The Scroll Reflection Edition. 7.21.

Why does Vegas set lines? What is their goal? Well, Vegas sets lines in an attempt to get exactly half of the action on each side of every line they post. In this case, they take the rake, guarantee a profit, and move on. So, does that mean Vegas lines are perfectly set? Furthermore, does it mean they are always perfectly set early in the week? No! Every week this season (starting Week 2), we’ll be jumping into early-week betting line inefficiencies to take advantage of before they move. This line movement can be caused by a number of factors, but the primary reasons for movements after initial line release are public sentiment and recency biases (shark money typically doesn’t come in until later in the week, when bettors have more complete information). With that, let’s jump in!

Week 7 Overview

This is a super unique week, from both a betting perspective and DFS perspective. We currently have FOUR games with a spread of 9.5 or more (!!!), with the Packers favored by 9.5 at home against the Football Team, the Buccaneers favored by 13.5 at home against the Bears, the Rams favored by 15.5 at home against the Lions, and the Cardinals favored by 17.0 at home against the Texans. At this rate, the NFL might pull the Jaguars off their bye to send them on the road (kidding). But what does that mean to us as bettors? It means finding positive expected value spots is a little more difficult than normal this week. As such, we don’t have a bonus pick and the “honorable mentions” sections is a little more barren than usually. I wanted to drop a quick note because I would rather have less picks than force ones in that weren’t to the same level of process-fitting, +EV plays.

+EV LINES ::

ATL (-2.5) @ MIA

Although this one seems a little chasey, with the Falcons coming off a bye and the Dolphins coming off a loss to the Jaguars, we have two boosts to expected value on the side of the Falcons: (1) a bye week for Russell Gage and Calvin Ridley to heal up and (2) a line that resides on the near side of the “magic spread with the hook” range. Put those both together, and I like the positive expected value on a line that appears likeliest to move in the direction of the away favorite.

SF (-4) INDY – SUN NIGHT

Because this line falls just outside the first “magic spread with a hook” range, it would be likeliest to move in favor of the favorites as the week moves on. In all honesty, this line feels properly set, and we might not see much line movement here, but it does meet our criteria for early-week +EV hunting.

HONORABLE MENTIONS::

The honorable mentions this week are those games that fit our criteria, but that I’m personally a little less confident in. If you take away the name of each team, however, all of these fall under the same criteria we’ve used up to this point so far this season. It just feels a little gross.

CAR (-3) NYG

The lack of the hook, with a spread falling within the magic range, is worth about 4% to the bettor. That said, there are more things that could fall on the side of the Giants that have me a little worried that public perception might make this line disobey the general laws of betting that we have dug so thoroughly into this year. As in, if Saquon Barkley somehow returns, it might shrink the line to closer to a pick ‘em. As things stand now, there is expected value in a favorite without the hook landing in the magic range of NFL betting.

CINCY (+6.5) BALT

Magic spread with a hook range historically favors the underdog. This is one of those that is difficult to stomach when you look at the names of the teams playing. Historically, the expected value is on the side of the underdog.

NYJ (+6.5) NEP

Another one, just a little more gross. I don’t know many people in the world that are excited to bet real American dollary-doos (shoutout to all my parents out there that watch Bluey, because that show rages) on anything pro-Jets, but here we are. The numbers don’t lie, it’s just hard to abide by them sometimes. This is one of those times.

In this weekly video, Xandamere reviews his roster-builds & process.

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Maximize Your Builds With OWS + FantasyLabs

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Week 6 Review

Lesson of the Week: Road to Success, Path to First

This was a good week for me. My process was sound in my research, contest selection, and roster construction. I had a couple of good sweats with chances into the late games for big scores in the Wildcat on Draftkings and the Deuces Wild tournament on Fanduel. In both lineups, I had Odell Beckham Jr. left in the late games and was in the top 20 in the 2nd half of the afternoon games. Beckham was great leverage off of the Kareem Hunt chalk, and the game script played out perfectly. Losing him for a few series in the middle of the game to a shoulder injury was scary (at least he came back) and certainly didn’t help my chances as he definitely would have seen a few targets during that time and had scoring chances. Also, the runout of the Cowboys game was less than optimal for my teams. The thing to keep in mind, however, is that I had a chance! If that game played out where OBJ had the 35 point game instead of Lamb, I’m at the top of the leaderboards. OBJ has one 35 point game in 10 games for Cleveland over the last two seasons (since Stefanski arrived), and that was last year against Dallas in a high game total game when Chubb left early with an injury. If we say OBJ has a 10% chance at a game like that and then call it 50/50 that the DAL/NE game doesn’t go to overtime (which is where the Lamb lineups really shot ahead), that means I had about a 5% chance at topping the leaderboard — and I’ll take those odds every time! The key lesson here is that you have to have a path to get there. 

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been gathering thoughts about the community and DFS industry as a whole. So often, people say, “player X is great in a tournament!” without really exploring what that means or how to implement it. If you play lineups that are full of “good in a tournament” type guys, you’re drawing almost dead. Your core players are likely going to be relatively popular (for the most part) if you are doing things right. The industry is relatively efficient in locating plays and game environments at this point, so if you’re focused primarily on “tournament plays,” you’re going to end up off of many of the plays you will likely need to have a shot. In order to have a chance and be in the mix, you MUST build for ceiling and find great plays first. How I build my player pool is based primarily on the concept of locating highly talented players in good situations — this is the “road to success.” Once you are on the road to success, you can look critically at your lineup and figure out your “path to first.” You don’t need to have a bunch of low-owned players to get to the topmost weeks, just well-thought-out rosters in the context of the slate with a couple of things that give you a chance.

Below is the lineup from the Wildcat that was in the mix. Notice that all of my plays in my core and game stack were fairly popular and weren’t really “sneaky.” My “road to success” was simply being sharp about the good plays and game environments on the slate — building a great player pool. My “paths to first” were: 

• Higbee catches a couple of Stafford’s TD’s (he was close before both the Woods and Henderson TD’s)
• Chiefs D has a big day, and along with Hardman, they hurt production for Kelce/Hill/Williams 
• Beckham has a ceiling game at the expense of Hunt chalk

All of those are pretty reasonable outcomes to bet on, and all had fine “floors” to them as well, so if they didn’t carry me to first, it wasn’t like they would crater my chances. You can’t have six or seven different plays like that in your lineup, though, or you’ll never even get the chance for one of them to put you over the top.

Lineup Reviews 

As outlined in my +EV Primer course (you can find in the Marketplace – either by itself or in the bundle with my player pool course), one of my approaches that keeps me from getting too high or low week-to-week is playing consistent contests and approaching them from a season-long perspective and using that to evaluate my play and ROI. This season, in this article, I will be tracking my progress on a weekly basis as I play the Single Entry (SE), 3-max, and 5-max tournaments in the $20 to $150 price range on DraftKings main slate for all 18 weeks. Rather than sweating or worrying about my ROI every week and “hoping to cash,” – my goal for the season is to maximize profit relative to that long-term investment total. The results of a given week are irrelevant.  

Each week I will review the best and worst of my 11 lineups from my “Roster Block” of SE/3-Max/5-Max. Below are this week’s results, and you can find more information about my process/theory for this in my Week 1 Process Points article.

Best Lineup ($200k Three-Point Stance, 5-Max, $33)

The “story” I was telling: Most of my lineups this week were built through the Rams or Chiefs offenses (Mahomes and Stafford), and then I worked to fit my core pieces around them. This lineup was built first through my core of players from my player pool, and then I worked to find a passing game stack that fit around it. Notice that I did include Cooper Kupp in this lineup as well as a Mecole Hardman and Ricky Seals-Jones mini correlation from that Chiefs game. Both of those games were so likely to produce high scores that I wanted to still account for them and have a chance at getting the “right piece” to go in other lineups like this one. RSJ/Hardman were two high-usage players at cheap prices who gave me access to that game while also knocking out the often difficult TE position. Once I had my core in place, I was able to try to find a game stack that I liked using QB/WR/WR with the $18.4k I had left in salary. I did the NFL Edge writeup for the Packers/Bears game, and I noted in there how Fields/Mooney had modest requirements to return value at their price when played together — 250 passing yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT, 30 rushing yards for Fields plus 6/80/1 for Mooney would be 40 total points. Also, Davante Adams is so likely in a given week to have 22+ points, with upside any week to score 35-40 due to his role. Also, the correlation was high as if Davante had a big game, it was likely pushing the Bears offense to be more aggressive than they had been. So if Davante had 25 and the Bears combined for 40, that would have been 65 total points, which is not an unreasonable expectation. Davante stepped out at the 22-yard line on a long play in the 4th quarter that otherwise would have been a TD and put him over the 100-yard bonus threshold — which would have gotten him to around 25 points. The trio instead combined for 42.66 points, and my lineup finished 118th. Had they met the production threshold I laid out, the extra 22.34 points would have moved me into 3rd place for $10k. Only three more points above that would have been first. Also, and this is the critical part, no one else up top had that trio of players (or really any of them individually). If they meet those expectations, it was a clear path to the top for me, which is what we need to have a chance at a big payday.

Worst Lineup ($700k Power Sweep, 3-max, $150):

The “story” I was telling: This was my one Lamar Jackson roster, and I used Marquise Brown as the Ravens pass-catcher to stack as he was likely to be less popular than Mark Andrews while also being underpriced. I liked Keenan Allen as the bring back with Mike Williams likely limited (I was actually glad Williams played as it kept Allen’s ownership from getting out of control, and his presence was likely to draw defensive attention). Notice again that I accounted for the Rams offense with Higbee at the TE position and Hardman/Chiefs D accounting for how that game played out. Cooks/Taylor was one of my favorite correlation plays of the week, and Mixon was at the top of my player pool. The lineup didn’t work out, but I liked the process and how it came together. It told a very clear story for “how the slate played out,” which is something that we need to always keep in mind when building rather than just focusing closely on one game.

Week 6 Results: It was a very solid week with 8 of 11 rosters finishing in the money. My core players did pretty well, and most of my lineups were built around the Rams or Chiefs offenses, which was a good combination.

Week 6 Investment: $792

Week 6 Winnings: $930

Estimated Yearly Investment:  $14,000 

Yearly Winnings: $2,230

Dwprix breaks down the top lineups in the OWS Bottom-Up Build challenge.

Week 6 Review

Each week, I’ll review the Bottom-Up Build contest. I’ll look at how the winners got to the top of the leaderboard, the game environments used, and how we can use this tournament to become better players. The purpose of the Bottom-Up Build is to roster players that you would feel comfortable rostering in a regular contest (solid price considered floor and high ceiling) so when you’re building for other contests, you don’t find yourself struggling with the last couple spots, and jamming in someone that you’re not comfortable with.  Studying these players may also put you on a game environment that others may be overlooking.

Overview

Rules :: Max $44k Salary (exceeding $44k salary will disqualify entry); must use OWS avatar to be eligible for prizes

Total Entries :: 200 (162 eligible since 38 didn’t use an OWS avatar and/or went over salary and didn’t enter a lineup)

Prizes (Edge Points) :: 1st = 100 Edge // 2nd = 50 // 3rd = 25

Highest Owned Player :: Ricky Seal-Jones 66% (priced at $3,000)

Highest Owned Stack :: Taylor Heinicke (33.5%) // Ricky Seals-Jones (66%) – Combined Ownernership 34.5% 

• Only 2% of rosters had Heinicke without RSJ

See All The Entries :: Contest Link

Winners:

1st Place: Andkristopher

2nd Place: Tfly31

3rd Place: Cladybug

JMTOWIN’S BOTTOM-UP BUILD

Analysis

First place finisher, Andkristopher, chose to build a stack around the Rams who were facing the giants and gave up 44 points to the Cowboys the week prior. This matchup had the fourth highest total on the slate, and the Rams had the second highest team implied total. They were set up to smash in this spot. Andkristopher chose to roster both Matthew Stafford and Darrell Henderson, which in most cases might be seen as negatively correlated. Using this game environment, coupled with the smaller field size, made sense if you thought Stafford could start hot, causing the Rams to get up big, which would allow McVay to ride Henderson the rest of the way (LAR led 28-3 at half).  The total stack and run back consisted of Stafford, Henderson, Cooper Kupp, and Sterling Shepard.

Tfly31’s second place lineup was built around the Chiefs and Washington Football Teams game. The Chiefs were expected to win big. With Clyde-Edwards Helaire out, Darrel Williams was stepping into a full-time role. Williams was expected to get the majority of the RB touches in a game they were expected to be ahead in. When one team is ahead big, obviously the other team should be throwing more. Taylor Heinicke proved in his first three starts he can be a decent DFS quarterback with three straight 20+ DK point games and was facing a Chiefs team who have been one of the worst defenses at stopping the pass. Heinicke and Ricky Seals-Jones were the top owned stack in the BUB contest, and rostering Williams and Terry McLaurin in addition from this game made their lineup unique. 

Third place finisher, Cladybug, played a single stack of Teddy Bridgewater and Courtland Sutton, and instead of running it back, they rostered four players from the Chiefs/Washington Football Team matchup (Williams, Seals-Jones, McLaurin, and Mecole Hardman).  Bridgewater plus Sutton paid off in a game that went well over its expected total of 44, with 58 total points scored. This game was massively overlooked by the field. Cladybug was the only one to roster Teddy Bridgewater, and Courtland Sutton was only rostered in two other lineups!

Putting It Together

The top three lineups had stacks that were built around different game environments but all three rostered Ricky Seals-Jones and Darrell Henderson, perhaps the best two plays for the BUB tourney this week. They both had excellent price-considered floors with high ceilings given their matchups, making them great core pieces this week for the BUB. 

Matthew Stafford has now made four appearances in the top three of this tournament to start the season. Teddy Bridgewater plus Courtland Sutton have found their way in the top three twice this season. This is the second time Darrell Henderson has been in the winning lineup.

Finding players who fit into the $44k requirement is a great starting point when creating rosters for regular DK contests. You can either move higher priced stacks in, keep the lower priced stack in while moving higher priced “floating plays” in, or keep the QB and pay up for the other players in the same game environment.  Building this way gives you plenty of options to be creative when building, and can be a great starting point when building lineups for the week.  Not only are you researching value plays, but also game environments that could be going overlooked.

First place finisher, Andkristopher, blew the field out of the water winning by 20 DK points. This is the highest qualifying lineup we’ve seen in the Bottom-Up Build tourney this season! Congrats on the excellent lineup and we’ll see you in the Tournament of Champions Week 18!

Tournament of Champions

We are pumped to announce we will be having a Bottom-Up Build Tournament of Champions! The TOC will take place Week 18 and first place will win an OWS Inner Circle-For-Life ⭕️ membership with additional prizes to other qualifiers! All weekly first place finishers will be eligible. Congrats to those who have already qualified: Sgmain18, Spastictoaster, Swench1919, Mikeall65, abright8, and Andkristopher.

Week 7 :: Bottom-Up Tourney

Every week, you can click here for the newest contest link for the upcoming Bottom-Up Tourney.

Rules

1. Must be using an OWS Avatar to be eligible to win. This can be found on your profile page, or at the top of this week’s NFL Edge!
2. Single Entry // 200 Entries
3. Max $44k Salary (exceeding $44k will automatically disqualify your entry)
4. Prizes (Edge Points) :: 1st = 100 / 2nd = 50 // 3rd = 25
5. Winners please email support@oneweekseason.com with your DK Screenname

Larejo123 takes a look at some of the overlooked plays and “missed opportunities” from the week behind us, identifying the thought processes and approaches that could have led us to those plays.

Get rich quick schemes sell. Everywhere you look, content that provides any direction on how to earn life-changing money quickly is going to be a success. Everyone wants the secret sauce. Minimal effort, maximum rewards, where do I sign up? DFS can be a change-your-life overnight game but the odds are very slim. These large field tournaments that many of us play are almost exactly like playing the lottery every week. So why do we play them? Well, I do because I like my odds better than a completely random game of chance. DFS is a game of skill. Sure, there is a ton of luck involved, but there will always be an element of skill to complement the luck needed.

I’ll probably talk every week in this space about what it takes to win one of these large field tournaments, yet the reality is I’ll most likely not be able to guide you exactly to your victory. Sometimes, you’ll make some money following the content you read, and sometimes you’ll make money doing the exact opposite of what is recommended. Either way, it’s critical to not feel helpless. If you’re losing money each week and only playing massive tournaments, that’s what should happen! If you’re barely cashing here and there, but slowly bleeding bankroll, you might be close! Some tweaks in your process and a little more luck, and you’ll run into a win one of these slates. 

In order to properly reflect, however, I think it’s important to bring back the elements I’ve learned this season and written about so far. We have to pull them forward, otherwise, we consume them and move on, and most likely we lose sight of them. I’m going to synthesize some of these, as reflected in the previous Missed Opportunities. Some can be lumped together. I don’t want you to take these all as directives to mold into your process, but rather precepts for building a foundation for a GPP-winning thought process.

1. Opening Vegas range for low-owned game environments: 45.5-50.5. I’ve extended this a bit beyond the original 46-49 because we’ve seen some 50’s blow up. There’s something about the number 51 which draws my eyes for game stacking. Working against that would mean looking slightly under 51. Recent examples include Minnesota/Arizona (50.5, Week 2), Washington/Atlanta (48, Week 4), Browns/Chargers (46, Week 5), and Cowboys/Patriots (50.5, Week 6).
2. Fade the Public: When the masses are flocking toward a play, go the other way. Three weeks ago, we had the high-total Chiefs, with the perfect on-paper matchup for Travis Kelce, and Tyreek Hill ended up winning the slate. Last week, we had a perfect setup for Alexander Mattison and he smashed. And then this week, Kareem Hunt was the chalk play but it was Donovan Peoples-Jones who ended up on the Milly-winning roster. Give it more thought than the public perception. This is where reviewing Hilow’s End Around comes in handy. What kind of chalk are we dealing with?
3. Good offense beats good defense, and bad offense beats bad defense: Just keep this one stored in your mind. Week 5 with Browns/Chargers (89 points) is a great example of the first, while Week 1 with Houston and Jacksonville (58 points), and Week 4 with Washington and Atlanta (64 points) show the latter.
4. WR narratives: With WRs, if they are on the field a lot and have speed, they have upside. We label skill position players frequently. We label them as high floor, low ceiling, all or nothing, but we have to fight these narratives. Who is on the field? Who has a solid aDOT? Who has not produced lately? Who has not shown a ceiling lately, but could? Adam Theilen in Week 6. Robert Woods in Week 5. Mike Williams in Week 3. Courtland Sutton and Julio Jones in Week 2.
5. Paying up at defense: This has worked often this season. I won’t go through the game logs but specifically on DK, where defensive pricing is usually tighter, there’s a strong psychological urge to pay down at defense. Even those who plan to pay up, the longer they look at their rosters, the more likely they come off that expensive defense. Rams in Week 6. Bills in Week 4. Broncos in Week 3.

Bring these precepts with you as you move forward. What else did I learn in Week 6?

Donovan Peoples-Jones

I stared and stared and stared at the $3K-3.9K range of WR on DraftKings many times last week. For some reason, most of my builds landed me in this range for punt WR and I was fine with that. I figured I would take my shots and see if I could catch lightning in a bottle. So who did I play? Van Jefferson, Bryan Edwards, and I thought about DeSean Jackson. I never considered DPJ. He had played around 60-70% of the Browns’ snaps and had a respectable output in the Browns shootout against the Chargers the prior week (5/70). If this were Week 1, and Nick Chubb and Jarvis Landry were out, there would have been a whole bunch of articles touting DPJ as a sleeper ready for a larger role. However, Landry had been out for three games, and Peoples-Jones had produced no more than five catches, even going catch-less in Week 4. While the Browns were running out of options, there were some slim indicators leading to DPJ. However, this is not one I’ll harp on going forward, as any WR who plays 35% of the special teams snaps should not be on the Milly-maker winning lineup. But here we are!

Next week’s possible DPJ’s: Rashod Bateman vs. CIN, Quez Watkins at LV, Nico Collins at ARI

Cowboys at Patriots

I ignored this game all week. And that was far too common a thought. The game had a high-ish total, sitting at the top end of that Vegas range I talked about earlier, but with the Patriots involved, and the game being played in New England, the total seemed high. All the chatter about the Cowboys running the ball more, along with the likelihood they would be met in this contest by a team with a similar strategy, the general feel of this game was to hit the under. But the line moved up from its opening number and stayed there. This should have caught my attention more. While there were a few fluky touchdowns and an overtime TD which inflated the final score, trusting Dak Prescott to come through should have been a play we more considered; along with the always level-headed strategy of what Bill Belichick will focus on stopping vs. what he will ignore and let his team lose by (the less likely play). 

CeeDee Lamb, who has been looking more and more like the Cowboys #1 WR, along with Prescott, was a great stack this week. Taking a different angle than the public on this game environment was an even better way to ensure you could see some notable box scores emerging. When in doubt, trust the Vegas lines.

Vegas-range for low-owned games in Week 7: Washington/Green Bay, Atlanta/Miami, Philadelphia/Las Vegas

Tilt and the Law of Attraction

Every Sunday, many of our OWS family of Milly-sweating degenerates gather in the gameday-chat channel on Discord to cheer, support, and hope to sweat some lineups to the top of leaderboards. Of course, we often end up tilting our faces off and showing the absolute worst sides of ourselves as the day unfolds, and 95% of our lineups inevitably end up in the shitter. It’s cathartic, therapeutic, and sometimes amusing as hell. 

I usually begin the day with this friendly reminder:

Xandamere is often hovering, supplying us with data that supports how ridiculous variance can be in NFL DFS and how injuries can impact our rosters in such a brutal way. 

Which leads me to this week’s leading cause of tilt. The 1st quarter injury to Kadarius Toney. Toney had been dinged a little at the end of last week’s breakout game, but he was able to shed his questionable tag and suit up for Week 6. His smash last week was clearly not an anomaly. The sharpest minds that One Week Season has to offer pegged Toney as a sharp play this week or as a “one-off” (also known as a “stand-alone” or, as Xandamere’s puts it in his latest contribution to the DFS lexicon, a “floater”) or as the preferred bring-back in Rams stacks that had a high smash probability. His questionable status only aided to lower his ownership, making him a very attractive tournament option…and things started beautifully. 

Toney was clearly the focal point of the Giants offensive plan, and we got him at 6.53% ownership. Life is good!

But things don’t always go as planned. 

We were pretty heavily invested, and our moods were darkening early. 

There’s always a Zen approach to remedying a situation. 

The thing about tilt is that once it begins, it rarely subsides in a timely manner. 

Thankfully for my genitalia, it was the dust-ridden Le’Veon Bell and Devonta Freeman that scored the next rushing TDs.

Seriously though. Marquise Brown was in such a smash spot this week. The Chargers were a red-hot offense that would certainly put up points early and take the Baltimore Ravens out of a run-only game script. Except, oh yeah…humans do human things. 

I’ve done plenty of reading on The Law of Attraction and its various branches. The basic premise is that the universe takes everything we say literally, so we should always be speaking in terms of what we want…and speaking them in such a way that you’d think we’d received all that we desire already. However, putting this into practice essentially involves lying and may end up making you look like a total dick in chat. I mean, imagine if I responded to the above with “I only play Hollywood when he smashes” or “I always get Marquise Brown right.” 

Maybe “The Secret” is to keep your positive thoughts to yourself and avoid getting your ass kicked. 

Putting a substantial amount of money in play after a weeks-worth of intense study places us in a precarious position. Losing money in tournaments is a likely outcome, and when things don’t work out, it’s easy to feel as if that hard work during the week was just wasted time. But this is why we reflect and refine. We can’t let one unsuccessful slate affect the next one. 

There you go, bstreich…let it out! 

I play DFS for two reasons. The chance to win a million dollars and the sweat of trying to win a million dollars. That’s it. I should be playing smaller tourneys, cash games, etc., but I rarely do. So, most weeks, when I fall short, I have moments of doubt concerning my future in this space.

It’s very important to reflect upon your process for the week and come to an accurate assessment of where you were right, wrong, or simply unlucky. 

A Sonic Oversight

OK, I wasn’t alone here. 99.15% of the field also managed to avoid rostering Donovan Peoples-Jones this week. Having said that, I pride myself on identifying upward trends involving cheap wide receivers and micro projected ownership. DPJ had six targets in Week 5 and converted those into a 5/70/0 line with a long of 42 yards and did so at the minimum salary of $3000. With all of the hubbub surrounding Kareem Hunt as the chalkiest player of the year, we looked at Odell Beckham, Baker Mayfield, and even the Cardinals DST as potential leverage. Not sure how I managed to avoid digging in and considering DPJ, who should have been easy to see since he was priced up from the min-priced pack to $3500. I rostered him on a ton of Best Ball teams and played a decent amount in DFS when the other Browns pass catchers were initially dinged up, but this week I simply fanned. A clear oversight by yours truly. 

One person that didn’t miss Peoples-Jones was Gary Guttenberg, aka @1manpurimshpiel, on Twitter. As a result of his awesomeness, Gary won access to my MME Training Course, which, by the way, is available in the Marketplace now for your consumption. Worth every penny IMO, if only to hear my goofy impressions in the audio portions. 

Of Ownership and Content Absorption

Tee Higgins this week was a study in the imperfect nature of ownership projections. One trusted source had him at around 21% all week while another had him 5% early in the week, 11% from Friday-Saturday night, and then goosed him to 17% by Sunday morning. He ended up landing at 9.9% in the Milly, which came as a surprise to many. 

This scenario is one reason why I like to keep my finger on the pulse of all of the chatter around the DFS industry all week. It helps me assess ownership projections independently. The other reason is that I take my dog on long walks, so I listen to a lot of podcasts…but that isn’t important right now. What’s important is that you make a conscious decision about how much content is right for you. I’m on record as saying that I enjoy being a sponge and taking in all the data and viewpoints I can get my hands on. I believe I have cultivated an ability to sift through the noise and arrive at my own conclusions. Paralysis by analysis is a thing, however. If listening and reading too much content is only serving to muddy the waters, then narrow your content choices to involve fewer voices (hey, that rhymed!). Much like your player pool, it will feel much cleaner and even liberating to keep everything tight and concise. Plus, I think joining Inner Circle here, reading all of the sharp content, and listening to all of the pods should be enough of an edge to keep you above the field in terms of actionable knowledge. After that, I suggest simply adding seasonings to your tastes. Just avoid getting to that point where it feels like too many cooks are ruining the meal. More clichés! Sweet!

A Rare Managed League Note

As we learned during Best Ball draft season, Week 7 is the nuttiest bye week ever. An unusual amount of starting-caliber position players will be watching from the couch like us. It does present some opportunity, however. If you’re fortunate enough to possess enough depth to make it through this week, you can use waivers to beat your opponents to the best Week 8 matchups. While everyone else is franticly plugging holes to field a lineup, you’ll be looking ahead and gaining an advantage. One example for folks that stream defenses would be the Steelers DST. Headed to a bye and therefore likely to be available, Pittsburgh will play the Browns in Week 8, who may or may not have a healthy Nick Chubb. Also, some fantasy teams in your league will be forced to make some tough drops. If you can save your FAB this week, you will be positioned nicely to outbid your opponents on some outcasts that never should have seen the waiver wire. Go ahead and use your extra roster spot to grab that 2022 prospect that your dynasty opponent is trying to sneak through waivers for one week. 

Focusing some of your energies on your season-long squads is also a great way to look ahead and shake off that tilt from Week 6. 

Go forth and prosper, my friends. See you in the trenches again in a few days. 

LFG!

Lex Miraglia takes a look under the hood of the Underdog Battle Royale tournament: identifying what works, what doesn’t, and what provides our best path to first place in this top-heavy, but ultra-soft tourney.

Underowned Underdog Can Be Found In The Reflection Scroll Tuesday Nights

In this weekly video, TodFromPA breaks down his ownership in The Slant against top players in DFS.