Slate thoughts
As many of you know I do the ownership projections here at Footballguys in addition to this article. Last week on Twitter I did a couple of polls asking my followers what they thought the ownership range would be for a couple of key ownership questions for the week. They were Auden Tate, DeAndre Hopkins, Leonard Fournette, Christian McCaffrey, and Deshaun Watson. If you aren’t following me on twitter be sure to do so @SteveBuzzard These were all for DraftKings Milly Maker
The reason I wanted to do this poll is that we often see a player or two that just really picks up steam and is way higher owned than I would have ever thought using the metrics that I currently do. I wanted to see if a wisdom of the crowd's experiment would help identify the outliers.
How did it work? First of all, I did a poor job of identifying the players for the poll as it was David Johnson that the public fell in love with and was owned 31% when I only had him projected at 18%. The second player that jumped up high was Auden Tate as he ended up at 29% competed to my projected 24%. The crowd nailed this pretty well with 59% predicting a number higher than mine and 41% going under. Additionally, 33% said he would be 30%+. So he didn’t blow up but this was a good showing.
However, the poll failed with McCaffrey. McCaffrey ended up at 25% owned vs my 29% projected ownership. Again, the public projected 59% over my total and 41% under. But the big item here was 40% voted for 35%+ This would have been the exact type of response I was interested in and I thought might lead me to believe that he had the potential to go way higher owned. Of course, as mentioned above, he went under my projected total.
The rest of the polls ended up being somewhat inconsequential so the results are inconclusive after one week with one mild success and one big failure. I will try to continue to work on ways that improve our best in the industry ownership projections. On to this week:
Chalk
One of the biggest decisions each week is how to handle the chalk on the slate. The chalkiest players are typically the ‘best’ plays on the slate if you are trying to maximize your total points produced. However, if you are looking to win a big tournament you can gain a lot of ground on your competition if you choose a player that outperforms there. If that player is in a lot of lineups you can pass a lot at one time. Balancing scoring the most points and playing against your competition is the toughest part of DFS. In this section, we talk about how to handle the toughest decision of the week. What to do with the chalk:
There isn’t a clear-cut chalk play at quarterback which has been a trend most weeks. One of the chalkier plays will be Patrick Mahomes II and for good reason. The Chiefs are four-point favorites in the game with the largest Vegas total on the slate. Also, we have all seen Mahomes consistently light it up this year with an average of 366 passing yards per game and exceeding 315 yards in each game which is essentially a free bonus for sites that give bonuses for 300 yards.
However, there are some concerns for Mahomes this week. First of all, he was hobbled last week in the Sunday Night Football upset by the Colts. Without being able to roam around the backfield nearly as freely as he is used to he was a lot less efficient. This could be made worse if offensive lineman Andrew Wylie and Cameron Erving miss the game as expected. Erving is already a backup to Eric Fisher and as you get deeper and deeper into the depth chart cracks are more likely to be found. With Mahomes being less mobile this worries me. I will not completely fade Mahomes but if you are making only 10 lineups I would have him in one or fewer lineups.
At running back a lot could happen over the next 24 hours but one of the chalkier players appears to be Leonard Fournette. The last few weeks Fournette has been the only player keeping my lineups afloat as he has been low owned following the Thursday night slow start on national TV against the Titans. I still don’t forgive him for his week 2 letdown though. However, he has followed that game up with 225 and 108 rushing yards. I think this might give Fournette the attention that he has deserved while playing 92% of the snaps on the season.
The Saints are no pushover though as they shut down Ezekiel Elliot to 35 yards on 18 carries two weeks ago and Chris Carson to 52 yards on 15 carries right before that. Fournette could easily find this same fate as he has had a hard time getting consistent yardage. But he has been successful in breaking big plays and we know the Jaguars will continue to feed him. Don’t be afraid to put Fournette into your lineup but don’t go overboard after these last two big games.
DeAndre Hopkins has had a slow start to season seeing a target on only 29% of his snaps which is down from 34% last year. This is primarily because Will Fuller and Keke Coutee have been healthier and the Texans picked up Kenny Stills in the offseason. With the competition for targets up significantly, we have seen players like Fuller in the winning lineups while Hopkins owners just keeping weighting until next week. Is next week finally here? We already talked about Mahomes and how this game is the highest total on the slate. We also have to think that eventually players like Fuller blowing up have to help Hopkins get less attention from the defense. I believe Hopkins is still really good and if opponents ease up at all on Hopkins he could blow up like Fuller did last week. Because of that explosion potential, you need to play Hopkins. However, at one of the highest ownership rates across the industry, I wouldn’t play him more than 2 lineups out of ten. Maybe make one of them the lineup you play Mahomes in the hopes that Mahomes is healthy and the game is high scoring.
George Kittle is one of the highest owned tight ends of the week despite not starting the season off that week. Last week’s game was the first that he exceeded 60 yards or scored a touchdown and even his 70 yards for a TD isn’t what we were hoping for from Kittle at the beginning of the year. But sites have seen his struggles as well and have aggressively reduced his price. At his current price, he is a great bargain. To determine if he is too high owned and should be faded we can look at other tight end options. Unfortunately, it appears that the tight end player pool is pretty shallow this week and other good options are going to be pretty highly owned as well. As such you should feel free to use Kittle in your lineups
Contrarian
If you play too many chalky players you will be competing against too many people to win first place and the odds will be stacked against you. If you play too many contrarian players you won’t score enough points. Remember, the plays are contrarian because most likely there is something wrong with that player. In general, the public is very smart. Finding that right mix is the second hardest thing to do in DFS. In this section, I will try to point you to some of the most contrarian options on the slate.
Washington is a mess but they have a few things going for them. First of all, they are playing the Dolphins this week which thus far this year has essentially been an additional bye. Secondly, after Bill Callahan was announced as the interim head coach he decided to go back to Case Keenum as the quarterback. Most people will be afraid of Keenum since he was benched the last game he played but in GPPs it doesn’t matter if your quarterback is benched or just played poorly. You aren’t winning either way and a lot of quarterbacks have had bad days which kept players from winning. Before being benched Keenum threw for over 300 yards twice and had at least 2 TDs in every game. Grab Keenum at low ownerships against a bad team.
We will stick with Washington at running back where both Adrian Peterson and Chris Thompson are currently projected to be owned less than 5%. Thompson continues to be used heavily in the passing game with 4+ catches each game and receiving yards of 79, 48, and 68 in the games that Keenum started. Together they make a great cheap stack.
As for Peterson, Callahan has been on record saying that the team has given up on the run too early in games and Peterson said it has been the best week of practice since he has been there. Causing some to speculate that Peterson will be the beneficiary of the increased rushes. I wouldn’t play Keenum and Peterson in the same lineup but making a lineup or two for each seems like a good way to fit in other great options into your lineups.
D.J. Chark Jr is getting all the ownership love this week but the forgotten player has been Dede Westbrook sitting down at 3% ownership. However, for the year they are sitting at the same amount of targets and Westbrook slightly ahead when looking only at Gardner Minshew attempts. Chark will also likely get most of the attention from Marshon Lattimore leaving Westbrook the path of least resistance. Similar work, easier matchup, and 1/5th the ownership all sound good to me.
