Opening thoughts
This slate is unique in the sense that most people are starting later than usual on their analysis and wont get as deep into what they are looking at. The good thing about my process is that it stays consistent and tool driven. These are always my first thoughts when seeing the data in tools and projections that have been created by me for the past decade with only tidbits of reference from the industry. Just maybe that serves as a benefit to checking this post out this week more than ever. I will progressively add more data to this post leading up to lock so check back for updates, specifically Sunday morning.
Side note: dont forget to check weather reports as none of my tools consider weather in the calculations.
I asked Chatgpt to summarize my top plays for leverage considerations here and this is what it gave me
To figure out how we got here, I recommend reading on.
Part 1: Expectations vs Salary
Several big time teams are off the slate, and that sorta leaves Cincinnati atop of the usage charts by themselves. That is, 4 of the top 5 names highest on the chart are priced up Bengals and we have to immediately think they somehow end up in the top scorer's list as a result. Then as I look further left for cheaper standouts, I see guys like Bryce Young and David Moore appearing to be potential value plays this weekend when considering usage alone. We should also consider which teams appear to have the least value based on who is at the bottom right the most often; Philly, Seattle and Baltimore are teams that have multiple skill players in that range and so when it comes to building an optimal lineup, we will want to consider that in relation to the good value we can dig up.
Vegas Expectations
On the left side, I grabbed some Vegas lines and spreads to calculate the expected points for each team. On the right side, I projected my own totals. The idea is not to guess the exact points, but moreso to figure out which teams can exceed their expectations and possibly go off. Baltimore vs Philly is one of the top projected teams, but as mentioned, also lacking in value in their key skill positions in the past 3 weeks. The next game up? Tampa vs Carolina which appears to have both teams in position to succeed in getting points over expectation.
It is early for ownership but when putting team expectations next to ownership, it appears that TB@CAR is one of the under owned spots, as LAR@NO and LAC@ATL consume a bit of the early ownership forecasts.
Key DFS Metrics and Situations Summarized
Now that we have gone through the team totals, we can start to look at how teams fall in terms of passing and rushing situations. Houston does stand out to me for points and passing to get them on the surface. Seattle is someone I will look further into for rushing potential vs the Jets as not many will want to go there imo.
Game Scripts
This somewhat shows the detail behind the summary above, but also adds in that there are 3 offenses facing a defense that funnels to the pass (Carolina, Philly, and Washington). The Chargers vs Atlanta is also interesting since it could end up being high paced, and running more plays than usual.
Defense vs Receivers
When looking at where the holes are in the defenses, it is ideal to find cases where the team is good in some places and bad elsewhere, as opposed to just bad everywhere. This is because it is still difficult to project the work in those cases. The rams are facing a good case of this, where WR1 sees to be locked down while WR2 is a funnel. Note that Lattimore likely caused this situation and is no longer there, but this is what we want to find as we look for plays.
Draftkings Projections
With all things considered above, these projections are born. I believe that either a top QB or a top WR are usually signs that a QB stack can be made, even if the wrong player projects higher (wr1 vs wr2), so if I am going to take each unique team in the QB + WR section, I will have narrowed down my stack choices to about 8 teams (assuming i dont want a QB + TE stack). Anytime you can narrow down your selections, you are raising the odds of your lineup succeeding.
With that said, I have 5 defenses this week, and the Colts surprisingly lead the list. I simply don't play any defenses outside of the ones on my list as it has produced such good results over the years that I just take my chances on one of the 5 breaking out in sacks, turnovers or the ultimate touchdown. In an effort to change a GPP lottery ticket from a pick 9 to a pick 8, I blindly will lock in the Colts defense as one of my 9 plays and hope they are 'them dudes' this week that put up the value and leverage of the projection. It must be noted that they look like the chalk defense this week so it doesnt feel like a must play, but it is a starting point.
Part 2: Optimizer and Sim Analysis
The default lineup produced this, a Herbert stack with Ladd, which aligns to what I saw in my top projections. I see a double TE potentially, which indicates that value at WR might require some work to identify. I also see a reach up to Barkley who is very much touchdown dependent. He is scoring way ahead of his schedule though so I foresee he is a bust candidate any given Sunday, granted his ownership is low this week. Tank Dell popping in there is interesting because I do like Houston passing potentially this week vs the Jags, if the Jags can potentially put up a fight.
Sims (experimental)
I am going to intentionally skip ahead to the sims analysis here because I have seen some intriguing results when it comes to estimating the Salary required by each positions in relation to the winning lineups lately. This week, my approach will focus more on those ranges and combinations within $500 salary of the ranges. Even when the ranges may not be a direct hit, it gives an idea of where we need to pay up as well. This week seems like RB pay up is in order, followed by WR, so QB is more of a value thought this week than previous at sub 6K. I will identify those plays soon with reference to this.
Simulated Player Results
This is just a high level view of what the value of each player was, with the ability to calculate their upside as well. I wont dive into this here, but will go to our position by position breakdown of their usage next in order to begin tieing these plays together with action.
QBs
I'm looking at the QBs that fall in the circled range for the most part. I mentioned having a $500 salary buffer to the range, which could pull things down to $5500 and up to $6500, but at QB I try and dial that into $300 to tighten up the player pool. That gives us the top 5 QBs in this list:
The bottom 5 have a few guys projecting super well like Herbert and Stroud, but that means we are going to ignore one of the top QBs with upside. and lower ownership most likely. Kirk Cousins (off a bye week) seems to project as the most upside, in a game that I mentioned as being a potential high paced environment, and one that pivots off of a chalky Herbert. All of that is interesting to me. The downside is that none of his pass catchers project as a top option and neither does he, so that is the most high risk but high leverage plays on the slate based on this ownership.
The second QB on this list close to that range is Sam Darnold who does infact project as a top 5 QB option on the slate. I do want to favor him this week for that reason as my starting QB play. Finally Kyler Murray is also interesting because while he isnt in my top 5 projections, his WRs are. This is a situation in which I have historically found to be great for low ownership high upside stacks, so he is going to be someone I like playing in GPP as well this week.
RBs
The top usage over the past 3 weeks has been Chase Brown, and his ownership followed him. Hubbard is looking to be 1/3 of the ownership and not too far off the workload expectations. Then we fall to Mixon and Kamara prior to falling off to the next tier. The projected optimal seems to hint around 6900 and with 2 or 3 RBs in play at this position, we do have to throw a wider net. Ownership isnt as important to me in this role as others, but yet it still gives us the ability to pivot where the ownership doesn't make sense.
Seeing single digit ownership on Joe Mixon and Aaron Jones in the value position makes it to where we have to look at them closer. The average salary should reach that range of 6900 and so ideally you pick one you like and then figure out the remaining salary to find idea pairings.
WRs
The range for WRs hints at getting to the mid to upper tier of WR salaries when building. Since you need at minimum 3 pieces to make that average of 6200 salary, it is a bit more challenging to see candidates for leverage here at this point. However we compare to the defense vs receivers charts to see if any low owned WRs are in good spots.
We can also look at the next WR vs CB to get an idea of who is expected to see a weak matchup.
These 5 WRs are all facing a poorly graded CB based on PFF matchup data. Both Puka and Tyler Boyd are the most locked into their positions of the group, with single digit ownership projected. I expect ownership to change in the morning but wanted to mention these guys. Ladd also not entirely highly owned as of now, but with Herbert being popular, so will Ladd.
TEs
We are looking for TEs around the 4100 to 4200 range this week and I circled it since we only need 1 or 2 max. I thought I'd get to Otten more but he is right on the border of too expensive for the purposes Im going for, but still in the range. Hunter Henry is right on the button, and ironically going against my top defense which is negative correlation. Will Dissly is in this range but he appears to show up with negative leverage more often than not.
Aside from Arizona and Atlanta, all teams on this slate appear to be below average at covering the TE position on this slate, which is rare.
This is a list of TE pairings in the range of that salary.
100 lineup Analysis
The optimizer is good at telling you how things fit together under the salary cap and where the most popular plays lie at the same time. However these are my projections which add in the element of upside. It seems Otton is going to be someone that falls into my lineups often thanks to his lack of ownership but higher leverage, especially if he lands in the recommended salary range.
Part 3: Top Owned and Leverage Opportunity
Ownership shouldnt be the sole reason we fade a player and that's one reason I save this part for last. The other reason is that we see shifts in the numbers leading up to lock. It seems that most people are going to want to pay up for a RB today based on the top 3 names. Ironically the 3 top RBs average about 7033, around the range we want to spend.
In projections, Kamara is the only one I have projecting in the top 6. From run blocking, to dvoa, it seems Kamara is actually a good play aside from the ownership factor. I dont anticipate that majority of lineups are playing Kamara and Williams together, so one of these guys are over projected right now. With Kyren Williams at half the expected ownership of Kamara, he is a pivot to Kamara. But what other ways does Kamara potentially fail?
Vulchered by Taysom Hill - Every week since hes been in the league, someone has complained about this where Kamara does all the work and then somehow Taysom collects the touchdowns. He doesnt even play a ton of snaps usually and with him somehow playing from 3 different positions (QB, RB, TE), it is the worst feeling in the world. He is now priced up at 5K and extremely risky for that reason as he would need to steal a couple today to reach value
Passing game - Derek Carr is projected to reach 21 pts and at 5100 (with only 2% ownership), that seems like a decent value. They can be paired together even, although the issue still remains that Taysom can steal the passing touchdowns too. I noted that the Rams are not good against the deep ball though, and that means an MVS stack is also in play here.
Opposing team's passing game - Stafford is someone I mentioned as being in the price range for sims to succeed, and one of his WRs projects well in DVOA if not both. The only concern here is that currently the Rams project to fall under their implied Vegas total, maybe due to red zone concerns. The interesting thing with the passing game though is that you leverage a little of both Kamara and Kyren ownership, even if you play them in a game stack.
As mentioned, there are points and workload present for Kamara so next opportunity for pivot? Chase Brown. He is a top 3 workload over the past 3 weeks based on the scatterplot. The Bengals defense are even one of my top 5 this week (very weird). But how does he fail today?
Opposing RB - Najae Harris projects slightly better than he does on my end in the sims for value. The issue here is that Cincinatti is projected to win this on my end.
Passing game - While Chase Brown is the 3rd best usage, Joe Burrow and Jamarr Chase are number 1 and 2 best usage over the past 3 weeks. I believe they also use Chase Brown in the passing game so while its not full leverage, it is partially a thing that most wont build for.
Steelers Defense shows up? In a division rivalry, these teams know each other more than we credit. We also know that protection for Joe Burrow is an issue. Infact, Im not entirely sure that they will be able to run block today to open up the holes against Pittsburg either. Therefore Steelers defense could literally move up while the chase lineups stand still at the bottom of the leaderboards.
Other Pivots
I underlined the top owned plays and then mapped out the closest pivot points available to each of the top owned plays. One takeaway here is that most of today's pivots require moving up in salary. One key pivot though may be Kyren Williams, where you can save salary with Kenneth Walker, who is in a good spot for rushing per my RB finder.
Top Leverage Plays
These guys all carry some form of leverage right now based on ownership. I just wrote up the Steelers defense as a pivot to Chase Brown ownership. Barkley may go completely overlooked so theres that option too, in a Kamara fade situation. And finally the whole Houston team seems to be under owned with Stroud, Nico, Dell, and Mixon all showing leverage at a high rate.
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