Willing to Lose (Divisional Round)

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

Let’s time travel. It’s 2016. DFS is just a few years old and becoming more mainstream by the season. DFS has always been a game of outmaneuvering your opponents (aka scoring more points than everyone else) which means building for first place and first place only. But seven years ago, there were some sharper players who were ahead of the curve while the majority of the DFS “fish” would play DFS just exactly how you would think they would. By using the last game, or the last few games, as strong indicators for the next game. If the Raiders offense put up 35 points in Week 4, regardless of ownership, the field would flock to the Raiders the next week in the hopes of a doubling down. If a WR3 went for 100 yards in that same matchup, then why couldn’t they do the same thing yet again the following week. We would see something, and without some of the vast data we’re now exposed to, we’d expect it to happen again.

Fast forward back to 2023, and for the past few years, the DFS community is very hesitant to chase points. We know which players have talent and solid roles, and we have data that supports it. So, therefore, we know which performances are fluky, and we don’t want to be the fish who chases last week’s points. This is all good and true, and for the most part, it’s a great progression from how this “sport” has evolved. It’s natural. And with all the data available to us, we should for the most part let this guide us. But at some point, DFS still comes back to one thing: beating our opponents in tournaments by scoring more points. If we think about a pendulum swinging back and forth, once it goes far right or far left, it starts to gradually come back the other way. This is how I feel about building rosters this weekend.

We know predicting the future based on the past is a lazy approach. The past guides us, but it does not dictate what will actually happen. We just all need to collectively decide when we want to believe that the field overall is placing too much confidence in the past NOT indicating the future, in order to be slightly ahead of the field when the pendulum swings back. And in the playoffs, when teams are bringing their “A” games (except the Bucs, tbh), this is the guiding principle I’ll be using this weekend – letting last week’s games indicate this week’s outcomes. Based on current ownership projections, these seem to be a lens most won’t be looking through again this week.

Cowboys & 49ers Stack