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.
There appear to be four games that stand out from the rest on this week’s slate::
Considering this is a somewhat smaller slate and scoring across the league continues to be modest in many spots, finding a game that truly takes off (like SEA/DET on Monday night, or TB/ATL on Thursday) can quickly become a “must” on a main slate. Which of these four spots do you think is most likely to end up as that game?
By far, I see Ravens // Bengals as the game with the highest ceiling among these four.
To be clear (of course), this is not to imply that “you should only build around the Ravens // Bengals game.” As we know, we don’t get to play out this slate a hundred times; we only get to play it once. And in the small sample size of “one,” there are very clear paths to Ravens // Bengals being a slug-it-out division contest in which scoring never really takes off. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that it’s LIKELIER that the 49ers and Packers post really nice offensive games here than it is that the Ravens // Bengals game takes off. Said differently :: if this game fails to take off, tourney wins could easily come from Packers or 49ers stacks. But (as explored in my DFS Interpretations) I don’t see many clear paths to Bills // Texans becoming a fantasy gold mine (I have some unique ways I’ll be building around this spot in large-field play, but it won’t be touching my tighter builds), and I don’t think the Cardinals or the Rams have the juice to turn their games into true “had to have it” shootouts. This leaves Ravens // Bengals as the only game among these four that I think can truly develop into a “had to have it” game — which makes it a game I’ll be prioritizing across a chunk of my builds, in case this game plays to its upside and becomes a genuine separator on the slate.
From the lens of “which game has the best chances to turn into something you weren’t winning GPPs without,” the Ravens and Bengals stand out the most to me. Bills and Texans both have defenses that will look to clamp down on what the other offense does well, the Cardinals have just as much of a chance of falling completely flat as the other games in which we preached caution at high ownership, and the Packers and Rams have two head coaches that are more subdued in their tendencies to start the game, and the Rams have zero players currently that can ignite a game environment. Compare that to the Ravens, with Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry, and the Bengals, with Ja’Marr Chase, and there are clearly more roads to an elite game environment in my eyes.
I think the best chance of a “shootout” game is the ARI/SF game *if* 49ers LB Fred Warner does not play. The 49ers are going to move the ball and score points, it would be shocking if they score less than three touchdowns and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they score five. The question is what can the Cardinals do on the other side to give the game as a whole a high point total and perhaps elevate play volume. Arizona gets Trey McBride back this week and if Warner were out that would significantly alter the 49ers defensive outlook. If Warner plays, the BAL/CIN game would be my top projected game environment for a potential shootout.
BAL/CIN looks like it’s getting the attention here – I agree that it’s my favorite game to target, especially considering the extremely modest ownership currently projected for it. But I’m going to lean a slightly different direction (just to shake things up and present a different viewpoint)…BUF/HOU. Nico Collins is going to be owned (as he should be), but I think the field doesn’t otherwise know what to do with this game – the Bills are a hard spot to target for skill position players, but they’re all extremely cheap on a slate that doesn’t have a ton of great value options. The most expensive WR is Keon Coleman at $4,700 and it goes down from there, and we aren’t currently projecting much ownership here at all.
The bye weeks are here and we also have our first early Sunday morning game in Europe this week, which creates our first smaller main slate of the season with only 10 games (11 on Fanduel, where they include the Sunday night game). This naturally creates a smaller player pool but also condenses ownership a bit. As we often say, “chalk will always form” – whether it should or not. The flip side of that is that “fading the chalk” can be tougher as there are fewer alternative options to choose from.
All of that said, which of the players that are projecting to be more popular on this slate are you most comfortable with playing and are there any that you intend to fade (and why)?
