Sunday, Feb 11th — Late
Bye Week:
Bears
Bengals
Bills
Broncos
Browns
Buccaneers
Cardinals
Chargers
Colts
Commanders
Cowboys
Dolphins
Eagles
Falcons
Giants
Jaguars
Jets
Lions
Packers
Panthers
Patriots
Raiders
Rams
Ravens
Saints
Seahawks
Steelers
Texans
Titans
Vikings

Willing To Lose 7.21.

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

“Escape competition through authenticity” – Naval Ravikant

Anyone who read my MLB articles this summer knows that one of my favorite recent reads was The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. If you’re not familiar with Naval (he’s a tremendous follow on Twitter), he’s an incredibly successful entrepreneur, angel investor, and even more so just an essentially original thinker.

We often talk about how DFS is a game of competition. As JM says, “it’s not about how many fantasy points you score, it’s about paths to first place.” Well, how do we figure out what a path to first place looks like? Through informed original thinking. The reason why I subscribed to OWS in 2018 was because of how heavy the focus is on strategy and out-maneuvering “the field” in these DFS slates. OWS empowered me to understand, interpret, and make my own predictions about the upcoming slate. And I hope I can help you do that too. Let’s take a look at Naval’s quote again…escape competition through authenticity. What does he mean? In his words (I’m paraphrasing a bit), “if you are competing with others, don’t copy them. We’re all different as human beings. So be different.”

This slate is unique in so many ways. Think of the non-original ways the public will be building their lineups. They (we) start with Vegas totals (most of the time), look at on-paper matchups (i.e. defense vs. position), then salaries, and QB/WR stacks with a bring-back etc. It looks like we will see high ownership on many players who have already smashed this season: Cooper Kupp, Darrell Henderson, Leonard Fournette, Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, Lamar Jackson, Brandin Cooks, and more. Almost all of those players are coming from the high-total offenses this week (with the exception of Arizona, more on them later). We can take advantage of this. We can accept some of this chalk into our lineups, and differentiate it in our own authentic ways. After all, one of my other favorite Naval-isms is, “predicting the future based on the past is a lousy approach.”

Eagles and Raiders Game Stack

Ownership projections are showing a wide range at the moment, but fortunately, one of the simplest ways to avoid ownership impacting your lineups is through a game stack. I really like this game for a few reasons. First, it fits comfortably in the Vegas range 45.5-50.5 for an underowned game environment. This game ranks as the 4th-highest total on Sunday’s main slate. The second reason I like this game is that, as Dustin noted in Edge Matchups, both of these teams are top-ten in pass play rate. And third is because of Allegiant Stadium, the field where this game will be played.

If we take out the Raiders last home game against an ineffective, inexperienced Justin Fields (which ended 20-9), Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas has been playing Superdome-esque since its inception in 2020. Here is the amount of total combined points put up in eleven Raiders home games over the past two seasons (working from most recent):

●  29 :: Bears :: Week 5

●  59 :: Dolphins :: Week 3

●  60 :: Ravens :: Week 1

●  51 :: Dolphins :: Week 15

●  57 :: Chargers :: Week 14

●  71 :: Colts :: Week 13

●  66 :: Chiefs :: Week 10

●  49 :: Broncos :: Week 9

●  65 :: Buccaneers :: Week 6

●  53 :: Bills :: Week 4

●  58 :: Saints :: Week 2

Again, if we take out the Fields game a few weeks ago, the lowest total is 49. I personally did not bet the over on all Raiders home games last season but it’s safe to say that was profitable. 11 games and an average of 56 points (including the Bears game), with an average of 58.9 if we remove the most recent matchup.

Coming back to Sunday’s game with the Eagles, the question becomes can this game be a shootout? Well, based on stadium history alone, yes it can. Jalen Hurts and Derek Carr are both playable, with Hurts of course having the higher floor based on his rushing abilities. Miles Sanders (quietly 75/83% of offensive snaps last two weeks) and Josh Jacobs (four touchdowns in four games this season) are also viable. On the outside, if Dallas Goedert comes back, he’ll play all the snaps he can handle to take up a majority of the target share with DeVonta Smith. Darren Waller is probably the best floating play, albeit with his higher salary (remember how much we were all salivating over Travis Kelce in this same matchup in Week 4?). I will also have some Henry Ruggs and Quez Watkins. Stack this game up.

Joe Burrow + Bengals WR + Marquise Brown + Mark Andrews

Don’t Have Access? Click To Enter!

<< Unlock The Rest Of Willing To Lose >>