other” game that turns into a shootout. Of those – which one(s) stand out to you as potentially being very mispriced::
