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.
Last week I asked which of the four top projected game environments we thought was most likely to be the “must-have” game on the slate. My three esteemed colleagues all said BAL/CIN, while I said ARI/SF *IF* 49ers LB Fred Warner missed the game, but BAL/CIN if he played. After The Oracle was published, Warner returned to practice and was cleared to play meaning that our group was in unison across the board about the top spot to attack – and we were right in, a BIG way!!
This week we have a similar situation as there once again appear to be four games that stand out from the rest on this week’s slate::
Considering this is once again a somewhat smaller slate and scoring across the league continues to be modest in many spots, finding a game that truly takes off 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?
Washington // Baltimore — with primary focus on the Baltimore side — is the highest-confidence bet of the bunch to me. Simplifying my thoughts here :: it’s very, very likely that the Ravens put up points here, which means that some strong-to-elite scores are highly likely to emerge from the Baltimore side of the ball.
But while Baltimore is the offense “likeliest to crack 30 points,” I see the Lions // Cowboys game as the matchup that has the clearest shot at truly being “the game you had to have.” Dak Prescott already has games this year of 39, 42, and 51 pass attempts, and the Lions face the third highest opponent pass play rate in the league. The Dallas offense has yet to “click” this year, and there are clear avenues to this game environment underwhelming; but there are also clear pathways to this developing into “the game you had to build around,” making it one of my favorite spots to target this week.
It won’t be surprising to me if 70% or more of my quarterback exposure on the week comes from these two games.
While I think BAL/WAS could certainly take off, I’m a little wary of the skill position players in that game. In fact, we have yet to see a single pass catcher put up a game you’d be thrilled to have on a roster outside of Isaiah Likely in Week 1. Oddly, both primary running backs have put up solid games, and of course the quarterbacks are studs…I think my exposure to this game will be quarterbacks that don’t force pass catcher pairings but rather encourage correlation via boosts in my optimizer (i.e. “if Lamar Jackson, boost Zay Flowers/Mark Andrews/Isaiah Likely/Rashod Bateman by 15%”).
For me it’s DET/DAL. I think Dak has a comparable ceiling to Lamar and Daniels and he has some very nice stacking partners and only Jake Ferguson has really swung into chalk territory in our ownership projections, while on the Detroit side it feels like people don’t know who to play out of their embarrassment of riches of offensive players and so they just aren’t really playing anyone besides a bit of Amon-Ra St. Brown. Detroit is certainly hard to figure out where the big plays will come from in a given week (they’re really becoming very 49ers-like in that way), but that just gives us access to big ceilings in a great game environment at very low ownership…yes please.
To me, it’s the late-game hammer in the Lions at Cowboys. I don’t think the general field is paying enough attention to the fact that the Cowboys led the league in scoring per game at home in 2023 with a robust 36.8 points per game in the friendly confines of Jerry’s World. Even with the team scoring just 19 and 25 points at home this season against the Saints and Ravens, Dak Prescott has averaged 336 passing yards per game at home. I also don’t think the field is viewing CeeDee Lamb the way they did last season after he has failed to surpass 100 yards through the air in all five games to this point in the season. That said, the Lions have struggled to contain slot-hybrid wide receivers after allowing 11 targets to Jaxon Smith-Njigba in Week 4, a 7-117-1 line to Chris Godwin in Week 2, and 14-110-1 line to Cooper Kupp (remember him?) in Week 1. The other problem I foresee the field having with this spot is who to play (or not play) from the Lions, lowering the total expected interest in this game environment. I honestly don’t think you need to force a bring-back from the Lions in this spot due to the unconcentrated nature of their offense, but directed shots can be taken on both pieces of their backfield in game environment bets.
The Lions and Cowboys stand out to me as the Lions have such a clear path of least resistance in the way in which they want to base their offensive attack – on the ground. This creates a situation where they should be able to sustain drives and should also open up an extremely efficient passing game with chances for deep shots. It is easy to be aggressive on 2nd and 2 after a big eight yard chunk run on first down when you can be very confident in picking up the 3rd and 2 if your deep shot falls incomplete. Just a situation where so much is opened up and the Lions offense has an extremely high chance of success. Prior to their bye, we saw the Lions play in a high scoring and uptempo game against the Seahawks and I think we could see something similar from that spot. While I think DET/DAL is the game most likely to be a wild one, the salaries and condensed usage on ATL/CAR also makes that a game with clear paths to standing out.
Bringing back a weekly staple of The Oracle, what makes this slate particularly unique?
