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 weekend’s slate features six games and the way things work out we can sort them into three “buckets”::
Coming off the chaos and uncertainty of Week 18, where there are SO MANY games and it is hard to know exactly what the goals/motivations of many teams will be and how they will use certain players, the Wild Card weekend is about as stark of contrast as there can be. Everyone is in a “win or go home” situation, and there are only six games as opposed to the 14 from last Sunday. The later we get into the season, the more reliable spreads and totals can often become. However, desperation breeds chaos and the playoffs can make teams as desperate as we’ll ever see them. With that in mind, which game or games do you think have the greatest chance of producing an outcome that strays the most from the “bucket” of expectations that they currently fit in?
Oh man. This is a hard question, at least for me…but I will say that, to me personally, it’s also an irrelevant question. No shade on Mike here – but to me this weekend is less about trying to predict what will happen and more about setting ourselves up to take advantage of what could happen.
What I mean by this is that it’s the playoffs. These teams are, overall, good. Of the 12 teams playing this weekend, every single one of them is league average or better on offense. Every single team is league average or better on defense. In matchups between good offenses against good defenses, it can be really tough to predict which side comes out on top, but something’s gotta give.
But, and bear with me for being obvious – some of these games will go under and some will go over. I don’t know which ones, and predicting that isn’t really my strength as an analyst (though I’ll pay attention to Mike & Hilow’s predictions). What I can do, however, as someone who plays multiple lineups, is make sure to set myself up for success in different scenarios. We also get the incredible benefit of knowing the outcome of a game before the next starts, allowing us to build and adjust our lineups throughout the weekend. So, I’m less interested in trying to predict which game is most likely to either fall short of or exceed expectations and more interested in making sure I’m building a portfolio of rosters that is equipped to succeed under a variety of scenarios.
I’d place that bet on one of the games from the “first bucket,” or the two games with wide spreads. The Broncos averaged over 32 points per game in their final seven games of the regular season, giving this game some sneaky shootout potential beyond just saying “the Bills are projected to score a bunch of points.” How those points are scored becomes a little more clear in a game environment in which the Bills are pushed, with the potential to turn Josh Allen into Super Josh. It gets tricky when trying to figure out both who to stack Allen with and who to attack from the Broncos as both teams have been ridiculously unconcentrated, but this game stands out to me as one that could define the full slate.
Xandamere’s response here kind of perfectly encapsulates exactly why I asked this question. It is easy to throw your hands up and say “well yes, anything could happen!”, and obviously that is true but doing so isn’t going to help you win a tournament no matter how many lineups you are playing. The biggest trap that a slate like this has is that it is small enough to convince you that you can account for all the outcomes but you end up not really taking any stands and just having a lot of lineups where you say “man, I was so close I just missed on these two or three players!!” – but that’s something a lot of the field will end up saying on Monday evening. The “buckets” mentioned above represent what the standard expectation and approach will be from the field for each group of games and the true nature of this question is thinking through which spots you are MOST confident in how they will play out, which through process of elimination will therefore take you to which spots you see the widest range of outcomes. For me it starts with the PIT/BAL game as one with a tighter range. I don’t think the Ravens defense lets the Steelers offense put up a big game, while the Ravens should eventually score points but it may be labored and take some time against a tough Steelers team. Baltimore scores somewhere from 17 to 31 points while Pittsburgh scores 7 to 20 points is my expected range – relatively tight. Along those same lines, but briefer::
This leaves DEN/BUF and MIN/LAR as the games that seem to have the highest potential variance. The Broncos defense is good, yes, but it has been lit up by some elite offenses. I expect the Bills to have a very strong game and then it is anyone’s guess how the Broncos are able to respond. They are going to throw the ball a lot and be forced to be aggressive. If Bo Nix can find some success, this could turn into a wild shootout. On the flip side, that could work against them and we could see the Bills score six touchdowns in a rout. The other game could be a shootout if the teams can protect their QBs, but could also be low scoring if pass protection is an issue and the teams get conservative with their play calling. In any regard, these are the two games where I see a very wide range of potential outcomes, whereas the other four games I expect to play out in a way relatively close to the Vegas implied numbers, at least in terms of the box score.
What slates and contests are you planning to play this weekend and what are some things that you are focusing on in your builds or strategies as you enter these contests?
