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?
Oooooh!!!
This is a fun one this week.
On my Solo Ship show with Squirrel Patrol, he noted — about 10 minutes into the show — that it was probably the latest in the show we had ever turned our attention to the topic of game environments. The reason? — 1) we started out talking about Guerendo and Saquon; 2) there are a lot of viable QB focuses, and none of these viable QB focuses really separate from the others.
As I have noted multiple times this week, in multiple places :: there is certainly more than one way to attack this slate; but one very clear, +EV way to attack this slate is to lock in Saquon, Guerendo, and a Raiders pass catcher, and to build out the rest of your roster from there. I don’t have a stack that “stands out to me this week.” I don’t have a quarterback I “really want to play.” I don’t have a game environment that will be dominating my builds. But I do have a base layer I’ll be starting most of my rosters with — and this makes this slate particularly unique.
I’d start by saying you can viably have an extremely small running back pool. You’ve got Barkley, Kamara, Guerrendo, Charbonnet, and Allen all as big-time chalk plays…and I think you could viably just stop your RB player pool right there and call it a day. Look, if you want to try and pivot at RB, you absolutely can – maybe someone else has a really big game – but for me personally I don’t care about RB ownership and I’m happy to just stick with these 5 guys. I love love love tight player pools.
Next up at pass catcher, we have a LOT of volatility in many of the plays that are projected to be chalky. That doesn’t mean they can’t have good games, of course, but mid-tier plays at really high ownership against really good pass defenses (looking at you, Jeudy) aren’t really my thing.
What this comes down to is my kind of slate: lock in a small pool of running backs in whom I feel highly confident, then rotate the more volatile pass catcher plays around them.
This is a really cool slate for a few reasons: (1) there are no clear top game environments, (2) the field is highly likely to play one of Saquon Barkley or Alvin Kamara paired with one of Isaac Guerendo or Braelon Allen as the starting point to roster construction, which is likely to lead to very similar roster for a large portion of the field, and (3) there are some players that project extremely well that don’t necessarily carry GPP-viable ceiling.
Those three things define the slate because, to me, the field is laying out a clearly defined path with how they are going to attack the slate. And as we know, things almost never unfold as we expect in the NFL. That makes generating leverage through well thought out methodologies extremely important on this slate. Use those “if-then” statements this week!
We have a crazy week upon us, with no game environments that on the surface stand out but clear opportunities to stack up teams and hope things break right. On a ten game slate, it doesn’t take much for a team/game to separate from the rest. Along with that, the RB situations with elite options in “can’t-miss” spots and super cheap starters in good to great matchups give us a relatively clear look at how most of the field will be building. The issue is that building lineups is very uncomfortable when you get away from those top RB options and it’s just really hard to not take those cheap guys and their price-considered upside. I think that two TE builds are very viable this week and are a solid way to bet against how the rest of the field is building. Guys like Jonnu Smith and David Njoku could easily go over 100 receiving yards and score a touchdown or two, which could allow them to outscore the cheap RBs and make pairing them with another stud TE optimal.
What a week for running backs. We have the following situations all on one slate::
It seems like we are rarely blessed with cheap backup RBs these days as Draftkings usually proactively raises their salaries. Even when we do get one, we don’t see it often where they have the physical abilities of Guerendo and Allen. The convergence of events with those two being on this slate at the same time that we have two expensive RBs in amazing spots as well seems too good to be true. Unfortunately, we can only play three of them and there are a few RBs on the slate in interesting spots with very good price-considered ceilings as well. So how are you approaching the position?
