The dynamic game of Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) requires much more than simply knowing the sport for which we’re entering contests to be successful. We must be adaptable, precise, and open to learning from previous endeavors, the latter of which will be the primary focus of this weekly written piece. Game Theoretic methodologies will allow us to analyze and dissect the previous week’s winner of the largest and most prestigious Guaranteed Prize Pool (GPP) tournament on DraftKings – the Millionaire Maker. These same tenets of Game Theory, which can most simply be explained as the development of decision-making processes given our own skill and knowledge, assumptions of the field based on the cumulative skill and knowledge of others playing the same game, and the rules and structure of the game itself, will allow us to further train our minds to see beyond the antiquated techniques of roster building being employed by a large portion of the field. Approaching improvement through these methods will give us insight into the anatomy of successful rosters and will help us develop repeatably profitable habit patterns for the coming weeks. We’ll start by looking at the previous week’s winning roster, extract any pertinent lessons for future utilization, and finish with a look ahead towards the coming main slate.
Winning Roster
Lessons Learned
Over-stack
The over-stack is a technique utilized at a lower rate by the field than its hit rate in the NFL, meaning we can “win more when we’re right.” The idea of “winning more when we’re right” takes us back to a previously discussed idea in this column – the theoretical idea of payoff dominance (covered in our Week 2 piece). This week, we saw a single game environment leap production from every other game environment, which provided a scenario where multiple GPP-worthy fantasy scores came out of a single game. Check this out:
· Jamaal Williams – 26.90 DraftKings points
· Rashaad Penny – 31.70 DraftKings points
· T.J. Hockenson – 42.90 DraftKings points
· Geno Smith – 34.70 DraftKings points
· Jared Goff – 37.22 DraftKings points
· DK Metcalf – 24.90 DraftKings points
· Josh Reynolds – 21.10 DraftKings points
That’s a good number of high-value fantasy scores all coming from a single game environment. Now we have to ask ourselves if there were any indicators that this game might overperform ownership expectations. Yes, there 100% were! All of D’Andre Swift, Amon-Ra St. Brown, and D.J. Chark were ruled out throughout the week for the Lions, yet the game total moved less than a field goal. That’s actionable information that Vegas was telling us, a lot of us just didn’t listen. The over-stack comes into play based on the respective salary for the pieces in that game, meaning we can capture bulk upside all at once from a potential top game environment. The game ended up hitting a 99% outcome (if the Seahawks and Lions played 100 times in a row, the actual outcome we saw in Week 4 might happen only once), but that’s exactly what is needed to ship the Milly Maker.
Running Back Upside
Hoop2410’s winning roster utilized Austin Ekeler and Josh Jacobs, two players who had underperformed to that point in the season. The underlying usage metrics for Ekeler had been down compared to 2021 but he was playing a team allowing over 200 rush yards per game through three games, meaning touchdown equity was high and per-touch expectation was high.
Josh Jacobs had borderline elite usage metrics in 2021 in neutral-to-positive game script, something the then 0-3 Raiders hadn’t seen in 2022 until their win over the Broncos in Week 4. Noticing these spots where trends might toe the line between predictive and reactive are simple ways to boost expected value.
Bubble Building
The theme of the season through the first three weeks was how dominant the wide receivers in the NFL were and how they were vastly outperforming running backs with comparable pedigree. Then what happened in Week 4? Aaron Adler, site manager extraordinaire for One Week Season, brought out an interesting piece of data surrounding the scoring in Week 4:
DK Metcalf was the highest-scoring wide receiver on the slate with a score of 24.9 DraftKings points, meaning no wide receiver scored over 25.0 points – there were 10 running backs or tight ends to score more than 25.0 DraftKings points this week!
The point of that exercise is to drive home how different each week and each slate are in the NFL. We can’t simply look to what has worked in the past or how players or teams have performed already to project the future. The game of DFS is about placing ourselves in repeatably profitable situations through +EV (expected value) decisions and allowing variance to work its course – the game of DFS is not about predicting what will happen better than everyone else.
That lesson hit hard this week through a roster utilizing a running back in the FLEX position. General DFS theory asserts utilizing the higher intrinsic variance of wide receivers in the FLEX position on rosters because they have a better theoretical ceiling when compared to running backs in today’s NFL game. That said, the field is privy to this theory now, meaning we don’t see running backs in the FLEX position nearly as frequently as we have in the past – which is actually a point of leverage generation now. Let us look at a mathematical example to highlight this point.
Think about two players and their respective range of outcomes on a given week. Player A has a true ceiling (99% outcome – he will hit that value once in 100 tries) of 45.0 fantasy points with a mean (50% outcome – he will hit that value 50 times in 100 tries) of 9.5 fantasy points. Player B has a true ceiling of 37.50 fantasy points with a mean of 10.2 fantasy points. “Player A” is a theoretical representation of the wide receiver positions while “Player B” is a theoretical representation of the running back position. The true ceiling of wide receivers is higher in today’s NFL game, but that doesn’t mean a running back can never outscore a wide receiver in the sample size of one week.
That’s exactly what happened this week. “Player B” (running backs) outscored “Player A” (wide receivers) by hitting a 99% outcome while wide receivers hit an 80% outcome. Now, if we know the field is utilizing running backs in the FLEX at a lower rate than the chance of a running back outscoring a wide receiver – BINGO, we have our leverage. As in, it isn’t enough to simply think through general DFS theory. As we’ve explored in the past, we must also be thinking through how general DFS theory interacts with field tendencies, and this was a beautiful example of that in action this week. “Bubble building,” or building rosters without outside influence, helps to shed these biases.
Looking Ahead
Damien Harris / Rhamondre Stevenson (Running Back Upside)
The Patriots win the “which team is playing the Lions this week” merry-go-round and might be doing so with their third-string quarterback. It becomes fairly obvious how the Patriots would likely game plan in that case, the question then becomes do we think the Lions and their bottom-ranked rush defense can stop the run? I side with the answer to that question being a resounding “no.” Harris is the preferred goal line back, elevating his touchdown equity (touchdowns in three consecutive weeks), while Stevenson appears to have the inside track to increased pass game usage, elevating his per-touch efficiency numbers. I side with Harris in a vacuum, with any expected leverage based on ownership projections likely to weigh heavily on the decision later in the week.
James Robinson (Running Back Upside)
What interest this game does get at the running back position is highly likely to be biased towards the dynamic rookie on the other side (Dameon Pierce), but the Jaguars quietly rank in the top five in most defensive metrics against the run (extreme pass-funnel defense). Houston, on the other hand, is the worst defense in the league against the run through the first month of the year. These two-down-style running backs need a lot more to “go right” in order to hit, but they offer comparable true ceilings to wide receivers in their price range. It just so happens that Robinson is in a good spot to see the game environment required for him to hit this week.
Eagles at Cardinals (Over-stack)
This game opened with the week’s highest game total and is sure to garner ownership. That said, the field is struggling with how to handle mobile quarterbacks and, more specifically, how to stack them. As we explored in previous weeks, rushing quarterbacks still have their true ceiling unlocked through the passing game (whereas their rushing potential is a floor-boosting attribute). The Eagles and Cardinals have two of the four true “Konami code” quarterbacks in the NFL in the week’s highest game total game environment, yet the field is unlikely to stack these offenses, stack the game environment, or over-stack the game environment this week.
Bubble Building
I’ll leave you with a couple of questions (because the whole point of what I do at One Week Season and the whole point of what this weekly column is designed to do is to train you to make better decisions in DFS):
What do you notice about the upcoming slate as an angle you want to attack this week?
What is something the field is likely to react to or overreact to based on recent trends?
Which game, game environment, or team carries more upside than the field is likely to consider this week?
