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.
A throwback to a 2021 staple of The Oracle, what are you seeing that makes this slate particularly unique?
On DraftKings, the presence of Ehlinger combines with the low ceilings of most of the QBs within $1500 of him to create a very interesting and unique dynamic. By “interesting and unique,” I mean this is a setup we run into maybe once every handful of years, and it’s a setup we have to properly think through strategically in order to ensure that regardless of how we build (with Ehlinger, without Ehlinger), we are building in a +EV manner.
We have eight games implied to score under 45 points, with only three games above that mark. As we often talk about, Over/Unders are not all created equal, as some games have a broader range of potential outcomes on either side of a game total than others; but generally speaking, it’s not unlikely that all of these low-total games finish under 50 combined points…and it’s not unlikely that two of the other three games also finish under 50 combined points. This could set up a situation in which one game going for just 60 to 65 makes it “the game you had to have.”
We’re also missing most of the high-priced QBs, several of the top WRs, and both of the top TEs, while this slate gives us lower price tags than we used to see on CMC, Jonathan Taylor, and Alvin Kamara, alongside a lot of other really strong, largely-underpriced running back plays.
We’re missing SO many good teams! As a result, we have one game with a total over 50, two more in the high 40s, and that’s it for high total games to target. Missing a lot of key top players and a plethora of viable value options (especially at tight end with no Andrews/Kelce on the slate and at QB with Ehlinger) means that salaries feel exceptionally loose this week. To me, these types of weeks are really interesting, because it means we can identify with a high degree of accuracy how most of the field is likely to build, so we can decide how to smartly differentiate with a high degree of accuracy.
The quarterback position presents two unique decision points in our roster building journey this week, with quarterback shaping up as “pay up for the perceived safety of Hurts or all the way down to the min-priced Ehlinger” and with tight end a case of “George Kittle then everyone else.” This slate also has more viable running back options than any other main slate this season, which should be fun to navigate for the deeper thinkers. That makes this particular slate one of the more unique slates we’ve seen this season!
This week it seems like there are more viable running backs who are very talented and/or in great spots than I can ever remember on one slate::
Those are 15 running backs who all have very justifiable cases to be made for them to have a very good game this week, and there’s almost certainly some I’ve left out and still time for late week news to creep in. While it is difficult in situations like this, we know we can’t play them all and failing to make a stand basically guarantees a losing week. How will you sort through all of these options and weed out the RBs you will be playing this week?
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