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.
Last week, something that I believe all of us talked about at various points was how it felt like a week that would be relatively low-scoring, with tournament winning lineups landing in the 190 to 200 range. Turns out, we were too optimistic. The winning lineup in the Milly Maker put up 178.32 points, and across all the large field tournaments there were only a couple of lineups that cracked the 180-point mark. We’ve accurately identified those weeks sometimes in the past and we’ve also recognized some of the highest scoring slates of the season prior to kickoff. There is huge value in that, and frankly it is probably a good starting point for any week. If we have a good grasp of what type of scoring we are going to need in order to win, but our opponents may not, that can be a huge edge as we make choices about roster construction, how correlated we want to be, and which ways we try to get “unique.” As such, what are your thoughts about how this week sets up and what are your expectations for the winning scores?
Bigger scores in DFS are a function of a number of things. Are there a lot of players who score 30+ points? Are those 30-pointers (or high-end raw scores) popular or unpopular? Are there popular value plays that perform well? And of course, are there game environments that perform at a high level and leave other games in the dust?
I don’t see this as a slate where there are likely to be a ton of players who score 30+ points, but I do think there is potential for more high-end scores than we have seen in some past weeks. To be clear: this is not “a prediction that we will see more high-end scores than we’ve been seeing of late,” but it is an assessment that if we played out this slate a hundred times, we’d have more weeks with “several high-end scores” than recent weeks.
Furthermore, players with decent pathways to high-end scores include Christian McCaffrey, De’Von Achane, Travis Kelce, Cedric Tillman, Jahmyr Gibbs, Kyren Williams, Deebo Samuel, Kenneth Walker, and others, all of whom are projected to garner 10% ownership or higher.
“Popular value plays” come with low floors this week, but unlike some weeks, the “popular value plays” do come with a ceiling.
As for game environments :: nothing really stands out on this slate; but would it surprise us if the Ravens and Steelers played to the upside? Would it surprise us if the Seahawks and 49ers played to the upside? There are other games that could also play to the upside; but these two games, in particular, stand out as spots where a back-and-forth game could develop.
Put it all together, and I think this week’s slate lands in the “broad range of outcomes” bucket. Last week, I was so convinced in the expected low-scoring nature of the slate that — for the first time in at least four or five years — I had multiple core rosters without a stack (i.e., rosters that effectively bet that there would be no stacks you “had to have”). This week, I’m back to a focus on double-stacks, as I think it’s likely we see a double-stack winning tourneys. Outside of this single component of roster construction, I don’t necessarily change a whole lot based on how I see scoring playing out (that is to say, I’m always targeting high-end scores on each spot on my roster); but I am at least shifting back to a stack-heavy approach, and I’ll be prepared for a higher-scoring weekend if that’s what comes our way.
There are three primary points I’m looking at when analyzing the scoring likely to be required to win GPPs: (1) how much projectable value is present, (2) how many game environments are present that could blow up, and (3) what is the median game total. This slate has a far different feel than last week in that there are numerous players priced below where they should be given current role, range of outcomes, and upside, there are numerous game environments that could blow up, and the median game total is up. As such, we are likely to need 205-210 points to ship major GPPs this week, which fundamentally alters our approach – just as the question suggests.
This week looks fairly normal to me. Multiple games with totals in the mid to high 40s, and what looks like a couple of good value spots (remember high scores aren’t just due to lots of touchdowns being scored – it’s also due to players putting up lots of fantasy points and us being able to afford those players in our rosters).
I’ll be honest, I think this is a good question, but I don’t tend to think about the week’s scoring environment all that much. Maybe that’s wrong, I don’t know…but at the end of the day our goal isn’t to score 180 points or 200 points or 220 points, it’s to score more points than all of our opponents. So, I’m just looking for the strongest individual plays and the best teams/games to attack. The only thing I really think is different on what looks to be a lower-scoring week vs. a higher-scoring week is that in the former there is some value in higher floor but lower ceiling options (think Adonai Mitchell last week – on a week that looked to be higher-scoring, a play like that would not be as strong as it was last week).
On Draftkings specifically, I feel like the highest scoring weeks (where GPP winning scores are 230 to 250) are ones in which things set up specific ways in around each of the positions::
When you have all of those factors in play on the same slate, the pieces to the puzzle kind of fit perfectly. A couple of “cheaper” game stacks allow people to give themselves a strong base for their lineups without constricting the rest of their roster. Strong mid-range RB options allow people to get 40 to 50 points from their two RB spots and still have the salary to pay up for the explosive WRs. The tight end position is often the skeleton key to slates as well since a cheap TE hitting a big score opens things up for the rest of the roster. If you have only two of those situations, things become a little tighter and the winning scores seem to be in the low-200’s. If you have one, or none, of these situations then we end up with the ugly weeks like last week. Sometimes you can “flip” a couple of those situations and still end up with three or four salary situations that give a path to high scores. That usually happens when one game with more expensive players truly goes nuclear (think BAL/CIN games this year) and/or when you have a super-cheap player that goes for 30ish points (think Cedric Tillman and Mike Gesicki weeks).
As for this week, I would say that we are “checking” two of those four boxes. The RB salaries this week are all pretty high and the few cheaper options aren’t in great spots, which means there are unlikely to be mid-range RBs who match the top-tier RBs from a salary perspective which makes paying up at WR more difficult. Likewise, there are some solid TE options on the slate but it doesn’t feel like a couple of weeks this year where it felt like there were a bunch of guys who could smash their salaries. There are, however, some explosive WRs on the slate. As such, I’m expecting winning GPP scores to be in the 200 to 220 range.
There are three teams on this slate that really stand out to me in terms of having very condensed offenses and good spots to potentially have big games this week. Those spots are:
We have these three teams who all have great outlooks for this week where it is a strong bet that their offense performs well, and also a strong bet that we know where that production is going to come from. That is a powerful combination. As discussed, the Dolphins are less certain in terms of usage but are perhaps the best bet to put up 35+ points and they also probably have the best “values” of the bunch as Tyreek Hill is about $1k below where we’d expect if Miami was being viewed how they were to start the year and Jaylen Waddle/Jonnu Smith kind of combine for that “third leg” of the offense. Unpacking all of that, I have a two-part question for you:
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