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.
I can’t help but chuckle a bit as I look at player and ownership projections for the week on Thursday and Friday and they are all over the place and basically just hands thrown up as there are so many moving parts on all of these teams that it really is hard to know what to expect. There really is nothing like the final week of an NFL season and this year is no exception, with so many variables and situations to consider and question marks all over the place in terms of how teams will approach the week, motivations for individuals and teams, and difficulty to know where we can find “certainty”. There are even a lot of spots where the “motivations” for a particular team could be fluid and change as the game is being played – for example if the Commanders are up big on the Cowboys, then the Packers game becomes meaningless for seeding purposes and they’ll be traveling to Philly next week. In that scenario, how quickly do Jordan Love and Josh Jacobs come off the field? Similarly, on Wednesday’s Fanduel Labs show I talked about how the Bucs Defense could be correlated with Michael Penix Jr. and the Falcons passing game, as a scenario where the Bucs dominate the Saints would leave Atlanta knowing their season is over and potentially letting the rookie QB sling it. All of the “chaos” provides anxiety and stress as we search for “certainty”, but it also provides a golden opportunity for those willing to embrace it.
What strategies do you see for your approach to this week in particular that may not work out every year but you believe, over time, give you the best chance to take advantage of the uncertainty that Week 18 provides? Also, do you have a particular type of contest that you prefer on this unique slate?
As I’ve made known, of course: I don’t typically play the final week of the regular season. Part of this is schedule-related. This is typically a difficult week to get out of state to reserve DraftKings entries. Another part of this is slate-related. After wrapping my final week of content on the season (at the end of what’s effectively a six month marathon-sprint), I’m usually not enthusiastic about playing what is, in a sense, a different DFS sport than we’re playing the rest of the year (said differently: if this were a week like any other week, playing the slate would be my final reward for all the hard work of the season; but with this slate providing completely different challenges and edges to a normal slate, it feels less like a reward and more like work). I do, however, have thoughts on this slate — from years of research, prep, and “paying attention on Sunday” in the final week of the regular season — so I’ll share what I can in this regard.
Firstly, I see the edge on this slate being greater in large-field play than in small-field play. Or, said another way: I think our typical small-field edges go away (which isn’t to say we can’t find new small-field edges on this week — but is instead to say that the edges we can typically bank on in small-field play go away), as we are generally well-positioned in small-field play through our ability to turn the math in our favor with higher-confidence plays and better roster construction. With so much chaos swirling around the final weekend of the regular season, confidence is lowered across the board, which makes it harder to stamp in the typical edge we have on tighter builds. At the same time, this opens the door for a chaos-embracing mindset to benefit us in large-field play. Asking “what if” questions, and being willing to be wrong in order to potentially be “all the way right,” can create edges that aren’t typically available. If I were playing, I would lower my bankroll exposure this week, and I would focus more heavily on large-field play. I think there is a good chance that at least one or two other OWS contributors will say that this is a week in which they typically expand their bankroll exposure, so don’t take my thoughts as instructions. You can, however, take my thoughts as one angle to consider for your own play this week.
Secondly, I think it’s important to point out that true “out of nowhere” scores are not as common in the final week of the regular season as legend seems to have it. In order for an “out of nowhere” piece to pay off, that player has to produce a truly noteworthy (price-considered) score. They have to outscore all the popular pieces in their price range — otherwise, you’re taking on extra risk for no real reward. If you’re considering going “off the board” this week, be sure to ask yourself whether or not the play you’re considering has genuine “had to have it” potential if everything comes together.
I think a lot of people focus on “what if” scenarios in the final week that are all about upside. What if Josh Jacobs is pulled partway through the game and Emmanuel Wilson gets more run, for example. But as I see it, that’s the wrong way to play the final week…while it is certainly possible for some big scores to come from out of left field, if you look at the history of winning final week rosters, that’s not actually the case all that often (or, well, maybe in some VERY large field stuff).
What’s much more important, in my opinion, is avoiding land mines. Avoiding the spots where a team does in fact mail it in early, or avoiding the spots where the field is expressing a lot of certainty (through high ownership) in spots that are actually highly volatile (i.e. RB1 is resting, everyone jumps on RB2, but the team just uses a split backfield with multiple RBs all getting 10 touches).
Like every week, chalk will form this week…but the chalk is much more fragile this week than it is in most weeks. That’s not to say it can’t hit, of course, but broadly speaking final week chalk tends to have a lower chance of hitting than mid-season chalk.
I also think it’s even more important than normal to have your rosters tell a story. A good corollary here is think about how to draft playoff best ball rosters. Every playoff best ball roster tells a story of what teams win each round and advance, and if your story is right, you stand a better chance of winning. Week 18 rosters are kind of like that if you’re looking at teams and motivation – as Mike pointed out, for example, if the Commanders are whomping the Cowboys, the Packers game becomes meaningless to them, so Commanders pieces could potentially be correlated with someone like an Emmanuel Wilson (and definitely should not be played with Jordan Love or Josh Jacobs, IMO). On the flip side of that, if you want to play Rico Dowdle or Brandin Cooks, they correlate positively with the main Packers weapons. Make sure your rosters tell stories, and for you MME folks, make sure you’re setting up your optimizer rules to take advantage of these stories (i.e. at most 1 of Jayden Daniels and Josh Jacobs could be a rule, or another could be in any roster with Brandin Cooks, boost the projection of Jacobs and Love – that sort of thing).
Finally, I will note that it’s extremely common for DFS players to think core players on unmotivated teams are bad plays because they have nothing to play for. But…that’s not really how football teams operate. Generally speaking playoff-bound teams will rest key starters, but eliminated teams usually play things pretty straight up. For example, last season nobody wanted to play Breece Hall because the Jets were eliminated, and he smashed at very low ownership and won people tournaments. TL;DR here is motivation is much more important for playoff-bound teams than it is for eliminated teams. Since the result of this is that we also see extremely heavy ownership on teams with lots of motivation, there is fantastic opportunity to play into the eliminated teams.
That’s really it, isn’t it? I think this question is framed beautifully because it captures what Week 18 truly is – a slate of uncertainty. But that also perfectly describes how to be most profitable in Week 18. The field is generally risk averse, meaning they are more comfortable with more certainty. In Week 18, we have almost zero certainty. There are a few teams with “something to play for,” there are the narratives behind incentives, and there are teams that are quite literally talking out of their collective asses. Weeding through all that to find the spots that carry legitimate upside is the name of the game, and we might have to embrace more uncertainty (read: variance) than on a typical slate. The field is not going to feel comfortable in doing that, hence the percentage solution will be to stay away from it. That provides us with an opportunity to get creative with the amount of variance we are willing to accept. Also note that the structure of this slate is such that 30+ fantasy points scores and 25+ fantasy point scores are likely to be less plentiful than on a normal slate, increasing the importance of gaining exposure to the players that do have that within their ranges of outcomes.
The short answer is to embrace more variance than the field. The long answer is nuanced and deserves its own explanation, which you beautiful people will get on The Slate podcast!
I think it’s fine to attack contests of all sizes this week, but I would adamantly contend that GPPs will be more profitable in the long run as compared to cash games on a slate with so much uncertainty.
I alluded to the Falcons situation in the question above, and that is one spot and example of where I think there is an advantage. Finding those second level correlations that exist this week whereas usually different games would have zero effect on each other. Not everyone is Dan Campbell and is going to go all-out regardless of situation.
I always play the Afternoon Only slate, as I’ve binked that a couple of times in recent years and one of those times was this exact slate on the final week of the year. This week I think that is an especially strong approach for most people as it naturally condenses your player pool. The Early Only slate is also a strong option for the same reasons, although I don’t like the contest options as much on that slate. Don’t be afraid to play those lineups built for the smaller slate on the Main Slate either, as there are enough games on each slate for a GPP winning score for the big slate to come from one of the smaller slates.
Finally, the thing that most people focus on are “player incentives” and “team motivations” in this week. Low hanging fruit, but not how you’re going to win, in my opinion. Many of the incentive things are not in the player’s control and the opponent isn’t just going to let them hit these marks. And for every “nothing to play for” team, you also have a situation where some players are playing for their next contract and/or players and teams can look at it as “we have several months to rest after today, why hold back?” These are NFL players, they don’t walk on the field thinking about or worried they are going to suffer catastrophic injuries.
Building off the first question, so much of DFS is now built around projection systems and “Sims”. The issue with those on a week like this is that any kind of automated system like that is only as good as the inputs, and this week the inputs are more volatile than any other. We obviously focus on the offensive side of the ball, but there are things happening on the defensive side that will also change what many of these games look like. For example, the Chiefs defense is 9th in the NFL in DVOA (ironically, 9th against both the run and the pass). But if they are resting a bunch of starters and the players on the field are a lot of guys who didn’t help them to that 9th place ranking, then how do we handle that? The Chiefs are an easy one to point out, but there are several similar spots where a defense’s name/reputation could be pushing people away from a spot they should actively be attacking. Which, if any, spots do you see where “false pretenses” could be giving us opportunities to get ahead of the field?
