Majesstik is one of the most respected Slate Breakdown artists in DFS
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Majesstik is one of the most respected Slate Breakdown artists in DFS
Pro Tip: For optimal viewing, use the “download” button
Before we get into the inner workings of this slate, I want to remind everyone of the theoretical leverage that can be gained by approaching each game in a sequence on a slate like this one. No two games are played simultaneously, meaning we get additional information with each game played. We can take that information (results, projected optimal players, ownership, etc) and include that in our decision-making matrix at each specific step – each game now being an additional decision node in the game tree. For those that are new to OWS, my works, or Game Theory, that effectively means we can adjust our rosters and the decisions that lead to them after each game is played. The benefit of this slate being spread across three days means that the process is less time consuming and frantic as compared to the Thanksgiving slate earlier this year, giving us more time to adjust our thoughts and actions at each step.
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.
RESTRICTIVE CHALK. Home favorite running back on the team with the second highest Vegas implied team total, coming off his highest snap rate and opportunity share of the season in Week 18. Everything checks out.
RESTRICTIVE CHALK. Puka has seen eight or more targets in every fully healthy game this season, hitting double-digit targets in four of his final eight games (14, 14, 14, and 13 targets in those four games). Nacua is going to project as one of the safest options on the slate and presents a solid on-paper play this week.
NEITHER RESTRICTIVE NOR EXPANSIVE CHALK. And then there’s Jones. I don’t get this one at all. Jones saw 20 or more opportunities eight times this season but did so only twice in his final six games. He saw more than 62% of the team’s offensive snaps only once in the final six games of the regular season and hit 20 DK points or more just three times all year. Color me unimpressed.
Mike Johnson (MJohnson86) has racked up nearly $500,000 in DFS profit as an NFL tournament player with success in all styles of contests
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)
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.
This weekend’s slate features six games and the way things work out we can sort them into three “buckets”::
Coming off the chaos and uncertainty of Week 18, where there are SO MANY games and it is hard to know exactly what the goals/motivations of many teams will be and how they will use certain players, the Wild Card weekend is about as stark of contrast as there can be. Everyone is in a “win or go home” situation, and there are only six games as opposed to the 14 from last Sunday. The later we get into the season, the more reliable spreads and totals can often become. However, desperation breeds chaos and the playoffs can make teams as desperate as we’ll ever see them. With that in mind, which game or games do you think have the greatest chance of producing an outcome that strays the most from the “bucket” of expectations that they currently fit in?
Oh man. This is a hard question, at least for me…but I will say that, to me personally, it’s also an irrelevant question. No shade on Mike here – but to me this weekend is less about trying to predict what will happen and more about setting ourselves up to take advantage of what could happen.
What I mean by this is that it’s the playoffs. These teams are, overall, good. Of the 12 teams playing this weekend, every single one of them is league average or better on offense. Every single team is league average or better on defense. In matchups between good offenses against good defenses, it can be really tough to predict which side comes out on top, but something’s gotta give.
But, and bear with me for being obvious – some of these games will go under and some will go over. I don’t know which ones, and predicting that isn’t really my strength as an analyst (though I’ll pay attention to Mike & Hilow’s predictions). What I can do, however, as someone who plays multiple lineups, is make sure to set myself up for success in different scenarios. We also get the incredible benefit of knowing the outcome of a game before the next starts, allowing us to build and adjust our lineups throughout the weekend. So, I’m less interested in trying to predict which game is most likely to either fall short of or exceed expectations and more interested in making sure I’m building a portfolio of rosters that is equipped to succeed under a variety of scenarios.
I’d place that bet on one of the games from the “first bucket,” or the two games with wide spreads. The Broncos averaged over 32 points per game in their final seven games of the regular season, giving this game some sneaky shootout potential beyond just saying “the Bills are projected to score a bunch of points.” How those points are scored becomes a little more clear in a game environment in which the Bills are pushed, with the potential to turn Josh Allen into Super Josh. It gets tricky when trying to figure out both who to stack Allen with and who to attack from the Broncos as both teams have been ridiculously unconcentrated, but this game stands out to me as one that could define the full slate.
Xandamere’s response here kind of perfectly encapsulates exactly why I asked this question. It is easy to throw your hands up and say “well yes, anything could happen!”, and obviously that is true but doing so isn’t going to help you win a tournament no matter how many lineups you are playing. The biggest trap that a slate like this has is that it is small enough to convince you that you can account for all the outcomes but you end up not really taking any stands and just having a lot of lineups where you say “man, I was so close I just missed on these two or three players!!” – but that’s something a lot of the field will end up saying on Monday evening. The “buckets” mentioned above represent what the standard expectation and approach will be from the field for each group of games and the true nature of this question is thinking through which spots you are MOST confident in how they will play out, which through process of elimination will therefore take you to which spots you see the widest range of outcomes. For me it starts with the PIT/BAL game as one with a tighter range. I don’t think the Ravens defense lets the Steelers offense put up a big game, while the Ravens should eventually score points but it may be labored and take some time against a tough Steelers team. Baltimore scores somewhere from 17 to 31 points while Pittsburgh scores 7 to 20 points is my expected range – relatively tight. Along those same lines, but briefer::
This leaves DEN/BUF and MIN/LAR as the games that seem to have the highest potential variance. The Broncos defense is good, yes, but it has been lit up by some elite offenses. I expect the Bills to have a very strong game and then it is anyone’s guess how the Broncos are able to respond. They are going to throw the ball a lot and be forced to be aggressive. If Bo Nix can find some success, this could turn into a wild shootout. On the flip side, that could work against them and we could see the Bills score six touchdowns in a rout. The other game could be a shootout if the teams can protect their QBs, but could also be low scoring if pass protection is an issue and the teams get conservative with their play calling. In any regard, these are the two games where I see a very wide range of potential outcomes, whereas the other four games I expect to play out in a way relatively close to the Vegas implied numbers, at least in terms of the box score.
What slates and contests are you planning to play this weekend and what are some things that you are focusing on in your builds or strategies as you enter these contests?
Larejo is a mid-stakes tournament mastermind who specializes in outmaneuvering 150-max players with a small number of entries
The old adage says, “Nothing is as good or bad as it seems.” I’ve taken this to heart over the years, and when you think about it, it’s so true. Whether you’re in the midst of something great, or working through something not so great, it will rarely feel or actually be as good, or as bad as it seems at the moment. That’s the thing with the NFL playoffs. Mostly everyone sees them the same way. We say the one seed is good. We think the seven seeds are bad. The seeding and recent play strongly influences our opinions because surely when the stakes are raised even higher, the better teams will prevail. Right? Not so fast. The balance here is we know for certain there will be some unexpected outcomes coming our way. We just don’t know where.
In the playoffs, we can put a little or a lot of our prediction formulas into the first matchups (or second in some cases) earlier this season. Teams evolve over the course of any season, coaches do as well. For this week, the Packers / Eagles Week 1 kickoff matchup holds little value. As does the TNF matchup in Week 6 of the Rams and Vikings. I’d argue that of all the current matchups, only the Steelers / Ravens game holds the honor of being able to see how these teams matched each other up earlier this season in order to assess this week’s game. That said, we need to find unpredictability in predictability. With six games on the weekend, we’re spanning all in this piece, including an emphasis on short slates where appropriate.
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.
(Updated 1/6/2025)
The final two bullets bring up an interesting dilemma as the two bye teams are the most likely to make the conference final and Super Bowl but drafting several of those players also hamper your chances of getting out of the first round.
To win, you will likely need (at least) five players to reach the Super Bowl. This incentivizes stacking your lineups to consolidate around a few teams you are hoping can make deep playoff runs, however, an aggressive stacking strategy has its trade-offs. If you prioritize stacking elite contenders, such as the Chiefs or Lions, this will likely have you drafting some poorly projected depth players to round out your team. Someone in your first pod/round will likely have drafted studs on wild card teams and while they will have an uphill battle to win the whole tournament, these teams will have a leg up on getting out of the first round.
If you consider stacking both bye teams, you must cap that at a total of 5 players and are fighting an uphill battle to advance. The tournament is very top heavy, and the two one seeds are the most likely to advance, so we will discuss below some of the strategies to best balance this predicament and try to thread a very thin needle to advance a team to the final 300 teams.
