StatATL has a math degree and a background as a financial analyst, and has blended an analytical, numbers-driven approach with an “OWS mindset” to rack up over $100,000 in lifetime DFS profit while maintaining low weekly buy-ins

Need more late swap education? Read this free educational article on Late Swap

Outlook 

Coming off back-to-back 10-game main slates, week 8 offers us a 13-game slate with some potential strong leverage in late swap. Last week we saw major tournaments, including the milli-maker be won with 180 (or less) points, however, on a slate with so many options and value available at almost every position, I’d expect it to take closer to 225-230 points to ship major tournaments this week. 

From a roster construction standpoint, I’d expect to see about half the field rostering 3 RBs this week based on current ownership projections. The remaining portion of the field appears to be split almost exactly 50/50 between a WR or TE in the flex, meaning we will see about 25% of rosters built with double TEs. We’ll discuss how we can leverage that knowledge more below.

Important Early Outcomes to Watch:

Along with the specific players/situations below, it’s important to realize that there are 6 teams (BAL, DET, HOU, GB, CIN & MIA) in the early window with team totals of 25 or more points, meaning there is a high likelihood we see multiple strong scores (25+ DK points) come out of those games.   

• Breece Hall – While the Jets fall just short of being included in the list above with a team total of 24, Hall is projecting to be rostered on about a third of all rosters in play this week. The Patriots have been gashed by RBs the past four weeks, allowing 118-2 to Tank Bigsby, 132-2 to Joe Mixon, 160-1 to Jordan Mason and 184-0 to the combination of Mostert/Wright, and the Jets are a TD favorite on the road.  
• Tyreek Hill – The Dolphins offense has struggled without QB Tua Tagovailoa these past few weeks, but Tua is expected back under center and Tyreek is severely underpriced for this news. Since being traded to MIA in 2022, Tyreek has 14 games of 28+ DK points (4x his current salary) across the 32 games where Tua started. Candidly, I’m not sure his projected ownership is high enough.   
• Cheap Buccaneers, specifically Cade Otton & Jalen McMillan – With both Chris Godwin and Mike Evans set to miss, the Tampa Bay WR room is extremely thin. Both Otton and McMillan are projecting for high ownership and, at their sub-$4k price tags, could easily put up a score that will make it difficult to win without.   Slate Breakers – Such as Jauan Jennings’ 49.5 DK point performance in week 3.

Price Range Breakdowns (Late Games):

$6,500 and up:

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 8 Overview

Things get fun again this week with five games on the slate. We do have a few situations that carry some uncertainty which will be a big deal on a smaller slate like this. Jayden Daniels is obviously the big one. If he is able to play, that lifts the entire game environment for everyone and alters the outlook for the QB and DEF positions while also affecting the range of outcomes involved. If he is out, Marcus Mariota becomes an interesting cheap QB option with rushing ability. The Broncos, Chargers, and Chiefs are all favored on this slate and all three of those teams have been a part of relatively low scoring environments in most of their games this season, so their matchups with the Panthers, Saints, and Raiders are not very exciting on the surface at all. This leaves us with a situation where the Bills // Seahawks game sets up as the clearest path to a shootout and maybe the easiest place to build rosters that feel like they have a high ceiling, with pieces of the other games mixed and matched. The three teams with low offensive expectations are all likely to have only one player (CAR – Hubbard, LV – Bowers, NO – Kamara) that draws much ownership.

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:

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

OWS Fam!!!

Week 7 was a chaotic slate, to say the least. As we get deeper into the season, we’re now at the point where injuries are taking over, and Week 7 felt like total carnage. 

Looking back, I’m not sure we saw some incredibly surprising outcomes, but we had plenty of players who carried decent ownership—from Jayden Daniels to Deshaun Watson to Deebo Samuel // Brandon Aiyuk to JuJu Smith-Schuster, and finally to Monday night’s Chris Godwin and Mike Evans—all who left games early due to injury and left owners grasping at air in their lineups.

It seems the 49ers and Bucs may face the most adversity in the short term, but it’s important to note that with a challenge comes opportunity. With (potentially) some prominent offensive roles opening up, and a next-man-up mentality on most teams, we’ll have a strong opportunity to find value in Week 8 and capitalize on our convictions to be a week early, instead of a week late.

Props 2024-25

Before we dive into the slate :: With NBA tipping off a couple days ago, it’s a good a time to remind you that NBA is easily the OWS Props team’s most profitable sport, with over $8,000 in in profit last season alone! 

And look (real talk) :: I am always dubious of any site that touts “money won,” because without sound process, simply posting W’s without explanation or process behind it signifies luck. This is biased, of course, but the OWS team may be the best in the business in providing accountability. Every day won’t be profitable (it’s about finding edges that will play out in our favor over time), but regardless of W’s and L’s, you can always find justified reasoning and thinking behind the bets that were made. This means that not only are you getting bets to trail, but you are learning along the way, so you are building your own edge, too. It’s a win-win.

It’s no secret that NFL is the most popular sport in the United States. And for that reason, the lines, whether game or player-specific, are the most efficient because the books get the most action on them. In the NBA, with less overall money on individual lines, the opportunity to find edges is massive—and the OWS team has done this consistently year in, and year out.

Jump in with us for $35 for a week pass, or $89 for a month, and if you don’t feel it’s a fit for you, we are happy to give you your money back.

Remember: You don’t have to follow the sports; you just have to follow the bets!

Week 8: Angles

In a week where we have four major U.S. sports all playing games (NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL), it’s almost as if the NFL deliberately scheduled every team to play Week 8, as if to say, “Our product is the best.” I can’t imagine they’d care so much about the money and attention…

I kid, but it’s kind of amusing nonetheless that after three weeks of at least some teams enjoying an off week, we now have Week 8 where no teams get to relax and take a break in the middle of the grind that is the NFL season. This includes last week’s London visitors, the Patriots and Jaguars, which are coming off a trip which typically constitutes a bye after such a change in time zones. Jacksonville, of course, was in the U.K. for two weeks having played the Bears and then the Pats, so maybe their adjustment back home will be a bit smoother than New England’s. It’s an interesting note either way for their opponents: the Packers (Jags) and Jets (Pats).

No byes and no London game means a full 13-game(!) main slate on Sunday. This includes five games in the late window, which by my count is the most we’ve seen all season. Most typical reactions to the size of this slate (after multiple weeks of 10-gamers) is going to be an overwhelming / “must cover every game on this slate” feeling. That may be a bit extreme, but dumbed down a bit, the projection I am making here is that there will be teams, games, and players you feel will succeed on Sunday and simply won’t have room to fit onto rosters. And that’s okay.

Even if you are an MME, 150-max player, you have to take stances. “Covering every square” may feel good, but it’s a poor strategy of maximizing what you win when you win. If your exposure is very spread out, your losses will pile up even as your wins may climb, which in essence brings down your total profits (assuming you did see a top 1% finish from a roster).

13 games…and away we go!

From the Top Rope

What a unique layout for this slate, where we have four teams projected to score about 26 points. Let’s start there. They are the Lions without Jameson Williams (27.75) vs. Tennessee // Green Bay (27) with its full complement of offensive players at Jacksonville with a four-point spread // Baltimore (26.25) at Cleveland (and Jameis Winston) favored by nine // and…the Denver Broncos hosting the 1-6 Carolina Panthers. One of these teams is unlike the other. I’ll let you guess which one.

In “Tier II” we are presented with five more teams projected to be within 25 and 26 implied points on Sunday. The Texans (25.75) vs. the Colts // Kansas City (25.5) at the Raiders // Bengals (25) vs. Eagles // Dolphins (25) vs. Arizona // and finally, the Bills (25) traveling to Seattle. In total, at least on the high end of projections, this is nine of 26 teams, or about 35% of the teams looking at more than three touchdowns and a field goal on Sunday. But here’s the kicker…none of these nine are playing each other.

With no games expected to climb over 50 points (in terms of Vegas over/unders), but a whole slew of teams about 25 and a bunch more (eight) hovering around 22, the books are telling us that if we played this slate 100 times, we’d get some wide distributions of scoring with teams peaking here and there but more times than not, no team truly putting the slate away.

That leaves us with this week’s approach: Embracing variance, because when we have a potential for outlier situations to emerge, when the books aren’t projecting them, we can feel more comfortable in putting our belief behind just about any team, knowing that the odds could be just as favorable to score 30+ points as any other team on the slate (i.e. we could make the case for probably half of the 26 teams in play to put up 30 points this week).

Emerging Angles

Instead of taking us even further into matchups, I’m going wrap up this week with specific angles I am seeing at first glance, without prior digging, that could emerge despite not jumping off the page(s) at the moment.

• The undefeated yet vengeful Chiefs are going to Vegas for the Raiders, who clipped them on Christmas Day last season before they set off their Super Bowl run. Patrick Mahomes is SO not in right now, and let’s see if DeAndre Hopkins suits up, but the Raiders’ defense poses the lightest threat they’ve seen in weeks. Mahomes is 11-0 in a dome in his career, and averages over 300 yards passing. Oh, and the Raiders lead the NFL in missed tackles by a wide margin (70, next worse is Carolina at 57).
• Green Bay’s offense and defense is getting healthy, Robert Saleh is now in the building, and they get a Jags team this week who has consistently ranked first or second in yards after the catch allowed this season (currently second worst to only New Orleans). Jordan Love pushes the ball downfield, and the Jags are leading the NFL in adjusted yards per completion. Got it.
• Atlanta predictably couldn’t handle the Seahawks’ pass rush last week (fourth in the NFL in pressure rate), but now gets Tampa Bay, who ranks in the middle of the pack in the same category. And this is three weeks after exploding for over 500 yards passing while their top two offensive weapons will miss this game (Evans and Godwin). Tampa running the ball to any success would be the only way to slow down Atlanta’s offense here.
• Arizona’s defense doesn’t blitz or bring much pressure, so Tua’s comeback here couldn’t come against a better opponent. However, Miami’s defense has been accommodating on the ground, so this game has a wide range of outcomes. 
• Bills // Seahawks and Eagles // Bengals seem like the best game environments to load up on, with talented offenses matching up. Josh Allen has another week with Amari Cooper and could be in scramble mode early and often against Mike MacDonald’s defense (which is good for him), while Metcalf’s availability could be the fulcrum of the game. As for the Eagles and Bengals, we saw last week how the Eagles will want to play games going through Saquon Barkley, but the presence of Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins, A.J. Brown, and DeVonta Smith provides enough on the outside to accelerate points.

Week 8 is a perfect setup for GPPs. Choose your adventure, and don’t look for too many reasons why the offense you believe in can score 30+. If you see a path, go for it. 

And ride it to the top of leaderboards on Sunday. 

Can’t wait to see you in the props streets (grab a Week Pass!!!), in the Bink Machine, and on the site this weekend. 

May Week 8 be your best week yet! 

~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::

The Week 8 main slate presents a stark shift in emphasis compared to the previous month of play. As I posited last week in the Oracle, I believe DFS scoring to be more closely tied to the available value rather than how many projected points Vegas expects to be scored on a given slate. This week brings numerous places where players are not priced as high as they should be. Player pricing came out before Tua Tagovailoa was expected to return from his most recent concussion, leaving Tyreek Hill, De’Von Achane, and Jaylen Waddle entirely too cheap for their range of outcomes against the Cardinals. Player pricing was released before the Buccaneers lost both Mike Evans and Chris Godwin on Monday Night Football. Player pricing was released before the Browns handed the starting job to Jameis Winston or announced a change at offensive play caller from head coach Kevin Stefanski to offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey. Jameson Williams was hit with a suspension on Thursday after we first heard about a potential violation of the league’s PES policy late Monday night. And there are still more situations that could develop through injury, like the potential for Tank Bigsby without Travis Etienne, or the Seattle pass-catchers without DK Metcalf, or Rashod Bateman without Zay Flowers.

The point I’m trying to make here is that the score needed to win GPPs is likely to be much higher this week than the previous four weeks of the season, the time when player pricing began to get extremely tight. As such, it is absolutely imperative that we shift how we’re looking at the slate ahead with the understanding that our end goal is likely a much different target than what we’ve grown accustomed to in recent weeks.

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. Breece Hall ranks fourth in expected fantasy points per game and plays a Patriots team allowing the third most fantasy points per game to opposing running backs this season. The biggest blemish to Hall’s upside here is an offensive line generating the fewest yards before contact in the league.

CADE OTTON

EXPANSIVE CHALK. Cade Otton is “fine” at salary but he’ll need the five (or six-to-seven, depending on how you view Dalton Kincaid and Sam LaPorta) tight ends capable of putting the slate out of reach (Brock Bowers, Travis Kelce, Trey McBride, David Njoku, Evan Engram) to not do so to matter on this slate. That number of tight ends with that type of upside only increases on FanDuel, where both George Kittle and Jake Ferguson are added to the main slate.

TYREEK HILL

RESTRICTIVE CHALK. Tyreek Hill is objectively priced $1,200-$1,500 too low with Tua Tagovailoa expected to return this week. It really is that simple.

J.K. DOBBINS

NEITHER RESTRICTIVE NOR EXPANSIVE CHALK. The matchup is pristine, but J.K. Dobbins has rushed for more than 2.9 yards per carry in just one of his previous four games and the Chargers rank top-10 in pass rate over expectation in the two weeks since their Week 5 bye. If a yardage and touchdown back fails at either reaching the bonus or scoring multiple touchdowns, they simply aren’t returning a GPP-worthy score, particularly one priced almost in restrictive chalk territory.

JAVONTE WILLIAMS

NEITHER RESTRICTIVE NOR EXPANSIVE CHALK. Javonte Williams ranks 24^th in expected fantasy points per game this season and 18^th over the previous month of play. That said, his matchup could not be better against a Panthers team allowing the most fantasy points per game to opposing running backs.

TEE HIGGINS

NEITHER RESTRICTIVE NOR EXPANSIVE CHALK. Uh, what? Just one game of even a 3x salary multiplier through five games this season is not where I want to be placing my hard-earned bongos this week. Throw in a quad injury on Friday that led to a questionable status and this is a hard pass for me.

JOE MIXON

RESTRICTIVE CHALK. Joe Mixon ranks fourth in expected fantasy points per game and has seen opportunity counts of 33 and 28 in his two fully healthy games this season, playing an opponent ranked dead last in rush rate over expectation against. Love.

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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Sunday Morning 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 :: $6.2K

Jameis Winston
D’Andre Swift
Javonte Williams
Cedric Tillman
Jerry Jeudy
Tyreek Hill
Cade Otton
Troy Franklin
Broncos

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

<< “BUB Challenge” Discord >>

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

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Blue Chips

Tyreek Hill

From my DFS Interpretations :: Tyreek got hurt in Week 14 last year, missed Week 15, and tapered off in Weeks 16-18; but before that, he posted 25.8 or more DraftKings points in nine of 12 games — while failing to post elite production against only the early-season Patriots, the Bills, and the Chiefs (two defenses that ranked top six last year in fewest yards allowed to wideouts). Arizona ranks 10th in DVOA against the run and 29th against the pass. Tyreek was in the rare class of players last year who were underpriced even in the mid-$8ks, and he’s now $7k this week.

I almost never go fully 100% on a player in MME, but I personally expect Tyreek to be as high as 60% owned in tourneys (especially single-entry), and I would like to be overweight the field. I won’t be surprised if he ends up on 80% of my rosters this week. If I lose because $7k Tyreek bombed in a good matchup, I’m okay with that.

“Light Blue” Chips

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Build-Arounds

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Building Blocks

“Core”

Jameis Winston + Cedric Tillman + “one other Browns piece” + Tyreek Hill

Story:

“Jameis throws the ball, and Tyreek smashes”

Why It Works:

The Ravens face the third highest opponent pass play rate and have allowed the most pass plays in the NFL of 20+ yards, while Tyreek Hill is one of the most underpriced plays we will see for a long time.

How It Works:

This week, I want to have a tighter core I’m betting on that allows me to mix and match high-upside plays around it. If my core produces at a decent level, I’ll have a shot at landing on the right mix-and-match pieces and having a big weekend. If my core smashes, I’ll almost certainly have a big weekend. And if my core fails, that’s the weekend gone; but as a former, long-time “true single-entry” player, I don’t really mind that. Jameis won’t be the quarterback all the time on this build, and I have a few other pieces that might push for hefty exposure (Broncos defense; possibly Breece Hall; mix-and-match of Texans), but the general idea for me this week will be, “Hope my core hits, and know I’ll be in good shape if it does.”

POTENTIAL DOWNSIDE:

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

“Split Stack”

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Bink Machine

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

Texans

I’m not sure yet if I’ll truly go ALL-IN here, but if I don’t, I may be close.

This rule (in the “team stacks” // “team constraints” area) says, “Play one player from the Texans on every roster.”

The thinking :: in 56% of their games with C.J. Stroud, the Texans have produced 25+ DK points from at least one player, and they have produced 29+ in all three matchups with the Colts. Mixing and matching Texans pieces is a highly viable strategy. Tank Dell and Joe Mixon are my favorite plays of the bunch, but I’ll also have some Schultz and some Diggs. Again, I may instead do something like 80% of rosters with a piece from the Texans, but this all-in rule is a perfectly viable way to attack MME, especially if you have a tight core you’re betting on this week (like me).

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 ::

Possibly Lamar Jackson on tighter builds || possibly Josh Allen on tighter builds || possibly Jalen Hurts // Joe Burrow (in full-on game stacks) on tighter builds || possibly Caleb Williams on tighter builds || Anthony Richardson || Jameis Winston; said differently :: “Definitely Anthony Richardson and Jameis on tighter builds, and some selection from these other options on tighter builds as well”

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 ::

• Jameis Winston – Eat that W, baby. So easy to stack Winston with his own receivers as well as Baltimore pieces. He should have to throw the ball often and Baltimore’s secondary has had a lot of issues this season. Get ready for a roller coaster if you play him, though. It’s probably best to just check the box score afterward.
• Joe Burrow – The Bengals have scored 20 offensive touchdowns this season and Burrow has accounted for 15 of them. This game profiles very similarly to the Ravens game earlier this year when Burrow broke the slate.
• Aaron Rodgers – Play him with Breece Hall and soak up all of the Jets touchdowns and offensive production in a game where they could easily score four or five touchdowns. (Don’t you ruin this for me, Braelon Allen!)
• Salary Savers: Gardner Minshew, Trevor Lawrence, Drake Maye

Running Back :: 

• Breece Hall – One of the top plays on the slate, regardless of position. Talented/explosive, 80%+ snap share in both games under Todd Downing, involved in the passing game, weak opponent, team likely to aggressively pursue points.
• De’Von Achane – After two games this season with Tua Tagovailoa at QB, Achane was the RB2 in fantasy. Tua is back. Achane is healthy. The matchup is ripe. And his salary is only $6,200.
• D’Andre Swift – Over 20 DK points in three straight games without hitting the 100-yard bonus or scoring more than one touchdown. A dual-threat RB who can hit big plays on the ground or through the air.
• Kenneth Walker – The Bills run defense is very beatable already and they have now lost one of their starting linebackers, Terrel Bernard. Walker was under the weather in Atlanta last week but has a chance to blow the top off this matchup.
• Saquon Barkley – There is a lot of value available on this slate and Barkley is likely to go overlooked due to the depth of the RB position this week. Saquon is the engine to this offense, however, and in the two games where the Eagles scored over 21 points this season, he is averaging 33 Draftkings points.
• Joe Mixon – 29+ Draftkings points in all three non-injury games he has played this year.
• Salary Savers: Not this week. Probably not a week to “pay down” at the RB position due to the depth of the position and the high ceilings available that you’d have to dodge.

Wide Receiver :: 

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

Vacated Targets

For DFS newcomers: Fantasy points boil down to where volume meets efficiency. Value is essentially what happens when that potential is misjudged by DraftKings pricing. When we spot value, it’s gold…for cash games. But in tournaments, those plays tend to draw high ownership, turning that golden value into a double-edged sword. The choices to fade or go heavy on these plays can ultimately decide what’s in the account come Sunday night.

One common scenario for value popping up on an NFL slate is when a target-heavy receiver suddenly exits the lineup. Those vacated targets can light up projection models, but relying on them is risky—now we’re gambling on limited data and banking on assumptions that come with high ownership.

Hear the wisdom of Yoda: “Roster speculative players into low ownership, I will. Into chalk…I will not.”

Or maybe it was Xandamere saying it 17 times on the Slate pod. Either way, it’s advice worth considering.

It’ll be tough to resist those chalky plays reaping the benefits of their teammates’ absence. Thankfully, we’ve got a solid resource for low-owned plays with upside to mix in alongside these budget-friendly clicks.

These are contrarian moves I’ll be mixing into my rosters to differentiate from the masses. Sometimes we’ll miss, but the ones that do hit will help us lap the field.

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.

Derrick Henry/Cedric Tillman

I’m running an embarrassing amount of Jameis Winston stacks. It was the first thing that jumped off the page on Monday. Even when I’m stacking a different game, I’ll still have some Tillman in the mix because, at $3,300, he can get there without necessarily dragging Jameis along for the ride. As for Henry, his knack for chunk plays and turning red zone trips into touchdowns makes him the guy who can push any standard game into a shootout. With both of these guys projected under 8% ownership, it’s a game environment bet I’m willing to make.

Darnell Mooney/Rachaad White

If this game turns into a shootout, we can scoop up some PPR goodness with touchdown upside at low ownership and leverage.

Mooney’s been seeing eight targets per game with a solid 11.3 aDOT (per PFF). Pretty nice ceiling at 5.1% pOWN.

And what if Rachaad White emerges as the go-to option because he’s a better receiver than Trey Palmer and Sterling Shepard? At just 2.5% pOWN, he offers leverage off his chalkier teammates, Jalen McMillan and Cade Otton.

Davante Adams/Hunter Henry

Leverage alert! I expect the Patriots to come out determined not to look soft against the run this week. With a stacked box, Aaron Rodgers will somehow Jedi Mind trick the young Pats into jumping offsides, leading to a couple of end zone heaves to Adams and Garrett Wilson. Adams is literally at 1/10th the projected ownership of Breece Hall.

If Drake Maye can push this game forward, it’ll likely be through his most trusted target. At just 2.9% pOWN, the $3800 Hunter Henry offers a nice price pivot off the aforementioned Tampa Bay chalk.

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

• This week has a lot of games on the slate but amazingly the top tier has only one game with GB/JAX (49.5) being the lone game in the top tier.
• There is a robust upper-middle tier that includes seven games! AZ/MIA (46.5), ATL/TB (45.5), BAL/CLE (45), IND/HOU (45.5), PHI/CIN (47.5), TEN/DET (45), and BUF/SEA (46).
• The middle tier is just one game with CHI/WASH (43).
• The bottom tier brings us home with four games: NYJ/NE (41), NO/LAC (41), CAR/Den (41), and KC/LV (41.5).

Pawn – WR Jalen McMillan ($3,700)

The Bucs WR room was decimated by injuries when Chris Godwin went down for the year and Mike Evans hit the IR with a hammy. After saying the Browns had the cheapest collection of pass catchers I could ever remember, the Bucs managed to take the crown only one week later. Sterling Shepard ($3,800), Trey Palmer ($3,500), Cade Otton ($3,500), and McMillan are all priced below $4,000. I feel relatively confident there has never been a team with all four of its primary pass catchers priced as punts. Someone is going to outperform their price, the only question is which one? I’m going to lean on McMillan but there is a case to be made for any of the four guys mentioned above. I suspect McMillan and Otton will draw the most ownership but all of them should be used to some extent by the field. These guys are going to mostly be used as salary saver one-offs making the idea of stacking two of them with Baker Mayfield ($6,700) relatively unique. I’ll have 1-2 large field lineups that play the idea of a Baker + two pass catches with a Falcons bring-back as its core stack while using all the Bucs receivers to save salary as one-offs on other rosters.

Knight – TE Evan Engram ($5,000)

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 8 Topics

1. Adjusting Our Sights (Or Not?)

2. Takesie-Backsies

3. Unique Slate

4. Chasing “Mid”

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

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1. Adjusting Our Sights (Or Not?)

The Question ::

Week 7 of the 2024 NFL season was one of the stranger weeks of football I can remember in the last couple of decades. Not necessarily in terms of the outcomes of the games, but with all the weird injury situations, new injuries, and the overall breakdown of player usage and production there was just a lot that made it a weird slate of games and the lowest week of “winning GPP scores” I can remember in quite some time. The interesting thing about this is that (as JM discussed in a recent Winner Circle pod) people tend to remember what just happened and let it play a bigger role than it should in how they view a specific situation. 

In last week’s Oracle, Hilow had a great point in one of the questions about how pricing often has more to do with overall slate scoring than the game environments themselves. This came to fruition as the slate’s lack of value showed up and left a situation where winning GPP scores were very low despite a slate with relatively high game environment expectations. This was the third or fourth week this year where we have seen running backs dominate, and we also had tight ends David Njoku, Kyle Pitts, Brock Bowers, and George Kittle meet or beat the wide receivers and running backs priced near them which made 2-TE builds viable if you chose from the right group of tight ends. Basically, you needed to have built with RB or TE in your flex to have a chance to win last week. 

This week there is a lot more value that has opened up due to an increase in games on the main slate (from 10 to 13), 21 of 26 teams carrying implied team totals of 20+ points into the week, and some mispricing from players returning from injuries (looking at you, Tua). This creates a situation where it is very unlikely that the slate plays out in a similar way to what we saw last week, but our cognitive biases will have that fresh in our minds when thinking about how the slate could play out. How do you adjust your sights back to the week at hand after such a strange main slate?

The Answers ::

JM >>

Speaking from my personal point of view :: My process and approach to the NFL season tends to allow me to pretty quickly wipe out thoughts of the week behind. My big-picture thinking of teams, coaches, and game environments makes it beyond-rare for me to like a player “because they are coming off a big game,” or to dislike a player “because they are coming off a bad game” — and I don’t even mean that I consciously avoid that trap; I mean that, at this point — 11 years into doing this — this doesn’t even cross my mind. Similarly, the way a previous slate was constructed, or the way it played out, gets wiped out of my thoughts pretty quickly. I aim to assess my play BEFORE games kick off on Sunday (something I strongly encourage DFS players to do), and then I have a bit of time enjoying the games, a bit of time feeling tense as the games progress and I find myself hoping we had a sharp week for subscribers, and then a bit of time during which enough has been resolved that I feel good about the week from a “work” perspective, and I simply wait to see how the DFS results resolve themselves. Once games end, I shift my mindset pretty quickly, and I typically go on airplane mode for the remainder of Sunday and nearly all of Monday, trying to multiply my time by avoiding screens and soaking up whatever is going on around me. By the time I hit Tuesday, the past week’s slate feels miles away, and my focus immediately becomes sorting through the pieces of that week’s puzzle to see what it looks like.

I have to imagine that Mike, Hilow, and X will have more insightful answers pertaining to the actual question asked — but I also hope that reading through my own thought process on this type of thing triggers valuable thoughts on your end with regards to how you can handle that turning of the page from one week to the next. Each week is its own unique puzzle, and we can’t waste time or energy pulling pieces from last week’s puzzle into something that’s completely different this week. Having a clear process for how you conclude a week and turn the page to the next can be extremely beneficial in helping you maximize your expected value in each new week.

Xandamere >>

This is a great question but also one I have a tough time answering in a way that I think really adds value to our readers. In my earlier years of DFS I definitely fell victim to thoughts like “this player has been really good lately, I want to play him” or “this guy really bombed last week and I played him, no way I’m playing him again until I see him do well.” But that sort of short-term thinking is incredibly destructive to our results (as I try to remind people whenever I see someone say something like “I’m never playing so-and-so again after they burned me this week!”). 

JM says something super interesting that I’ll expand on a bit. He mentioned that he aims to assess his play before the games start, and I think that’s a really worthwhile perspective to consider. We can’t predict outcomes. All we can do is try to make good decisions with the information that we have. Someone isn’t a “good play” or “bad play” AFTER we know the results – they were good or bad BEFORE the game started. Our job as DFS players is to take information and make good decisions with it, and whether or not those decisions are good ones is independent of the (not knowable) outcomes. It’s a hard mindset to really get into, but when people say “process over results,” this is just an expanded way to define what that actually means. 

To paraphrase Ted Lasso, the happiest animal in the world is a goldfish, because it has an incredibly short-term memory. As DFS players we need to be the same: we need to take the useful, actionable data out of prior weeks, but we need to have short-term thinking about the outcome (whether or not the guy caught the TD, whether they got tackled at the 1 or got into the end zone, whether the RB got the goal-line carry or the coach gave it to the RB2, etc.).

Hilow >>

I love this question because it is framed in a “what is most important” context, which matters much more than most realize. We’ve talked a few times about our individual processes this season, and if you remember, mine includes “diagnosing the slate” on Friday. That involves reading what the slate has to offer to formulate a good idea of what the end goal is on that particular slate. To me, understanding the state of the slate (this is why we begin the End Around with this section) is an important step to grounding your thoughts back to what is likely to be most important on that slate. And part of that reasoning includes a rough estimate of what it will take to win tournaments. We can then reverse engineer how to reach that target when constructing rosters, which will help guide roster construction decisions. Where is the value? How solid is the value? How many people will be on the value? How does that influence the target?

On this particular slate, there is no shortage of potentially viable value pieces, meaning the score needed to win GPPs is likely to be much higher than the previous two weeks (180-183 shipped majors in Week 7 and 188-190 shipped majors in Week 6). We’re likely looking at a slate where 205-215 is going to be required to win tournaments, meaning we need to be targeting beyond 4x when we construct rosters (not just from individual plays because that’s playing the lottery, but in how we are constructing our rosters, in totality). So, how do we get access to “more raw points” this week?

Mike >>

For me, the big thing about this week is understanding that the value available is going to change how the slate plays out as much as anything else. Also, since there are so many games on the slate, the tendency for most people is going to be to try to account for every game and think “oh man, I can’t totally fade that spot”. I think that will especially be true considering last week there weren’t any game environments that took off to the point of being a must-have to build around. Those things being fresh in people’s minds and psychologically driving thought processes will be a big deal, so refocusing on our tried and true roster construction principles will help us avoid those obstacles.

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2. Takesie-Backsies

The Question ::

There are two clear situations that are going to drive a lot for this slate. First, the Dolphins offense is facing a relatively intimidating Cardinals defense in the return of QB Tua Tagovailoa, while their players have very suppressed salaries due to their to-date struggles without Tua. Second, the Bucs played on Monday night and lost their top-2 WRs (Mike Evans and Chris Godwin) after pricing came out. This results in a situation where the Bucs have 3 WRs and a TE all projecting for 10 to 30% ownership at price tags below $4,000 on Draftkings, in a game where they are facing a defense they got into a shootout with just two weeks ago. 

The question I have around this is from a bit different angle than we usually have for these questions as it is not directly a strategy question, but how we answer it can be a valuable thought process and can give us some insight on the strategies we should take to approaching what will be critical inflection points on the slate. Below are the eight players in question, along with their salaries for Week 8. If Draftkings was given a “do-over” and you were in charge of the pricing, what do you think the appropriate salaries would be for these players and what do you think their ownership would be at those salaries?

• Tua Tagovailoa – $6,100
• De’Von Achane – $6,200
• Jaylen Waddle – $5,400 
• Tyreek Hill – $7,000
• Sterling Shepard – $3,800
• Jalen McMillan – $3,700
• Cade Otton – $3,500
• Trey Palmer – $3,500

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!

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Within the Scroll each week, we will share our early week bets and the thesis behind them. Our hopes are that this article will help the OWS Fam become better prop bettors as we teach you to fish.

Caution: Odds in the prop’s streets move fast, and it is likely these odds will have changed by the time you read this. With that in mind, we have left a “good to” mark to help you decide if the bet is for you.

(Feel free to DM Xandamere or JReasy on Discord with any feedback)

Zay Flowers (BAL) UNDER 4.5 Receptions

Flowers is coming off an ankle injury resulting in a DNP, DNP, LP practice this week and a Q tag. Baltimore is 8.5 point favorites on the road. Bateman is coming off a strong game and Andrews role is at least kind of coming back to life after a slow start to the season. Ride the Big Dawg.

The bet is good to: -120

Nick Chubb (CLE) Under 1.5 Receptions

The Browns are 8.5 point dogs with Jameis Winston installed as the new starting QB after losing Deshaun Watson for the season. This has never been Chubb’s role in the offense. In a game where they are losing (and a pretty much lost season), I doubt they push Chubb coming off of his knee injury. This is a bad line by the books at plus money.

The bet is good to: +100

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

For anyone who has read my content this season or throughout the years, you know I like to build differently. It’s not always intentional but I try to avoid consuming a ton of content before giving my thoughts on a slate so I can be unique, by simply thinking on my own. As a reader and contributor, I mostly try not to visit The Scroll until Saturday night (other than reading this article when it’s published) because it’s so simple to be swayed by someone else’s words. 

Our best, built-in advantage is to be ourselves. And on a 13-game slate, as I wrote in the Angles email, the opportunities to be different seem endless. You can get behind just about sixteen different offenses this Sunday and feel good about it. Here’s my rough count: Lions, Packers, Jaguars, Colts, Texans, Chiefs, Ravens, Eagles, Bengals, Falcons, Bucs, Browns, Dolphins, Bills, Seahawks, Bears. Insanity, and you could still tell me there’s more.

But the more I have thought about this slate, the more I want to eliminate short-term thinking. How can we approach this differently? We could cut off our player pools by looking at only early rosters, or just late-game rosters. We could radically simplify our exposures and land on two to three teams and play them every which way. We could cross off a few high scoring games and land elsewhere, simply betting on those “tier 1” game environments to miss. I could go on, but take your pen and draw your lines, then go build and go win.

Game-stacking like it’s Week 1

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.

There are plenty of people who do their DFS research in a “bubble” and that sort of prep work is celebrated here at OWS. Most of your top analysts prefer to research the slate with as little outside bias as possible, which is great for the final product each week. How airtight are these bubbles, and does it help the average DFS player who doesn’t have the luxury of this “bubble” experience on their own? The answers are “only somewhat” and “not likely.”

Think about the last election ad you heard or scrolled past. You probably quickly viewed the ad and had a negative reaction against the candidate you don’t like, reinforcing what will ultimately be your choice in November. The increase in negative campaigning that ramps up near election day has the effect of creating negative bias, a cognitive bias that is more attention-getting (we are more likely to react to something negative and remember something negative), and more stress-inducing. Many voters will lose interest in the election as a result of negative bias, citing emotional responses to the stress caused by the ads. Negative ads create a negative bias that ultimately influences election results. 

Week 8

Much of the build-up to Week 8 has included some of this negative talk that no “bubble” can keep out as Week 7 was full of injuries and bad beats. JuJu was 25% owned and got hurt. Jordan Whittington produced 0 points at 17% ownership due to a likely shoulder injury. Jayden Daniels was well on his way to a good fantasy score for the 15% of people who rostered him until injury befell him as well. The TB Bucs are dealing with injuries to their two star WRs. NO is missing an entire double stack (QB // WR1 // WR2) to injury. HOU isn’t quite the same without Nico. KC was already missing Rashee Rice and Kelce wasn’t helping much. There are a lot of negatively biased thoughts about the state of these teams and subsequently the Week 8 slate.

Negative bias is more attention-getting and more memorable which likely leads a lot of people to start their research with the negative news at the top of their mind. Negative bias is also stressful, creating a mindset of “I hate this slate” or “This slate is ugly.” This is all important to recognize because cognitive bias affects people’s decision making. I imagine the negative bias will lead many to spend less time researching this week. There are enough distractions in our world including the NBA starting. This is likely to divert some people who just don’t want to deal with the negativity. I also imagine the negativity will lead people to make snap decisions. People will pick their Buccaneer or indiscriminately spread ownership to all three. Recency bias is bound to be more influential on a week like this as people search for certainty in what has most recently happened. Before we move on to some of these specific situations, check in on how negativity bias is affecting your emotions around this week’s slate. You may need to reframe the message for yourself; look at all this value that is opening up! I get to play Jameis Winston (or the defense against him) this week! Find a way to reframe negative thoughts into positive ones to get your mind ready to play this week!

Bias Around the Industry

The WR Crunch

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.

Week 8

Angles – JM

Solo Ship – JM & Squirrel Patrol

DFS Labs 8.5 DK – Papy & Cheeseman

SEARCHING FOR CEILING – HILOW & RICH HRIBAR

Block Party – JM & Peter Overzet

DFS Labs 8.4 DK – STATATL & Cheeseman

DFS LABS 8.3 FD – Mike Johnson & Maximus

DFS Labs 8.2 DK – Hilow & Cheeseman

Weekly Roster Review – STATATL