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.
This week we have a bit of a “Cool Kids Club” in the afternoon slate, with three spots standing out::
With all of that in mind, are there any other teams or games that stand out to you as most likely to join the “Cool Kids Club” by the time the games are over on Sunday?
Man, I wish!
There is definitely room for the Dallas // Buffalo to finish in the mid- to high-40s, and for a game from the early slate to match that. In fact, it’s possible for Commanders // Rams and/or Cardinals // 49ers to finish in the mid- to high-40s in blowout style (49ers, in particular, or Rams running away with their game and scoring a bunch of points while the overall scoring stays down), but what’s difficult to see is A) a scenario in which ALL those late spots fail, or B) a scenario in which one of the early games develops into a true shootout.
As I’ve explored in this space and in the Winner Circle pod this year, we have a big edge in DFS through the lens of strategy, roster construction, game theory, etc., but we also have a big edge in DFS through our ability to better understand the matchups, game environments, etc. than the field is able to understand them. I bring that up here because it’s easy, on a slate like this, to fall into a trap of saying, “Everyone is expecting these late games to be so much better, but what if that doesn’t end up being the case? What if, instead, multiple games in the early window shoot out, and all the late-slate players underwhelm?” And yes, if that were to happen, this would provide a clear path to first place…but the chances of it happening are too slim for me to consider this to be a +EV approach (especially as I still expect a lot of scattered attention from the field on early-game players).
As we’ve discussed this week in the Angles Pod, my Player Grid, etc., there are certainly ways this weekend could play out that would lead to “completely avoiding the early games” being a failed approach, but I also want to acknowledge that it’s HIGHLY probable that a piece from both the Rams and the 49ers will belong on tourney-winning lineups (if not being downright necessary for tourney-winning lineups), and it’s “likelier than not” that the late games will provide more valuable DFS scores than all the early games put together. There are still ways to maneuver to the top of the leaderboards this week; but in my eyes, “building around totally different scenarios for these games” is not the most +EV way to get there.
Not really. There are a couple of spots you could make cases for having some upside – the Dolphins are a ridiculously good offense that could find ceiling even in a tough matchup, the Packers are looking better of late and are in a matchup that gives us a lot of confidence in where the ball is going, HOU/TEN has some good pieces in good matchups, but overall the lowest total afternoon game is 48 while the highest total morning game is just 42.5 (and every other morning game is under 40). You can take some shots at the morning game environments and hope to find a low-owned shootout, but in all likelihood the best game to stack around will be one of the three afternoon games.
Honestly, no. There are other spots for individual pieces but my primary focus is on those three games this week. And that’s okay, because we have a very clear picture of how the field is handling those situations, making it relatively easy to differentiate from the field.
TB/GB stands out to me as the spot with the most potential for a shootout. We have seen the Bucs defense be shredded several times this season and even pulled the usually mundane Falcons into a fun game environment in Week 14. The Bucs defense is battling a ton of injuries and Jordan Love is coming off a game in which he struggled against Wink Martindale’s Giants defense, and this would be a perfect spot for him to get back on track. The Bucs offense also has some guys who can make plays and this is a Packers defense that just made Tommy DeVito look like a world beater. This game has all the ingredients for a high scoring affair at reasonable salaries compared to the “Cool Kids Club”.
Running back has become an interesting position in DFS as spending up at the position can often make it difficult to fill out a winning lineup due to the constraints it puts on the rest of your lineup. This week we have two of the three highest salary RB’s (CMC and Kyren Williams) projecting for over 30% ownership. However, the spots they are in truly do seem to be elite. CMC dropped a 50-burger in his matchup with the Cardinals earlier this year and Kyren Williams has possibly the best RB role in the league and his team has a high chance of scoring 30+ points.
How are you handling the RB position this week and specifically what are your thoughts on the spots for those two?
