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.
Usually we like to start this article off by discussing what is “unique” about a particular slate. This week it is very clear that the answer to that is largely tied to the fact that this is the smallest “Main Slate” of the year. There are only eight games with sixteen teams on this slate, which will likely alter scoring expectations, ownership numbers, and the field’s overall approach to things. With all of that in mind, what stands out to you about this slate and what are your expectations for how this smaller slate is likeliest to play out in terms of overall scoring, GPP winning scores, and what positions you think are highest priority or likeliest to separate the winners from losers?
Indeed, the fact that this is an eight-game slate is immediately “unique.” But what does it all mean?
I think there’s a chance we see a high-scoring week — but in order for that to happen, we would probably need the Packers // Vikings game to play all the way to the upside, or we would need the Panthers // Bucs game to snowball into something special. Other avenues to a high-scoring DFS slate are big individual efforts from popular players (several of whom are capable of such efforts).
The likeliest way for this slate to play out, however, is for sub-200-point scores to ship DraftKings tourneys, and for small edges in scoring to ultimately make a big difference.
If no game shoots out in a major way, there will be opportunity for a game like Jets // Bills or even Titans // Jags to provide difference-making production.
I also see the running back position being more thin than normal on projectable scoring, with clear potential for none of the most popular running backs to go for more than 22-24 points (which would open the door for running backs with broader ranges of outcomes to post 28+ and become actual separators at a position where this isn’t usually an opportunity for significant edge).
If the running back position does suffer some performance loss this week, we have several wideouts capable of scoring 30+ (with 40+ within range for several players on this slate) — making the wide receiver position a spot where we might want to prioritize salary // upside-hunting.
Finally, this seems to me to be a slate where just simply trying to “play good players” will provide some level of edge. With so few games, and with so much that could go sideways, playing good players (ideally on good teams) can be one of the easiest ways to position yourself to scoop more points than your competition.
This is a real weird slate because there’s only one game that has both a high total and close spread, and overall just a lot of teams with really low totals (only 8 of 16 teams even have a 20 point team total). Backup quarterbacks abound, which will lower interest in a lot of pass catchers…I expect ownership is going to become quite concentrated. Fewer games means we likely have a lower-scoring overall slate, but what’s important to note is that the fewer games there are the lower the overall optimal lineup score (because there are fewer teams playing thus fewer opportunities for big outlier performances), but it also means that winning tournament lineups are closer to the optimal than normal (because fewer players to choose from, more likely to get things right when building). So I’m not sure that GPP winning scores really change necessarily…I’ve seen 3 or 4-game afternoon slates with GPPs won by the same or even higher scores as have taken down main slates.
From a strategy angle, the smaller the slate, the more important I think it is to try and win each position. If you need to be closer to optimal to win, that means you can’t afford to lose out at a given position and try to make it up with lower-owned outlier high scores elsewhere. That makes Brock Bowers and, to a lesser extent, Jonnu Smith especially interesting to me as they’re the tight ends who’ve shown the ability to truly win their position with scores that nobody else can match. At quarterback one could say the same for Josh Allen, IF he’s pushed into Superman mode (read: if the Jets put up a fight). Wide receiver and running back are deep enough that there aren’t the same individual major decision points – lots of guys can have good (and clustered) scores at those positions.
I almost get tired of saying this (and you guys and gals might be growing tired of hearing it), but man, I love this slate. Anything that is out of the “DFS norm” is room for bumps to expected value, and this slate is far from the “DFS norm.” It is likeliest we see scores in the 195-205 range ship majors this week with fewer opportunities for outlier production to exist. That said, just because something is less likely doesn’t necessarily mean that is how things will play out. For me, targeting game environments heavily on this slate will be one of the biggest boosts to EV we can make because there are fewer opportunities for another game to match the production if one truly blows up. Based on our discussions in previous weeks on The Slate podcast, I get the feeling the field will take the exact opposite approach by clinging too tightly to median projections. Oh, the places we’ll go, and oh, the expected value we’ll generate!
I think this slate has a wide range of outcomes as the smaller amount of games and the fact that so many of them have modest totals provides a clear blueprint for how it could be a boring Saturday. On the flip side, teams who are in contention are condensing their offenses and feeding their studs while many teams that are out of the playoffs are featuring younger players or critical pieces of the franchise out of necessity due to injury or as a means of using their remaining games to evaluate and develop. This provides us with a situation where some of these games with low projected totals could smash their expectations and also where we could see some outsized usage numbers that lead to huge individual performances. Since the slate is condensed with fewer teams/players, more elite individual scores will automatically inflate overall scoring. I think around 210-220 points will be required to win tournaments on Draftkings this week.
We have talked throughout the year about how rosters built heavily around a specific game can give us a clear path to the top on weeks where one game blows the others away. This week there are two games that have far higher totals than the rest (CAR/TB and GB/MIN) and could potentially separate in a big way. Two part question here, which of those games do you think is more likely to turn into a “shootout” and of the remaining six games is there one that you think has sneaky paths to putting up a big number?
