Angles hits inboxes on Thursday mornings throughout the regular season; you can also find Angles in The Scroll on Thursday afternoons.

OWS Fam!!!

Here are three words you can say to yourself on repeat this week: Process over results.

Whether you won big in Week 1, came up empty, or finished somewhere in between, Week 2 should be about sticking to the process.

It’s hard to effectively separate ourselves from outcomes, but it’s something we should strive for across many aspects of our lives. I don’t know about you, but my earliest memory of this concept comes from when I was a child listening to a parent tell me that it didn’t matter if I won or lost, but just that I had fun playing.

We kind of know even as kids that this is relatively untrue. Sure, some of us are born more competitive than others, but who doesn’t like to win?! And yet, even as the adults around us tried to support us and be positive, and to enjoy the journey we were on, it likely still took a while to sink in. 

Eventually, I’d be willing to bet that the more you focused on doing your best on the task at hand, you naturally improved at separating yourself from the finishing outcome. Controlling what you can control and putting your all into it was about all you could do in any competition. 

Well, separating ourselves from outcomes and sticking to our process is applicable here during “overreaction week.”

There’s a reason Bill Belichick was famous for saying the most important play was the next play. It’s because creating the simplistic mindset of compartmentalizing previous results with future expectations is what will give us the best chance to succeed.

So whether you won or lost, welcome back for Week 2. Recognize that much of the field will have a hard time this week separating last week and this week, and yet we know that Week 1 outcomes have no bearing on how this week will turn out. I guess that’s why we call this One Week Season!   

BINKS!

Before we look at the slate, we need to talk about the wins! We saw some extra large payouts for the OWS Fam in Week 1, starting with opening night. Check out our post on X that highlighted these, but this incredible community has already taken down payouts ranging from $10,000 to $98,000.

We LOVE to see our users flying the flag at the top of leaderboards every week, and Week 1 was no different. We know we have an edge on slates that are loaded with uncertainty, and it’s good to see the results follow!

Reminder :: Week passes and Month passes are available for the Bink Machine optimizer. The OWS community is uniquely equipped to succeed in mass-multi-entry, but honestly, if you’re putting enough money into play each week to justify the cost, the Bink Machine can be massively helpful for even more limited-entry play, as it can give you a leg up in understanding optimal lineups, how the field might look to build in a given week, common roster construction approaches for the week, and more. There can be an intimidation factor when using an opto for the first time, so we also have tutorial videos to help you understand what you’re working with.

Week passes. Month passes. Awesome options.

Try it. If you don’t like it, or it isn’t for you, let us know. We’re always happy to send you a refund if something isn’t a fit.

Week 2!

Welcome to Week 2, which I’m officially going to dub “the one where everyone plays a running quarterback.” Hope that catches on…

Seriously, though, of all the results from Week 1, the macro outcome that cannot be overstated is how much success Josh Allen, Anthony Richardson, Jayden Daniels, and Lamar Jackson had. They finished with four of the top five QB fantasy scores on the week, only to somehow let Baker Mayfield crash the party.

As we look ahead to Week 2, we don’t have Allen and the Bills on the slate, but we can reasonably expect all of Richardson, Daniels, and Lamar to garner strong ownership, with users flocking to the insane rushing outputs they each produced in the opening week. Deviating away from these three could be a simple, unique approach, but let’s dive in to see what jumps out.

Missing from this slate are the aforementioned Bills and the Dolphins, along with the Texans, Bears, Falcons, and Eagles. Which means we won’t get the chance to roster Allen, Tyreek Hill, or the NFL’s leading passer in Week 1 (Tua). We also are given a week’s break from trying to identify which of the Texans’ wide receivers will have a big day and spared having to watch the Falcons or Bears try to play competent offense.

But some of the implied totals we have are sure to bring your eyes toward them…

The Lions lead the way at a robust 29 implied points as they host the Buccaneers (22) in their second consecutive rematch from last season’s playoffs. That one ended 31-23 in favor of Detroit and it was the second matchup for these teams in the 2023 season (DET also won at TB in Week 6 when they had Goff throw it 44 times to just 22 rushing attempts). 

The Cowboys and the Chiefs are expected to score 26.5 points as they match up with the Saints and Bengals, respectively. Dallas hosting the suddenly high-flying Saints could feature two overconfident teams based on last week’s results. Kansas City, on the other hand, gets the Bengals at home in a game they are likely to show up for still sulking from last week’s surprise loss against New England.

The 49ers (26 implied points), who somehow ruined a dominating MNF victory over the Jets by creating a media saga with how they are handling the Christian McCaffrey injury situation, travel to Minnesota (20) to take on a Vikings team that beat them, 22-17, in the same environment last season. Brock Purdy threw two interceptions in that one and Minnesota DC Brian Flores is likely to bring the heat again this week.

The Rams (25) and Cardinals (24) match up in what’s expected to be the closest spread of the high-total games, with Los Angeles obviously down Puka Nacua and Arizona coming off a terrible loss at Buffalo last week. This one has the potential to be a shootout, as the Cardinals’ defense isn’t likely to get better after giving up 34 points to the Bills, while the Rams’ defense was also exploited by the Lions last week as they learn about life after Aaron Donald.

The Ravens are the last team of this group expected to score over 25 points on this slate, hosting the Raiders in what Vegas (the sportsbooks, not the team) expects to be a one-sided affair. Can Gardner Minshew right last week’s wrongs and deliver on a Ravens defense the Chiefs were able to exploit? If the Ravens’ defense does take a step back this season, this is the game that would highlight that.

Outside of the more obvious spots, here’s a few more questions to be asked ahead of Week 2:

• What can the Jets’ offense look like at Tennessee without the black cloud (conservative play calling) of a Monday Night Football deja vu hanging over them? 
• What will Richardson or Daniels do as an encore from last week? Both of them lost their matchups, were limited in where they threw the ball and how often, but were exciting (and profitable) for fantasy players to watch. How does that change in different matchups this week? (IND at GB // NYG at WAS)
• Can Justin Fields enter the group chat (running QBs) with an easier matchup at Denver? Did he have the quietest ever 14 for 57 rushing yards by a quarterback last week?
• The Chargers go to Carolina high off their opening win. They gained 176 rushing yards vs. Las Vegas. The Panthers allowed 180 rushing yards to New Orleans last week. 

Week 2 is also the first real week we’ll contend with more injury news, but as you sift through this slate, try to be aware of some of these macro events from Week 1 and how they will affect thinking in building lineups this week.

Two different weeks, with different matchups, different news, and one fact: Week 2 is a one-week season.

And with that, we’ll see you all over the site this weekend, out in the Discord channels, and at the top of the leaderboards come Sunday evening!

~Larejo

Majesstik is one of the most respected Slate Breakdown artists in DFS

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Hilow is a game theory expert (courses at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Northwestern) and tournament champion who focuses on mid/high-stakes single-entry/three-entry max

MACRO SLATE VIEW::

Week 1 brought us a week of falsities and uncertainties. Week 2 is even more psychological than the opening week because we’ve seen these teams perform. But we’ve only seen these teams perform once and haven’t been given the whole picture yet.

Let me take you back to kindergarten. Remember those paint-by-number pieces of art where each number corresponded to a different number, and you had no idea what the final picture would be? That’s a lot like the NFL season. Camp and preseason served as the rough outline of our picture but it was all just lines on canvas. We just got done painting all the areas with the number one. We got a small glimpse at what the final product will be. But there are still 16 more colors left to paint. Who in the room tried to figure out what the final picture was after the first color? That was me. I wanted to figure everything out before everyone else because I was so damn competitive. But we grow. We soften. We learn what we’re good at and how to spot situations where it’s okay to not know the final answer.

Which brings us back to the Week 2 NFL DFS main slate. These teams have only sketched the rough outline and given us one color to paint with. We might think we know, with a high degree of certainty, how a team will behave in certain situations, what tendencies to expect when leading or trailing, or what teams we can expect to push a game environment all on their own.

If Week 1 was the slate of uncertainty, Week 2 is the slate of overconfidence.

There are two major aspects that shape this slate. First, injuries are now an issue after we went through the fewest off-season injuries I can remember in recent history. Second, the chalk on this slate is some of the heaviest chalk I can remember in recent history. Those two aspects of the macro slate view combine with the field’s overconfidence in Week 2 to return one of the most dynamic slates, through a theoretical lens, I’ve tackled since writing this piece.

So strap in, this is a fun one!

RESTRICTIVE CHALK VS EXPANSIVE CHALK::

Quick explanation :: Restrictive chalk is an expected highly owned piece that restricts the maneuverability of the remainder of your roster while expansive chalk is an expected highly owned piece that allows for higher amounts of maneuverability on the remainder of your roster. Classifying various forms of chalk as either restrictive or expansive allows us to visualize what it means for roster construction on a given slate and how restrictive a certain player might be – meaning more of the field will look similar from a roster construction standpoint with that piece.

BREECE HALL

RESTRICTIVE CHALK. There are three, maybe four (depending on how you view Bijan Robinson), clear and true workhorse running back situations in the league this season, and all three are on this slate. There’s Breece Hall with the Jets, Kyren Williams with the Rams, and the San Francisco 49ers (and even that one is open to interpretation due to Mason’s lower pass game involvement). With that said, Hall, Williams, and Mason are extremely underpriced in Week 2 relative to their range of outcomes on this slate. So, it makes sense that all three of those players are amongst the chalkiest plays we’ve seen over the previous three to four seasons. The question on this slate is not whether these are “good” plays or not – they are good plays – the question is how do we attack this slate knowing that there are three underpriced, solid-on-paper plays that are not going to go overlooked by the field?

The final piece here is Hall is just good at football. He forced six missed tackles and gained 3.56 yards after contact per attempt against a solid 49ers front. That’s impressive as hell considering he averaged 3.4 yards per carry. But that also highlights how poorly the Jets offensive line performed. Something to consider here against the retooled Titans defense under Dennard Wilson. Wilson deployed 33.3% Cover-3 and 24.2% Cover-4 coverages in Week 1, two coverages that are built to split the difference between coverage and stopping the run. This same defense just held Chicago backs to 3.44 yards per carry.

KYREN WILLIAMS

RESTRICTIVE CHALK. See Breece Hall.

The final piece here is the offensive line injuries for the Rams.

JORDAN MASON

NEITHER RESTRICTIVE NOR EXPANSIVE CHALK. See: Breece Hall.

The final piece for Mason is the low emphasis in the pass game, making him largely a yardage-and-touchdown back.

COOPER KUPP

RESTRICTIVE CHALK. Cooper Kupp is coming off a vintage performance in which he saw 21 targets. First off, Kupp is not washed. Second, Sean McVay did an outstanding job in Week 1 playing the hand that he was dealt, and keeping his team in a position to come out victorious. The Rams lost three offensive linemen in addition to the wide receiver who just set the rookie receiving record, all in the first half. To combat the relentless pass rush of the Lions, McVay shifted to an offense that moved the football through quick-hitting strikes to Kupp. Seriously, McVay called an incredible game. The Lions generated a ridiculous 23 pressures. 23! Turn the page to their opponent in Week 2 and we’re likely to see Kupp’s aDOT increase due to the inability of the Cardinals to generate organic pressure without bringing pressure.

CEEDEE LAMB

RESTRICTIVE CHALK. CeeDee Lamb at home against a defense that utilized man coverage at a 41.0% frequency and single-high alignments at a 66.7% frequency in Week 1 sounds pretty sweet.

DEMARCUS ROBINSON

EXPANSIVE CHALK. On the field for almost every play and in a route for almost every called pass play, for a price of $4,000. Makes sense on the surface. That is, until you realize there are very few paths to ceiling here.

CHALK BUILD::

JMToWin is a high-stakes tournament champion (Thunderdome, Luxury Box, Game Changer, Wildcat, King of the Hill/Beach, Spy, etc.) who focuses on the DraftKings Main Slate

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OWS Fam ::

This is not a complete list of all the good plays on the slate

This is, instead, a look at the player pool I’ll be fishing

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The Grid ::

Bottom-Up Build

:: covered in-depth in the Angles Pod (it’s highly recommended that you listen to the breakdown of the roster in order to see the thinking behind it, and in order to understand what we’re talking about when we look at a “bottom-up build”)

Blue Chips

:: my “Tier 1” plays: the plays I feel confident leaning into across different types of builds; these players have a high ceiling and a low likelihood of price-considered failure

Build-Arounds

:: games, offenses, situations, or scenarios I’ll be looking to build around across my rosters

Building Blocks

:: unique player pairings that can be used as foundational building blocks for tournament rosters

Bonuses

:: players who don’t fit into the categories above — either Upside pieces who don’t have the floor to be Blue Chips (and are not being focused on within my game-focused builds) or players who may not have a strong shot at ceiling, but are worth keeping in mind from a “role” perspective

Beta

:: a new category for 2024! — these are players who are not going to be “featured” on my tighter builds (i.e., one could show up on a tighter build, but they are not being prioritized as such), but who I will be mixing and matching across some portion of my MME builds

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Saturday Evening Update ::

Bottom-Up Build

Full breakdown (of what this is, and what the thinking is behind these players) can (and should) be found in the Angles Pod (on the One Week Season podcast feed).

Bottom-Up Build
DK Salary Remaining :: $6.0K

Daniel Jones
Jaleel McLaughlin
Kyren Williams
Brandin Cooks
Malik Nabers
Terry McLaurin
Mike Gesicki
Andrei Iosivas
Colts

Join The Bottom-Up Build Contest On DraftKings!

Buy-In:

Free

Rules:

Build with a salary cap of $44k or below!

Prizes:

1st Place = 150 Edge Points + Rare Blue Name Tag in Discord
2nd Place = 75 Edge Points
3rd Place = 40 Edge Points

*1 Edge Point = $1 in DFS courses on OWS

<< Join Here >>

*must use an OWS avatar (found on your profile page) to be eligible to win

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Blue Chips

Kyren + Kupp

Surprise, surprise.

Check out the Building Blocks section for my breakdown of this combo (and of these plays individually).

“Light Blue” Chips

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Build-Arounds

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Building Blocks

“Kram em In”

Kyren + Kupp

Story:

“They do what they do.”

Why It Works:

In games Kupp missed last year, Kyren + Puka combined for scores of 42.3 // 61.1 // 20.7 // 65.0.

In games all three played in together last year, Kyren + “top wide receiver” combined for scores of 30.5 // 55.6 // 48.1 // 47.1 // 45.8 // 57.6 // 55.4 // 51.8.

That’s 12 games Kyren played, and across those 12 games, “Kyren + top Rams WR scorer” would have gone for roughly 4x the combined salary of Kyren + Kupp this week five times(!), while going for roughly 3.5x two-thirds of the time, and while disappointing only twice in 12 games. Quite simply, this provides one of the best “salary allocation to floor/ceiling outcomes” setups we will see all season, and the fact that this game is being played against an Arizona team that 1) does not have a strong defense, and 2) is expected to keep this game competitive throughout makes it massively +EV.

How It Works:

Kyren and Kupp will be two of the more popular plays on the slate this week, but pairing them will be a tremendous way to differentiate. Most Kyren rosters won’t get the Kupp score, and most Kupp rosters won’t get the Kyren score, allowing you to move ahead of all those rosters if both of these guys hit together. Similar to our Achane/Tyreek setup last week: this isn’t enough to “win you a tourney all on its own,” but it’s a great way to get a head start on the field.

POTENTIAL DOWNSIDE:

The story plays out differently, and you don’t get first place — which is really all that matters.

Typically, we include two or three additional Building Blocks…but given that this block will absolutely dominate my roster-building process this week, I’ll remain authentic to the way I’m seeing the slate and move on from here.

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Bink Machine

A look at some of the rules I’ll be applying in the Bink Machine this week.

“If Pittman”

I don’t expect to have Michael Pittman this week, but I talked about this setup in my DFS Interpretations, so I wanted to illustrate what this would look like. In short: In order for Pittman to hit, he almost always needs volume (i.e., he’s not a big-play threat so much as he’s a compiler). And in order to see volume, he’ll almost certainly need the Packers to be scoring points. Therefore, if I’m playing Pittman, I want to also account for the players on the Packers who might be creating a game environment that forces the Colts to stack up passing volume.

This rule says, “On 100% of rosters that have Michael Pittman, play one of these other three guys.”

Kyren // Kupp Rules

Let’s say I wanted the following setup:

1. Kyren + Kupp go on 40% of rosters together
2. 20% of rosters have Kyren solo, and he’s allowed to be paired with one of the cheaper pass catchers from this team as well (but he doesn’t have to be)
3. 20% of rosters have Kupp solo, and he’s allowed to be paired with one of the cheaper pass catchers from this team as well (but he doesn’t have to be)
4. On the 20% of rosters that don’t have Kupp or Kyren, I want to have one of the cheaper pass catchers from this Rams team (essentially saying, “I don’t think the Rams fail against the Cardinals; so if both of the expensive guys are underwhelming, that almost certainly means one of the cheaper guys is hitting”).

This will be a really cool set of rules to look at.

Here’s how I would build them.

Firstly, I would set minimum/maximum exposures (the last two boxes in each image below) at appropriate levels on each player:

With Kyren + Kupp being played together on around 40% of rosters and each being played solo on another 20%, this puts each guy at 60% total ownership. They are set at 58% to 62% to give the optimizer room to work.

Johnson // Robinson // Parkinson will account for 20% ownership on the rosters that don’t have either Kupp or Kyren, and among the 40% of rosters that have only ONE of Kupp // Kyren, I want to leave room for these guys to also be rostered, but I don’t want them rostered on all. Add up the three cheapies, and they will account for “at least 36% ownership,” and “as much as 46% ownership.” This means somewhere around half of my Kupp-only // Kyren-only rosters will add a cheapie from the Rams, and the other half will not.

Next, we move over to the rules, and we start with a “Kram Em In” rule that says, very simply, “On at least 38% of all rosters, include both players from this pool.” (Note: we put 38% here instead of 40% in order to give the optimizer some room to work. We’ll provide this room throughout our rules.)

Next, we want to make sure that our Kupp + Kyren rules do not include one of the cheapies.

The following rule says, “On 100% of rosters that include both Kupp and Kyren, make sure that only two players from this pool (Kupp and Kyren) are used.” (This could also be accomplished in the Team Stacks section by putting ‘Max Flex’ at 2 for the Rams, which would prevent the optimizer from ever building a roster with three non-QBs from the Rams together.)

This now ensures that we’ll have “at least 38% of our rosters” with both Kupp and Kyren, and that none of these rosters will include a third skill position player from the Rams.

The next thing we want to do is make sure we have some Kyren rosters without Kupp, and vice versa. We’ve already established that Kyren and Kupp will each be on 58% to 62% of total rosters, and that at least 38% of our rosters will have the two of them together. So now, we need to establish a rule that excludes these pairings on some builds.

These rules each say, “on at least 30% of my (Kupp/Kyren) rosters, include only ONE player from this pool” (or, in other words: exclude the other guy). Thirty percent of Kupp rosters is around 18% of my total rosters, and the same goes for Kyren, creating exactly what we’re looking for here.

Lastly, we need to make sure that ALL of our rosters with no Kupp or Kyren have one of the Rams cheapies.

This can be done in a couple ways.

First, we can change the “Team Constraints” to say that every roster has to include at least one piece from the Rams.

Instead, we could build a rule that says “on 100% of rosters, include at least one player (and as many as two players) from this pool.”

And if we want, we can sharpen this final piece by creating a rule for each “cheapie” that says they cannot be paired with another “cheapie” from this team.

Put it all together, and roughly 40% of rosters will have Kyren and Kupp together, roughly 20% of rosters will have Kyren without Kupp (and around half will include a cheapie), roughly 20% of rosters will have Kupp without Kyren (and around half will include a cheapie), and all rosters without Kupp or Kyren will include exactly one Rams cheapie.

Bonuses

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If Building For Single-Entry // Three-Entry Max

This is my narrowest pool, which means it’s the pool likeliest to change a bit as I move deeper into builds. If it changes throughout Saturday night, I’ll add an update in this space.

If I were building for single-entry // three-entry Max, my tightened-up player pool would be:

QB ::

Kyler Murray // Matthew Stafford || Jayden Daniels // Daniel Jones || Brock Purdy || Anthony Richardson || Justin Fields

RB ::

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A Wrap ::

I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!

-JM

Mike Johnson (MJohnson86) has racked up nearly $500,000 in DFS profit as an NFL tournament player with success in all styles of contests

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Welcome back to my (Mjohnson86) Player Grid. I am changing up the format of my Player Grid this year to be more direct about the players I like at each position and keep myself from casting too wide of a net. We have plenty of strategy talk and full game write-ups on every game here at OWS, this year I’m going to use this article to give direct answers on who I think the best tournament plays are each week. Also, note that just because a player isn’t on here doesn’t mean they are a bad play, I’m just intentionally trying to limit the players I list to about 3 QBs, 5 to 7 RBs, 6 to 8 WRs, and 2 or 3 TEs and that means that some plays don’t make the cut – we can’t play everyone. Feel free to drop me feedback in Discord or on Twitter about the new format and if you like this better or last year’s. Enjoy!!

This is a list of players that stand out to me at each position from using my “Checking the Boxes” criteria outlined in my course you can find in our Marketplace. This list is a starting point, from which I build out lineups using game theory and roster construction concepts with the mindset being to find the best plays with big ceilings. Low ownership is a bonus, but not a must. 

(Side note:: You’ll notice at the bottom of this article that Fanduel will have its own Player Grid this year)

Draftkings Player Grid

Quarterback ::

• Patrick Mahomes – Mahomes is always capable of 300+ yards and 3 touchdowns, and this week is no different. 
• Jared Goff – Goff faced the Bucs twice last season and averaged over 300 passing yards in those matchups while throwing two touchdowns in each game. The Lions have the highest implied team total on the slate.
• Kyler Murray – Dual threat QB with great weapons. Should be able to make plays with his legs and have more downfield opportunities this week.
• Salary Savers: Daniel Jones, Gardner Minshew, Derek Carr

Running Back :: 

• Kyren Williams – Elite workload and great matchup. Mispriced.
• Breece Hall – May be the first RB off the board if season long and Best Ball drafts happened today. Will probably spend most of the year priced over $8k.
• Isiah Pacheco – I expect Cincinnati to encourage the Chiefs to run and I expect Kansas City to oblige, with Pacheco posting one of his stronger games of the year.
• Jordan Mason  – Mason got his opportunity in Week 1 and boy did he make the most of it. If pricing came out after the 49ers had played, Mason would likely be about $1,200-$1,500 more expensive.
• James Conner – Conner seems likely to have 18+ touches weekly. The Lions had success in Week 1 with their running backs against the Rams in Week 1 and I expect Conner to be involved in the passing game and near the goal line.
• Salary Savers: Mason, JK Dobbins, Zach Charbonnet, Rico Dowdle, Chase Brown

Wide Receiver :: 

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Sonic is a Milly Maker winner and large-field tournament mastermind who focuses on mass-multi-entry play

Football Is Weird

The results of last weekend’s games provided us with more useful data than the previous seven months combined, yet the sample size is still ridiculously small. Was last week’s player usage a result of an opponent-specific game plan? Game script? Or are these snap/target counts a dependable sign of things to come?

Money can be made this week for those who successfully separate the signal from the noise. I’ll be trying to leverage against Week 1 overreactions because this truly is a One Week Season. 

Some of these are not for the faint of heart. These are players I will be mixing into my rosters to differentiate from the masses while adding correlation. Keep this stuff out of your cash games for god’s sake.

Secondary Core-Relations

We’re always hunting for those high-ceiling combinations to add to our existing game stacks. It’s better to aim at getting four things right instead of trying to hit a nine-way parlay. I’ll lean on a handful of core secondary stacks that will be finessed into lineups whenever feasible.

Justin Jefferson/Brandon Aiyuk

Show me an elite wideout on a team that will likely need to be aggressive, and I’ll be above the field every time. JJ’s ceiling at 7% ownership is an auto-click already and pairing him with a 49ers piece tells a viable story of a back-and-forth affair. 

What do you win when you win? 

Deebo Samuel will be heavily featured in my tournament portfolio but as a secondary stack, I’m intrigued by the ceiling/ownership of Brandon Aiyuk. At roughly 6%, Aiyuk will exist on only a quarter of the rosters as Deebs and less than one-tenth of the rosters of teammate Mason Jordan. I’m also fine going with George Kittle. He’s projected for ownership in the 4% range but at a TE position that yielded little spike scores in Week 1. George can give you three points or 33 points depending on the game plan and script. The risk here is that he stays in to block more often against Minnesota’s blitz-happy defense. Classic large field-only tournament play. Bonus that Aiyuk and Kittle provide leverage against multiple chalky teammates as well. 

I bet you didn’t even notice I inverted Jordan Mason’s name up there, huh? 

Editor’s note: I did and thought Sonic didn’t know his name

Ja’Marr Chase/Xavier Worthy

Leaning further into the “gotta play elite wideouts at low ownership” mantra, Chase and his 5% projected ownership make for an interesting price point tournament play. At $7800, he’s sandwiched between the highly owned Amon Ra St. Brown and Cooper Kupp, so there’s little chance of Chase getting steamed. If this game shoots out, I can see Xavier Worthy being a catalyst. His silly speed at 2% ownership is boom/bust MME goodness. 

I’ll be paring these two and some Rams/Cardinals players in some cheaper QB stacks like Daniel Jones, Justin Fields, Sam Darnold and Deshaun (eek!) Watson.

Jameson Williams/Mike Evans (or Jalen McMillan)

I’m praying that Jamo is healthy but that his questionable tag remains until Sunday. If his ownership can remain in the single digits, he’s a potential smash play in this game environment. For correlation on the Buccaneers side, I’m always a fan of Mike Evans when his ownership hovers around the current number (5%). If scraping for some salary savings, try Williams paired with Jalen McMillian ($3600 and 5.6% pOWN). McMillan’s price and popularity would be higher had he connected with Baker Mayfield last week on one or two of their near misses. 

LOWER-OWNED TREASURES

Running Back

Papy is a full-time DFS player, with a focus on high-stakes tourneys, and with hundreds of thousands in lifetime profit

The Board

• There are three standout games (TB @ DET, LAR @ ARZ, and CIN @ KC) and they all have totals at or above 48. TB @ DET stands out (51.5) among the standouts.
• Just behind the top game environments NO @ DAL and SF @ MIN check in with strong (46.5) totals.
• The only game out of the top game environments with a spread under five is LAR @ AZ which is predicted to be a one-point game. DET // KC // DAL are all at home, and all favorites by at least a touchdown.
• After the top five game environments, the next highest total (43) belongs to a broad range of outcomes game between NYG @ WAS.
• The other seven games on the main slate have low totals below 42, with three of those games failing to break 40.

Pawn – RB Jordan Mason ($5,200)

For those who follow Papy’s pieces, you’ll know that I typically go cheaper at pawn than a $5,200 dollar player. There were cheaper guys I considered for this spot (Luke Schoonmaker // Jalin Hyatt // Demarcus Robinson // Allen Lazard // Andrei Iosivas // Tyler Johnson // Jalen McMillan) who are all priced below $4,000. Even though I’d prefer to keep my pawn play cheap, Mason is still one of the cheapest playable RBs and is too critical to the slate to leave off the list. Assuming Christian McCaffrey sits, Mason becomes a super obvious, and thusly super chalky play (likely 35-40% owned). Mason is clearly mispriced, benefitting from the Monday night discount, and is coming off a 28-carry game. He’s also playing behind a strong O-line, in one of the best running schemes. The one negative is that he only saw one target, but the 49ers only threw 29 passes in a game they controlled. Still, it doesn’t look likely that he’ll have the same receiving role as CMC, but when you consider that CMC would be priced over $8,000, that hardly matters. The other issue with Mason comes from a strategy standpoint. He’s going to be turbo chalk. That doesn’t matter as much in smaller fields or 50/50 contests, but in large field tournaments, there is a case to be made for the fade and pray. The Vikings defense looked good last week but they were taking on bad Daniel Jones, which is a lot easier than playing the 49ers. Assuming CMC sits, I’ll use Mason on my smaller field teams, while looking to be different in other spots. The same won’t be true for my “Milly Maker only” lineups, where I’ll be more likely to fade him and hope for a brick that hurts a large portion of the field.

Knight – WR Chris Goodwin ($6,000)

Goodwin is the player I’m putting into this space because I think he is the best overall value from the TB @ DET game, but really, this post is representative of the entire game. I could’ve listed any of the primary offensive contributors from either side. Baker Mayfield // Mike Evans // Rachaad White // Jared Goff // Amon Ra St. Brown // Jameson Williams // Sam Laporta // Jahmyr Gibbs // David Montgomery are all in play. I took the time to write that list out to show how many people in this game are useable. I even listed Jalen McMillan as one of my alternate pawns. If there is one game on the slate that can explode to the point where you need to have it over-stacked to win, this is the one. 

I’m going to use players from this game throughout my builds, with one of my main lineups dedicated to an over-stack. I’m not sure if that stack will be based on the Bucs (Baker // Evans // Goodwin) with Lions as bring backs, or based on the Lions (Goff // ASRB // Williams // LaPorta) with Bucs as bring backs, but if I had to decide right now, my favorite stack would be Baker // Evans // Goodwin // LaPorta. It is highly likely someone from this game posts a tournament winning score, with the main issue being picking the right guys. The best part? Ownership is projected to be reasonable! Even low! How often can you stack a game with a 51.5 total and have your lineup not end up mega chalk? The fact that Goodwin (16%) is projected to carry the game’s highest ownership is wild. Using current OWS ownership projections: LaPorta (5%), Williams (3%), Evans (4%), Mayfield (6%), and Goff (3%) are going to be criminally under-owned. How can you play Goff // Williams // LaPorta // Evans, in Detroit, with a 51.5 total, and negligible ownership? Ridiculous. Even Gibbs (14%) and White (8%) are far from chalk, with Monty (5%) also being an afterthought. Ownership projections can evolve, but with the strong probability that Jayden Daniels // Cooper Kupp // Breece Hall // Jordan Mason // Kyren Williams // Travis Kelce are all going to be highly owned, things probably won’t drastically change. It usually takes courage to stack a low owned game, but how brave do you have to be to stack the Lions at home, with the highest total of the week, when no one’s looking?

Bishop – QB Jayden Daniels ($6,200)

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.

Week 2 Topics

1. Week 2: The Turning Points

2. The Gem That Unlocks The Slate

3. Buyer Beware // Buying Low

4. Floating Plays

5. “That was so obvious, how did I not see it?”

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1. Week 2: The Turning Points

The Question ::

It is only Week 2, and yet we are already faced a slate that seems likely to have two very clear decision points and situations which will have a huge impact on how the slate turns out:

1. The Rams without Puka Nacua. The Rams gave Cooper Kupp a massive role without Nacua, while Kyren Williams was still in a bell cow role. Meanwhile, the Rams’ ancillary players (Demarcus Robinson, Tyler Johnson, Colby Parkinson) are extremely cheap. All of this while the Rams have a juicy matchup with the Cardinals on tap.
2. Christian McCaffrey is almost certainly going to miss Week 2 and his replacement, Jordan Mason, had a huge game against the Jets in Week 1 and has a very low salary relative to his expected usage and offensive environment.

There are a lot of things that impact the outcome of a slate, but these two situations are so extreme and the way the pricing works out they will almost certainly be turning points for the outcomes on Sunday. How are you seeing and approaching these spots?

The Answers ::

JM >>

In 12 healthy games last year, Kyren Williams topped 17 DraftKings points 10 times (incredible), while going for 24+ points in half those games (and 28+ in five of 12!).

Furthermore ::

• In games Kupp missed last year, Kyren + Puka combined for scores of 42.3 // 61.1 // 20.7 // 65.0.
• In games all three played in together last year, Kyren + “top wide receiver” combined for scores of 30.5 // 55.6 // 48.1 // 47.1 // 45.8 // 57.6 // 55.4 // 51.8.

That’s 12 games Kyren played, and across those 12 games, “Kyren + top Rams WR scorer” would have gone for roughly 4x the combined salary of Kyren + Kupp this week five times(!), while going for roughly 3.5x two-thirds of the time, and while disappointing only twice in 12 games.

Nothing is “guaranteed” in fantasy, but Kyren + Kupp — against Arizona — is about as “guaranteed” as you can get.

Obviously, I have detailed this in other places, but I see Kyren + Kupp pairings as the most +EV way to attack this slate. In MME, it’s sharp to also mix in some Kyren-solo, Kupp-solo, and “Rams rosters without Kyren or Kupp,” but Kyren + Kupp will be the central thesis of my builds this week.

The more I think about pricing on this slate, the more I gravitate toward heavy Mason exposure as well. We’ve talked a lot, across the last couple weeks, about the way running backs are used in today’s NFL, and how this relates to DraftKings pricing (in short: over time, you will return more points-per-dollar-spent at wide receiver than at running back, so it makes sense to prioritize salary at wide receiver where you can; but also, there’s a big gap in role/production between, say, the typical $5k running back (DK) and the typical $6k running back, which also means you sometimes have to eat that extra spending to raise the overall floor and ceiling of your roster). And the fact that Mason is in that low-$5k range with a legitimately large role makes him intriguing not just from a perspective of “how this individual play stacks up,” but also from a perspective of how this allows us to bend the rules we’re usually working with in terms of salary allocation.

Said differently: I’ve been talking, this week, about how you could play Jaleel McLaughlin for the savings, and even though he probably won’t get you more than 11 to 13 points on a good week, this could still be valuable toward a tourney win because of what he allows you to do elsewhere on your roster.

Well, JM: “Keep it simple, stupid.” Mason is only $700 more than McLaughlin.

Because of all the unique pricing components to consider, I don’t think Mason should be judged on the final raw score he produces. Instead, the fact that he should be able to return anywhere from eight to 30 DraftKings points, at only $5.2k, makes him hard to pass up.

Now, this all leads to a chalky start to rosters if using this as your primary core — right? But…

1) How much of the field will have Kupp and Kyren together? 5% would probably be generous, which means that maybe 2% to 3% of the field would have a starting point of Kyren // Mason // Kupp. If that ends up being the sharpest way to build, I’d gladly take sharing that starting point with such a small percentage of the field. And…

2) There is still a lot we can do differently away from this starting point.

If pricing had come out after these games had been played, we would probably be spending just under $23k for this block of three players. Instead, it costs us $19.6k to roster all three. That’s significant, and I personally don’t mind loading up on this starting point and differentiating (with low-owned, high-upside players, or with just plain sharper roster construction) from there.

Another note :: if Kupp + Kyren + Mason is (generously) going to be on only 2% to 3% of rosters…how many of those rosters will also have Deebo? It’s not quite the same setup as Kupp + Kyren, as the 49ers have two other alpha weapons they can work through; but Deebo will almost certainly scoop some extra work left behind by CMC, creating an opportunity to play a pair of player blocks with high floors and ceilings that will be largely overlooked.

Hilow >>

In short, I’m playing both and simply figuring out ways to play them that the field is unlikely to utilize.

While we don’t expect Cooper Kupp to see 21 targets every week that Puka is out, we can be highly confident in him seeing 10-13 targets on a weekly basis. Furthermore, we expect those targets to be more downfield against a Cardinals defense that is incapable of generating pressure organically and without the blitz. That should result in a higher aDOT with not everything being these quick hits against a Lions defense that generated the most pressures in Week 1.

As for Mason, we can’t expect him to see a similar pass game role as we would with Christian McCaffrey, but he played an absolutely elite snap rate and saw every running back opportunity for a team that has scored 30 or more points in 16 of 25 Brock Purdy starts in San Francisco. I’ll save some of the way I see to play these guys that the field is unlikely to get to for the End Around and The Slate podcast.

Xandamere >>

I’m likely going to end up being overweight on both of these spots. Generally speaking, ownership doesn’t bother me at running back – I’m fine playing into chalk at the position where production is most dependent on volume when it’s a spot where we can reasonably project a lot of volume on a good offense at a modest salary. As for the Rams, well, Hilow noted the bull case for them as well. I may end up using an “at least 1 Ram” rule on all of my rosters this week. 

Football’s a funny game and players can fail in great spots, but I’m always going to want to play the guys who are in the best spots, even into ownership. There are still plenty of other lineup spots left at which to get different.

Mike >>

Both of these spots fall squarely in the “don’t overthink it” bucket for me, but the Rams in particular are a spot I don’t think we can avoid. It is notable that the five Rams skill players (Kupp, Kyren, Demarcus Robinson, Tyler Johnson, and Colby Parkinson) plus Puka Nacua combined for 85 Draftkings points in Week 1, despite the team only scoring two touchdowns and only Kupp reaching a yardage bonus. Removing Nacua from the equation, it is still highly likely that almost all of the Rams production comes from these five players and they are facing a much worse defense this week. Those five players combined have a salary of about $25k on Draftkings and if the Rams score 3 or 4 touchdowns it is not hard to see the group putting up over 100 points. Even if the Rams simply have another similar outing, around 80 points from that group at their prices would necessitate a situation where either all of them were “solid” or a couple of them were “smashes”. In MME play, I’ll probably have at least 2 Rams in most of my lineups. In smaller field, I’ve been toying with three or even four Rams in lineups even without Stafford.

As for the Jordan Mason situation, that one has more paths to failure, and they are pretty clear:

1. The 49ers offense struggles against the Vikings similar to how they did when these teams met last year.
2. The 49ers offense does well, but it is the passing game that most of the production flows through. 

That makes “Purdy Doubles” one of the more interesting leverage opportunities on the slate. 

Everyone focuses so much on “ownership” and trying to be different with every play, but that’s not really necessary. You can have Kupp, Kyren, and another Rams WR/TE at 20%+ ownership each and Deebo Samuel at 15%+, but if you put Purdy/Aiyuk or Purdy/Kittle in that lineup as well you’ve put yourself on a pretty unique path and still have three spots to differentiate more if you feel the need. Lesson of the day, don’t let ownership dictate your path.

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2. The Gem That Unlocks The Slate

The Question ::

While individual player takes and situations are important to know and play a role in DFS, we know that locating the right team and game environments is often the critical part to the process. This week, we know the Rams/Cardinals game will be popular due to the aforementioned Rams situation and the Bucs/Lions game should also be a high scoring affair that is rightfully targeted by the field. The Bengals travel to play the Chiefs and that game is likely to draw attention as well. However, this is a 13 game slate which means there are 10 more games on the slate. We are so early in the season that it is likely there is another gem somewhere in there which will be the key to unlocking the slate – which one do you think it is?

The Answers ::

Thanks for hanging out with us in The Oracle this week

We’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!

Larejo is a mid-stakes tournament mastermind who specializes in outmaneuvering 150-max players with a small number of entries

I typically write this article on Thursday nights. I do this for a few reasons. First, because I don’t enjoy overthinking and being bombarded with information. I’d likely write with more conviction if this piece didn’t hit The Scroll until late Saturday nights but I would have changed my mind too many times during the week to make much sense in my lineups. This way, by writing this article earlier in the week, once it’s published, I mostly build lineups that are in line with the strategies called out. It keeps me grounded to a core no matter the thoughts I have on Friday and Saturday, and at the very least, if these have a great week, at least I know I’ll be celebrating with y’all.

Blink

The second reason I write these on Thursdays is because sometimes simply watching football gives me some inspiration for what direction to take the article in this week. So, as I was watching the Bills/Dolphins this week, I couldn’t help but think about Malcolm Gladwell. Why, do you ask? Because for whatever reason, every time they showed Mike McDaniel on the sideline, I couldn’t help but think that he somewhat resembled a young Gladwell. They are both geniuses in different ways, wizards of their crafts, so it kind of makes sense. But regardless, in thinking about Gladwell and McDaniel, it clicked: the blink test.

Gladwell’s book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, was published back in 2005 nearly 20 years ago and it gets even better with age. At that time (imagine this), Gladwell wrote about how people were living in the age of…wait for it…information overload! This is 2005, before the relative explosion of the smartphone and social media. And yet, here we were with an author such as Gladwell talking about just how suffocating it can be to be able to access anything you want on the internet and to get so completely bogged down by information and data that it could cause analysis paralysis. Just amazing.

To take this one step further, he talks about the blink test, which is essentially saying that in some fields, and at some times (more than we think), we are all capable of making better quick decisions (snap judgment) than we can make with loads and loads of data and analysis. If this doesn’t sound like the feeling of building a perfect DFS lineup, I don’t know what does. It’s why I always prefer to get my thoughts out early, to build lineups early in the week without deep preparation of a given slate. I am going to be influenced by the voices of people in the industry I trust, sometimes it’s for the better. But, if it 1) takes me away from my original thoughts, or 2) there’s little to too much justification as to why I’m making this change in strategy, then this is a detrimental endeavor. Instead of leaving this test here, let’s carry it forward. Where are we going to blink test this week? 

Dallas Cowboys

Prich has won over $300k the past 3 years and has found an edge in understanding the field biases and more importantly his own biases when building rosters.

How did it go last week? Really, how did it go? Because the strongest biases we bring to this week are the result of our understanding of our DFS performance last week. I did not make any moves in my rosters this past week. I mostly rostered lower owned plays in the afternoon games, and I was in a position to win a tournament if McLaughlin or Dowdle had what would be a surprisingly good week. It didn’t happen, but I felt good about the decision. I never really gave much thought outside of 5% of lineups rostering J.K. Dobbins. Imagine if I had weighed that switch heavily and then not pulled the trigger. I would be in a much different spot entering this week. I would likely be dealing with omission bias. 

Lineup regrets

If passivity in decision making wins out, our brains are happy. Our brains have a harder time dealing with a bad decision; it’s considered a harmful action. We prefer harmful inaction instead. This is why making a meaningful switch is so hard. We fear the regret we will feel if we switch and are wrong. We fear it more than if we don’t make the switch. If I had made the switch to Dobbins, and then McLaughlin excelled (he had five targets right away in the game but had no success with those plays, and then they fell behind), I would have the worst feeling of regret. Our brains judge the decisions we make and try to prevent the harmful feelings. Who did you switch to, or not switch to last week? Recognizing it as a bias can help free its hold over you. Additionally, we should always consider whether a roster switch is a play for first place.

There have been a lot of interesting stat lines from players who we expect to do well and players who are surprising us. We should try to remember the primacy bias where our brains think that whatever happens first is more likely to happen over and again. J.K. Dobbins may be the lead RB in LAC, but his production was on the back of a 61 yard TD run vs. LV. How likely is that to occur in the future? 

Primacy Bias and Week 1 Notables

As a prerequisite, there are two things that should be considered:

1. What is your bankroll? This can be considered for the week, or the entire season. But, as a best practice, I’d recommend you cap your weekly exposure to 10% of your full-season bankroll. For example, if you’ve got $2,500 you’re willing to put into play over the course of the NFL season, I would shoot for $150 -$250 in play each week. Any more than that, and you are at risk of going broke or having your play change to a more cautious approach/style. Playing with fear, aka not to lose, is a detrimental mindset, and will likely hinder you from a winning lineup. 
2. What is your goal for the season? Are you playing for fun? Trying to grind out a profit? Trying to hit a big score or have a life-changing win? Being honest with yourself and setting a realistic goal should determine the types of contests you enter.

Now that the prereqs are out of the way, some background . . .

I want to start by saying that DFS is hard. So much so, that a vast majority of players, (probably around 80-90%), are lifetime losers. In order to combat the turnover of players going broke, sites like FanDuel and DraftKings dedicate large advertising budgets to continue to attract new players. One of their key marketing strategies is advertising the ability to turn $20 into $1 million, with their weekly milly-maker contests. However, in order to win a tournament like the milli-maker, you have to beat a full city’s worth of entrants, hence why these types of tournaments are commonly referred to as “lottos”.

With that in mind, why make it even more difficult for yourself to be a winning player by playing poorly structured contests? When sorted by prize pool, almost all of the larger field contests on DraftKings for Week 2 have very top heavy structures, which essentially means, it will take a top 0.1%, (not 1%, but 0.1%) finish to return a strong ROI on your entry fees. My advice is to avoid these types of contests. Below I’ll outline what you should be looking for and the tournaments to consider at different buy-in levels. 

So what should we look for when choosing a contest?

Mike Johnson (MJohnson86) has racked up nearly $500,000 in DFS profit as an NFL tournament player with success in all styles of contests

This article is specifically designed to give you some ideas on ways that we can use strategy to jump ahead of the field on Fanduel. Touchdowns play an even bigger role on Fanduel than on Draftkings because receptions are only worth half a point, while on DK receptions are worth a full point. Touchdowns used to be an even bigger deal before (this year, FD added bonuses for yardage totals – more on this below), but it’s still something we need to focus on because of the reception difference and how they price their players. Touchdowns have a high degree of variance and since they carry so much weight on Fanduel, this article will focus on ways each week that we can leverage that variance to jump ahead of the field when things don’t go exactly as expected as far as who crosses the imaginary line while holding the football.

Brock Purdy Doubles (plus Justin Jefferson)

Jordan Mason is going to be highly owned this week and his price is extremely low, but we know touchdowns are huge on Fanduel. The simplest way for Mason to fail is the 49ers touchdowns all come via the passing game. All of Deebo, Aiyuk, and Kittle are cheap for their upside and everyone except Deebo will come in with super low ownership. On the other side of that game, for the Purdy doubles to really hit at their highest rate they will need to be pushed back by the Vikings a bit. Justin Jefferson at sub-5% ownership is the perfect way to round out that bet as he could easily see 12 to 15 targets as the Vikings try to keep up.

Brian Robinson

Mike Johnson (MJohnson86) has racked up nearly $500,000 in DFS profit as an NFL tournament player with success in all styles of contests

Strategy Ideas and Things To Consider

Finding An Edge

The whole idea behind this piece of content is that it is unique. Specific content and strategies for the “non-main slate” contests are very rare in the DFS industry, and most players who enter them are casual players or doing so on a whim after their main slate entries have had things go wrong and they want something to root for or to chase their losses during the late games. Edges are getting harder and harder to find in DFS as information gets better, projections get sharper, and the field gets more experienced. These smaller slates present a clear opportunity for an advantage for those that focus on them, as most players will just take their thoughts from the main slate and approach these lineups the same way – without considering how much having seven to nine fewer games (depending on the week) changes the strategy. The biggest win of my career came on an “Afternoon Only” slate in January of 2021 and I hope to share some of my insights on the format to help you attack this niche corner of NFL DFS.

Ownership Strategy

• Ownership will be higher for pretty much every player on “short slates” just because there are fewer players to choose from. This will be especially true for “chalky” players from the main slate.
• This means getting these players right is even more vital than on a main slate. There are fewer alternatives to choose from, so if they have a big game and you aren’t on them, it is much harder to find other ways to make up those points.
• This also means it is easier for lower owned players to pay off, as there are fewer players at their position that they need to have “fail” for them to be worth the risk.
• Correlation is even more important than on the main slate because the useful fantasy games that pay off for the slate are likely to be clumped up from the same games. I always make lineups with a game stack (QB + at least one pass catcher + at least one opponent) and then one or two “mini-correlations” from other games.

Week 2 Overview

This week’s Afternoon Only slate has three games and two of them are clearly better game environments than the third. One of the teams from the better scoring environments has a team (Rams) with a ton of value available. These situations are going to cause A LOT of duplicated or very similar lineups. Finding one or two low owned and/or low salary players will be critical to finding a way to the top of the leaderboard. It’s really hard to see the PIT/DEN game taking off as a whole but there’s likely going to be at least two or three total offensive touchdowns in the game and some volume stats as well. This means that somewhere in that game could be the gem that unlocks the slate. The only issue on a slate like this is that the Rams situation could make it so you don’t actually need that player if their value pieces hit as well. Just an interesting slate altogether.

QB Strategy

Quarterback is always an important position but that importance goes to another level on these small slates. There are two main reasons for this. First, on average, quarterbacks obviously score the most points of any position and we can only start one of them. Second, as noted above, correlation is even more important as the slates get smaller and there are fewer scoring opportunities to go around. By choosing the right quarterback, you are also increasing the chances that you are right at two other positions. Again, the shorter slate condenses the scoring across all lineups, making each position more vital to separating and giving yourself a chance to win. This is why quarterback strategy has its own section:

DFS Labs MNF – Xandamere & Cheeseman

Angles – JM

Block Party – Peter Overzet & JM

Solo Ship – Squirrel Patrol & JM

Searching for Ceiling – Rich Hribar & Hilow

DFS Labs 2.4 DK – Papy & Cheeseman

DFS Labs Labs 2.3 DK – STATATL & Cheeseman

DFS Labs 2.2 FD – Mike Johnson & Maximus

DFS Labs 2.1 DK – Hilow & Cheeseman

Week 1 Roster Review – STATATL