Willing To Lose 4.22

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

The intro to this week’s article will be shorter than usual. We had a new addition in my family, a little baby boy born last Saturday, and regardless of what time I finish this writing, it’s a near-guarantee I’ll be up again for the first of many times in a few short hours. Fun times, but sleep . . . who needs it?

Before we jump into the angles, however, I want to talk really briefly about two macro strategies to deploy in large GPPs: team stacks and attacking good rush defenses.

Team Stacks

We’ve talked about team stacks in the past here but yet again it shows as an underutilized strategy. The clear negative is a lack of correlation, but with so much focus on the top Vegas projected scoring offenses each week, and the focus on concentrated teams, I just want you all to think about this some more. Just like a game stack pairing 2+ pieces from one side with say 2+ pieces from the other side of the same game, team stacked rosters are just the same strategy with two offenses from different games. There’s a lot of chatter in 2022 NFL DFS circles about stacking less, but by doing that, we’re lowering the number of things we need to get right on our rosters. By still stacking, albeit with different teams playing in different games, we lose the game correlation but we keep the team correlation. More on this in future weeks.

Attacking good rushing defenses

How many times do we need to see a Ravens opponent end up on the million dollar lineup before I just stack against them every week? The Bucs have been here too; the Saints, Rams, Colts, and now this year Jacksonville, and even Seattle are showing up here. We know the fundamentals . . . stuffed runs lead to less runs which lead to more passes which lead to more incompletions and more clock stoppages and points. But is DFS maybe this simple? Here’s a handy and brief top 10 of both categories, entering Week 3: (Top rush defenses // Opponent pass play %)

Team	Rush Defense DVOA	Opponent Pass-Play Rate
Jags	1st	2nd
Colts	2nd	3rd
49ers	3rd	28th
Rams	4th	12th
Bills	5th	14th
Chiefs	6th	8th
Dolphins	7th	7th
Broncos	8th	5th
Bengals	9th	6th
Bucs	10th	4th

Are you kidding me with this correlation? Eight of the top 10 rushing defenses face the highest pass rates so far this season. I know we can also look at pass rates over expectations, and situation-neutral pace of plays, but maybe I’m old school. Who is good at stopping the run and who will NEED to pass to win the game? There are so many actions we can take off this data. My primary will be to continue to stack against these defenses, and to take the OVERs on pass attempts from the opposing quarterbacks. You do you!