Larejo is a mid-stakes tournament mastermind who specializes in outmaneuvering 150-max players with a small number of entries
The goal of One Week Season is to teach lessons that will last. As a part-time contributor, I’ll admit the most fun in writing any kind of prediction piece is putting yourself behind a player and seeing that player succeed. But, the problem with the “picking players” approach is there can be too much luck involved, and it’s not sustainable over time. When I came on board to write Willing to Lose last season during the NFL playoffs, I didn’t totally get the point of why showcasing process and strategy is the most valuable form of DFS content. My time is limited, as it is for many of you, and when I used to click on a DFS article, I wanted to do the least amount of work to come away with the best plays – instant success, it’s what we’re all after. But slowly, as you start to peel back any process to unveil the whys and the hows, you start to see that DFS strategy can be magical. Building foundational steps to repeat daily or weekly, and refining a process while introducing variables to it with each DFS slate is a game-changer. The only way to accomplish this is to learn each week, but not throw aside what you’ve learned to date.
And while no DFS website is perfect, it’s been amazing to see just some of the success OWS subscribers have had this season pulling down five and six-figure wins consistently. There have been some chaotic, illogical weeks this NFL season, just as there have been some chalk lineups winning large-field GPPs. But with a constant focus on figuring out how to fish, hopefully, we’ve given some good advice along the way here and there to refine your process every week.
And with that, in the spirit of transparency, as I am just one man, I figured this week I could walk you all through my process. By doing this, I want to also say that while writing this introduction, I have no idea who or what I will highlight as a “willing to lose” strategy later in this piece. I want to go on this journey with you together in Week 14. Let’s do it . . .
I don’t always keep these handy but it’s always a worthy exercise when I do. But the benefit I have here is the Missed Opportunities piece I write every Monday evening. It forces me to make some sense out of every Sunday, which is never easy to do. From Week 13, we learned:
● When value plays are overwhelming to simply start there.
● Condensed volume among wide receivers can be paramount.
● The 2021 viable double tight end strategy is still viable.
● Don’t overreact, but do react to Sunday news.
Team-wise we also had the following events transpire and/or emerge:
● Vikings losing to the Lions
● Dolphins D dominant again
● Colts and Rams drubbing of their opponents
● Bengals looking league average (not as good or as bad as we thought)
● Raiders and Ravens offenses are still looking out of sync
I then tend to move onto Vegas lines for Week 14 games. As JM noted in the Week 14 Angles email this week, we have one clear top game on the slate carrying an over/under north of 53 points in the Bills and the Bucs. My initial thought on these situations is always to ask, who are the under-owned players in that game? Then a few 47/48 point total games (these are my preferred game stacks, typically), and a whole slew of 43.5 and under games (look for floating plays, condensity). This week, these games are: DAL/WAS, LV/KC, and SF/CIN. More on this below.
I’ll spare you all here this tedious process but as most players typically do this on the website where they play DFS, I try to note this on paper somewhere to go through the exercise of writing players names, gauging my own reaction to those players names, and then crossing off some who I know I will not use. As a reminder, I typically build no more than five or six lineups each week, and I enter them in large-field, mostly low-dollar tournaments. I highly recommend doing this exercise no matter what kind of DFS player you are. It’s time-consuming but it helps to never overlook a player because at least you’ve written their name down somewhere.
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