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 has some interesting games on it for a variety of reasons, but perhaps the most interesting thing about the full weekend slate from a big picture perspective is the order in which the games will be played. We have two games with big favorites, as the Ravens and 49ers are each projected to win by 10 points. Those games are the first two games of the weekend, taking place on Saturday. We saw a lot of blowouts last weekend and we also saw how one game (GB/DAL) going nuts on the scoreboard can take over the entire slate and become key to everything.
With all of that in mind, what is your approach to those early games and which of the four games do you think has the best chance of separating itself with tournament winners coming from both sides?
Agree with Hilow that TB/DET is the clear “best game” target, but when you take ownership and player salaries into account, GB/SF is the one I want to place my chips on – we have a lot of cheap Packers passing game options, which gets us off of fragile cheap chalk elsewhere, and we can lean into the 49ers passing game, which is relatively low-owned for a 4-game slate and carries just as much upside as any team in the NFL.
For HOU/BAL, my approach is going to largely be to either build game stacks around it or avoid it entirely. I’m ok with some amounts of 1-off ownership (primarily on Likely), but I want the bulk of my exposure to this game to be in game stacks – my idea here is that this is the lowest total game of the week, and if it goes under its already-modest total we likely aren’t getting any “must have” scores from it, but if it goes over (which I think it has a reasonable chance of doing – the HOU team total is flat-out disrespectful compared to what Stroud has actually done this year), we could get a smash game at tiny combined ownership.
I see the game with the best chances of developing into something that wrecks the slate as the Buccaneers-Lions game, but Texans-Ravens and Packers-49ers both have some very strong cases to be made for that honor as well. I guess my answer is “pretty much every game except the Chiefs-Bills could fall into this category and I wouldn’t be shocked.” There are definitely some interesting dynamics to this slate with the large spreads in the Saturday games. I will be looking to take both extremes – stacking the hell out of those games and looking to go underweight on separate rosters, and everything in between.
Ironically, my answer is almost the inverse of Hilow’s LOL. It’s the playoffs, and a lot can happen. I agree that TB/DET sets up very well for a lot of reasons, and I won’t be surprised if that ends up as a very high scoring game. However, the 49ers and Ravens are teams who have shown they can easily score 40 at a moment’s notice when they have things rolling and it doesn’t really matter if the other side comes along for the ride. I also think if the 49ers do put up a huge game against Joe Barry’s defense (which should be no surprise to anyone if they do), the Packers are well equipped with so many young weapons to score 3 or 4 touchdowns in catch-up mode.
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?