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 weekly staple of The Oracle, what makes this slate particularly unique?
To me, what’s making this slate unique is the available salary. This may not be the way everyone is seeing this slate, of course, but I feel that the following affordable players are underpriced for their role and/or upside-potential this week :: Matthew Stafford || Chase Brown || Tyrone Tracy || Cedric Tillman || Elijah Moore || Jalen Coker || Taysom Hill || Mike Gesicki. While many of these guys will be popular, pairings may not be quite as popular; and pairings with another tight end (Bowers or McBride, in particular, though also things like Dak // CeeDee // Ferguson) will be even less popular. Said differently, I genuinely like some of these plays, and I would say “fair price” for every player on that list is about $800 more than the price they are carrying. This makes it easy for me to find myself with two guys from that list on a roster, and to then be surprised at how much flexibility I have to pretty much stock a roster full of mid- to high-priced players I really like. Given the current meta of DK pricing, where everything is tighter than it was in the past, and where we’re paying more than “fair value” on a lot of players, this is a unique setup indeed. To top it all off, this could prove to be a somewhat unique roster construction approach, which creates an even clearer pathway to a first-place finish.
We might finally get running back value week! The sites have been doing an exceptionally good job of pricing up backup running backs, and so we aren’t getting a bunch of min-sal RBs, but Chase Brown and Tyrone Tracy are both very clearly underpriced for their expected touches/matchup. And then we might finally get a couple of actual super-cheap RBs…Tony Pollard seems likelier to miss than to play and Julius Chestnut is minimum salary on both main sites. Brian Robinson could miss for the Commanders, and Jeremy McNichols is min salary as well. It feels like after multiple weeks of really tight pricing, things are at least somewhat opening up (it’s not “loose,” but there are a bunch of clear underpriced spots).
Staying true to the theme of the 2024 season, pricing remains extremely tight. That said, we have plentiful team totals that seem ripe for fantasy goodness. The Bills, Ravens, and Falcons all have Vegas implied team totals over 27 points. The Eagles and Bengals are nipping at their heels at 26.5 and 26.25, respectively. The Lions (25.25), Saints (25.25), Rams (24.5), Cowboys (24.25), Commanders (24.0), Seahawks (23.5), Packers (22.75), Chargers (21.75), and Dolphins (21.5) all have team totals north of 21 points. But again, pricing is tight.
This gives us a good idea of the starting point for our rosters this week, likely needing 205-210 points to ship major GPPs. That is a similar starting point to what we dealt with last week and a stark contrast to what we needed the month preceding Week 8. This means that players priced below where they should be gain immense value, most notably, for me, bringing the Browns’ pass game pieces back to the forefront of consideration (Jameis Winston + Elijah Moore + Cedric Tillman, while also emphasizing players like De’Von Achane, Cooper Kupp (if Puka Nacua out), Tyrone Tracy (if he clears protocol), Sam LaPorta without Jameson Williams in a tight end-funnel matchup, even running backs like Rhamondre Stevenson and D’Andre Swift.
This week feels hard, especially on Draftkings. The main reason for that is the fact that there is not a ton of available, comfortable value options. That is exaggerated by the fact that we are coming off a week that was loaded with value options. The psychology of “what happened most recently” is at play here, which makes it feel harder than it really is. Said another way, if we were playing this slate a week ago without the recent memory of the Browns/Bucs/Dolphins situations making roster building very easy, this would feel like just another slate.
The DAL/ATL game projects as one that could turn into something special. Not only is it the highest total game on the slate, the Cowboys defense has been terrible this season and the Falcons defense is one that consistently fails to get pressure on the quarterback. While the Cowboys running game has stalled this year, they have become fairly predictable and have struggled against defenses that could pin their ears back and expose them. Considering how likely it is that Atlanta has a lot of offensive success against Dallas with their balanced and explosive offense and the fact that Dallas may actually be able to move the ball prior to garbage time to push the game environment, this one seems to have all the ingredients for a true explosion game – or at least that’s how I am seeing it.
With all of that mind, what are your thoughts on this spot and how are you approaching it? I think a mistake that people often make is trying to account for too many different games on every roster and thinking “I need a guy from that team/game” or this roster doesn’t have a chance. Do you think that fallacy is actually accurate in this spot or what are the paths to where “fading” this game can pay off?
