FanDuel GPP Guide: Week 1

Later in the season, success in FanDuel guaranteed prize pool tournaments comes from drilling into individual matchups and grinding the details to find an edge. Stats matter. Week 1 is different. We know far less than we think we do about which offenses will click, how usage will shake out under new coaching staffs and with new players being incorporated, and which defenses are actually worth avoiding. Salaries came out a month ago and plenty has changed since, so the pricing is looser than it will be at any other point in the season, and it will probably take a massive score to win a large tournament.

As I explained in the DFS First Look on Wednesday, every number in this article comes from my own weekly projections, which are built on a simulation of every game on the slate run ten thousand times. The simulation also solves the best possible FanDuel lineup in each of those ten thousand worlds, and how often a player lands in that best lineup is his optimal percentage. For tournaments, the key is comparing that number to our percent rostered projections, which Devin Knotts assembles each week. When the field is on a player far more often than he shows up in the optimal lineups, he is over-owned relative to what the numbers say, and when the reverse is true, he is a leverage play.

Finding the players with the upside to actually win a tournament, or at least place in the top 10, will always be the key in large-field tournaments, where a huge share of the prize pool goes to the top 0.1 percent of lineups. However, one of the things I want to focus on more this year is finding the players and roster builds that also land in the money (the top 25 percent) more often, in addition to having tournament-winning upside. Those are the players I really want to highlight in the positional breakdowns below.

At each position, I will show you which players are expected to be the most popular (the chalk), with the ones I think are worth going heavy on even at that elevated ownership marked as good chalk, and then a list of other targets who are flying a little further under the radar and whom my process likes more than the field does.

Slate Overview

Before diving into the individual plays, let's get a big-picture view of the slate. The table below shows each team's implied total and how it compares to my season projection for that offense, along with two numbers that frame everything that follows. The first is how often that team's players show up in the optimal lineups across the ten thousand simulations, and the second is how often we project them to show up on the field's rosters. I have always loved comparing those two. When a team's players fill more of the optimal lineups than the field is projected to roster them, our competition is probably overlooking that offense, and when the reverse is true, the field is probably overplaying it. That gap is the quickest way to start strategizing on where to be over the field this week and where to be under it.

Los Angeles Chargers, 28.5

The Chargers are a good offense in a great matchup. Not only do they have the top implied total on the slate, but that number is also 20 percent above their average implied team total for the full season. Justin Herbert, Omarion Hampton, Ladd McConkey and Quentin Johnston are each priced attractively, and the Chargers fill about 64 percent of the slots in the optimal lineups against 47 percent of the field's projected roster spots, the widest gap in our favor of any offense on the slate. This is the spot to be over the field, and it is especially intriguing because Sunday is the unveiling of whatever Mike McDaniel has spent the whole offseason cooking up.

Detroit Lions, 28.25

Detroit looks good on paper, but I fear the Lions may be over-rostered in GPPs. The Lions carry the second-highest implied total at home against New Orleans, and the field is projected to be all over them, led by Jahmyr Gibbs at better than 40 percent rostered and Jared Goff as the most popular quarterback on the slate. Lions players fill about 94 percent of the field's roster spots against 62 percent of the optimal lineups. The simulation likes Detroit plenty, but the field likes it a lot more, which makes the Lions the key offense where being under the field looks like the play.

Cincinnati Bengals, 27.0

Cincinnati against Tampa Bay has the highest total on the board at 50.5 and real shootout potential, which is worth chasing in tournaments. The field is on the Bengals at roughly the rate the optimal lineups are, so Joe Burrow, Ja'Marr Chase and Chase Brown are fair plays rather than leverage plays, and the Tampa Bay side of the game is where the field is lighter.