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 our first question focuses on “what is unique about this slate?”, but this week the answer to that question is relatively apparent and all of our answers will likely look the same if I simply ask that usual canned question, so let me set the table for us a bit::
This week’s 9-game main slate is the smallest of the season and we have a wild mess of uncertainty around teams on both ends of the spectrum – those who have a lot to play for in terms of playoff position and seeding, those whose spot is clinched but have a small range of outcomes for where they can be seeded, and teams whose seasons are done and may be considering benching players or taking a long-term (wink, wink) approach to what the best outcome for them this week is.
With all of that on the table, the question becomes what do you make of it all and does it shape your approach to the slate in terms of player selection and/or the contests you think are best to target?
Oh, man! If last week did anything for me, it reminded me of how sharp the slope of uncertainty can be at this point in the season. The toughest thing? Most of the uncertainty we deal with at this point in the season is difficult to forecast. Teams that looked like they were giving full effort last week might look checked-out this week. More confusingly, teams that looked checked-out last week might look engaged once again this week. On top of this, a lot of playoff spots are locked up already, with seeding the only thing left to play for. Is this seeding important to these teams? Will James Cook see his workload lightened? Will the Steelers attack in their normal manner if Baltimore loses on Saturday, or will we see some subtle changes?
My typical approach this deep into the season is to lean a bit more heavily into spots where I feel we have some actual certainty — spots where teams have something serious to play for, or where we have a team that’s been out of it for a while, and we can therefore feel confident about what we’ll continue to see from them. But last week felt like a reminder that even when we think we know things, there are things we don’t know.
With all that, I do want to lean into higher-certainty spots as much as I can…but I also want to acknowledge that uncertainty has a more featured role in the slate at this point in the season, and that we should be a bit more willing than normal to embrace variance and invite uncertainty onto our builds.
Oh boy. The end of the season gets into dangerous territory around the assumption of rational coaching – that is, we tend to think we know what’s best for a team to do in terms of who and how they should play and build accordingly…and then often end up frustrated because the team doesn’t do what we want them to do. Motivation is a tricky thing in the NFL, because players play to win when they’re out there. So, I don’t tend to put a ton of stock into it, except in the very last week of the season when we see teams outright rest players – prior to that, it’s really pretty darn rare to see teams significantly change their game plans based on playoff standings.
To be clear, it certainly CAN happen. I think where we’re likeliest to see it is with injured guys – they’re less likely to play through questionable tags, or to get their full workload if they do play, if the team has nothing to play for in terms of playoff outcomes. Outside of that, I think I’m personally looking more towards next week for more motivation-based tournament strategy (and oh boy I’m sure we’ll all write a lot about it then).
Here’s what I do think about this slate, though: it’s less about who we’re NOT playing and more about who we ARE playing (and guess what, this is our task every single week). And when it comes to who we ARE playing, there just aren’t a lot of really strong spots on this small slate – only 4 teams have team totals of 25+ points! And it’s not that we can only play guys from teams with 25+ totals, but overall this is just a low total slate and that significantly condenses the player pool that I personally want to be investing in.
Yea, that pretty succinctly summarizes what this slate is telling us. We have almost zero certainty outside of the Arizona-Cincinnati game, there aren’t many (any?) running backs that carry elite cost-considered ranges of outcomes, and the quarterback position is a hot mess. Those variables come together to have me almost entirely focused on game environment bets as a way of capturing bulk ceiling, with a heavy emphasis on game over-stacks.
We like the Cardinals and Bengals… over-stack them. We like the Jaguars but aren’t sure where the production is likeliest to come from… over-stack them. We like the pass volume in New Orleans… over-stack them. We like the reduction in primary targets in New England… play them together. We like the concentration of expected offensive volume from the Raiders in a solid matchup… stack them up!
My answer to this question can basically be seen within the second question…..targeting the spots where teams could score a LOT of points. The Bengals, Jaguars, and Patriots all stand out to me as potential spots for that to happen and while I don’t necessarily think all of them will go wild, I do think that at least one of them posts the kind of offensive day that you need to have and on a smaller slate like this multiple pieces probably makes sense.
Earlier this season I asked this question when we had smaller slates as well. This week with only nine games and questions around the offensive environments in many of those spots (only six teams with implied team totals of 23 or higher), there is a good chance of multiple GPP-winning scores coming from the same offense and the quarterback may or may not need to be a part of it.
In that spirit, the question becomes what are some teams that you would be interested in playing multiple players from the same offense without the quarterback in a “Player Block” that can position your roster in a spot to benefit from being on the right spot at the right time?
