Today Is Just Another Day
Early in the morning of August 1, 2016, the NFL (daily fantasy sports) season officially started: FanDuel released its Week 1 salaries. (Note that the season-opening Thursday game between the Panthers and Broncos is not included in the first slate that FanDuel released.)
In this series — The Freedman Files — I’m uncontrollably spewing my thoughts systematically analyzing these FanDuel salaries on a position-by-position basis.
— Part 1: Quarterbacks
— Part 2: Running Backs
— Part 3: Wide Receivers
— Part 4: Tight Ends
You’re welcome.
For a macro perspective on Week 1 FanDuel salaries, be sure to check out FantasyLabs co-founder Jonathan Bales‘ recent piece.
Let’s Ease Into It
I’m busy today — so busy in fact that I’m considering taking the time to list for you all the items on today’s to-do list, just so you can see what I mean:
— Write half of this piece.
— Try to take a nap without my wife noticing.
— Write the other half of this piece.
I’m almost worried that I’m getting an ulcer from this stress.
Anyway, since I’m hoping to get this piece done in fewer than 10,000 words, I’m going to sum up this slate’s wide receivers for you in one word.
$9,000 Is a Lot of Fake Money
We know that the NFL is now a passing league, and the Week 1 salaries reflect that fact. Only four players break the $9,000 threshold: A quarterback — Aaron Rodgers — and three wide receivers — Antonio Brown, Odell Beckham, Jr., and Julio Jones.
Over the last two years, the average wide receiver projected to score at least one point on FanDuel has produced a +0.41 Plus/Minus with 41.0 percent Consistency, regardless of salary.
Per our Trends tool, wide receivers with salaries of at least $9,000 over that time frame have enjoyed +1.92 Plus/Minus values with 51.5 percent Consistency.
A couple of items to note:
— The maximum salary for a wide receiver over the last two years is $9,400. Once a guy reaches the $9,000 mark, he is very close to the overall salary ceiling.
— Paying up seems to pay off.
That last statement is especially true for Antonio, OBJ, and Julio. In our database, only eight wide receivers have ever had a $9,000-plus salary, and only four of those have returned value at that price.
Three of those guys are . . .
$9,000 is a lot of fake money, but these wide receivers are probably worth it.
I Say ‘Probably,’ Because . . .
There’s a sh*tload of value at this position. Between A) the $9,000-plus studs and B) the wide receivers projected to score at least a point is C) an entire galaxy of options who offer some classic arbitrage potential.
For instance . . .
$6,600 Is the New $9,000
At $6,600 (the 27th-highest salary at the position), we have three wide receivers who have all individually been undervalued on FanDuel (and probably in reality): DeSean Jackson, Jarvis Landry, and Jordan Matthews.
Even if you don’t like their individual styles of play — because “D-Jax is too boom-or-bust,” or “Landry’s yards-per-reception average sucks,” or “J-Matt’s just a slot receiver” — it’s hard to discount the dominance of a cohort this cheap.
Year to year, these guys have been incredibly consistent:
And they are precisely in the sweet spot of their personal salary ranges: When priced comparably in the past, they have collectively had a +2.15 Plus/Minus with 54.9 percent Consistency.
Basically, in order to think that these guys are overpriced now, you need to believe that A) the production of the last two years is unrepresentative bullsh*t and/or B) what applied in the past no longer applies now. D-Jax is in the same situation, Landry is probably in a better situation with new head coach Adam Gase, and Matthews — albeit in a new (possibly lesser) situation — is another version of Allen Robinson, as pointed out by Ian Hartitz in his 2016 Eagles Preview. (More on A-Rob later. Actually, I can cover it now: Regression.)
Here’s something else to consider: Antonio, OBJ, and Julio have outproduced their salary-based expectations by 21.09 percent when priced at $9,000-plus. D-Jax, Landry, and J-Matt have outproduced expectations by 22.78 percent when priced in the $6,600 range.
The cheaper guys provide a very similar return on a percentage basis, afford owners the salary space to pay up at other positions, and still meet their salary-based expectations well over 50 percent of the time.
Last year, Landry was 16th among wide receivers in fantasy points per game on FanDuel. Even with Miami playing on the road against Seattle and implied to score a slate-low 17.25 points, he’s probably too cheap. Miami doesn’t need to score a lot of points for Landry to catch a lot of passes.
In Week 1, the Eagles are playing at home against the Browns, who last year were ranked 26th in pass defense against wide receivers, per Football Outsiders’ Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) metric. Ex-head coach Chip Kelly may have taken his fast-paced offensive system with him to San Francisco, but the Eagles are still implied to score 25 points. When playing on home teams implied to score a similar number of points, wide receivers with J-Matt’s target history tend to do well:
As for D-Jax: John Daigle covered him well in his 2016 Washington Preview. Injured in Week 1, D-Jax returned after the Week 8 bye, worked his way into game shape in Weeks 9-10, outright dominated in Weeks 11-16, and took Week 17 off. If we use the RotoViz Game Splits App, we can see the extent to which D-Jax dominated when he was fully healthy:
In Week 1, he’ll be at home going against a Steelers defense that last year ranked 26th in pass defense DVOA against No. 1 wide receivers.
It’s time to take a nap.
My Wife Caught Me Napping
That’s better than being caught sleeping around.
The Shortest of Blurbs
Keenan Allen: A couple items to note . . .
— Week 1: $7,400, 13th-highest
— 2015: 11.13 targets per game, 4th-highest
That discrepancy is begging to be exploited.
An Even Shorter Shortest Blurb
— Week 1: $8,400, tied for 5th
— 2015: 12 targets per game, 3rd
DeAndre Hopkins: Available at a slight discount — and he’s playing at home as a favorite against a Bears defense that last year ranked 31st in pass defense DVOA against No. 1 wide receivers.
I guess that shortest blurb wasn’t the shortest after all.
These Numbers Don’t Add Up
In Week 1, the Colts and Seahawks are both at home. The Colts are favored by five points. The Seahawks, 9.5 — the slate’s highest mark. And they have the two highest implied point totals: Indianapolis at 27 and Seattle at 26.75.
Quarterbacks Andrew Luck and Russell Wilson have two of the top-five salaries at the position. They are also both good runners, which must be what FanDuel is counting on — because their wide receivers are cheaper than VHS copies of ’90s porn. (I’m surmising.)
Let’s start with the Colts receivers.
At $6,800, T.Y. Hilton has only the 23rd-highest salary at the position.
(You’ve got about 27 seconds before that last link becomes remarkably NSFW.)
(If repeating a joke is wrong, I don’t want to be right.)
Hilton is being valued as the guy who last year put up 11.06 fantasy points per game (on his way to his third-straight 1,000-yard season, by the way). That’s wrong. He played nine of his 16 games without Luck.
Instead, since he’s going to be, you know, playing with Luck in Week 1, he should be valued as the guy who has been Luck’s clear No. 1 receiver for 22 games over the last two seasons:
Over the past two years, Hilton has done very well when the Colts have been implied to score a comparable number of points against non-division opponents:
By the way: Does his 33.3 percent Upside in such games intrigue you?
Colts No. 2 receiver Donte Moncrief is $6,200 — only $600 cheaper than Hilton. On the one hand, that seems unreasonable. For his career, Hilton has averaged 73.0 receptions, 1,153.0 scrimmage yards, and 6.7 all-purpose touchdowns per 16 games. What has Moncrief done in his two NFL seasons? In the big picture, he’s done relatively little.
On the other hand, Moncrief is the No. 2 receiver in a potent offense, and he’s the big-bodied weapon that the Colts are likely to use the most in the red zone throughout the season, as five of his six touchdowns last year came from the 11-yard line or closer. He was targeted only 12 times inside the 20-yard line last year, but his 66.7 percent catch rate suggests that he could see more targets this year. As a point of comparison: Last year Hilton turned only 46.7 percent of his 15 red-zone targets into receptions.
In Moncrief’s favor is also the fact that last year he was almost as productive as Hilton was when they both were playing with Luck. In those seven games . . .
— Hilton: 12.61 points
— Moncrief: 11.59 points
Hilton was better, but he wasn’t that much better — except that he was.
In 2015, Moncrief’s production was driven by touchdowns and Luck. In the five games with Luck in which he scored a touchdown, he had 14.76 points. In all other games last year, 6.14. Hilton, meanwhile, scored 22.7 points in his two scoring games with Luck, and 9.39 points in his 14 other games played.
All of this is to say that A) Hilton and Moncrief are probably not as comparable as assets as their salaries indicate and B) Moncrief is still undervalued in his own right as long as he has Luck throwing touchdowns to him.
The Vegas total suggests that Luck is likely to throw a touchdown to someone in Week 1.
And, jeez, Phillip Dorsett is A) $5,400, B) a second-year first-round speedster who scored 10 touchdowns his final year of college, and C) slated to be the No. 3 receiver for a high-scoring offense that has no receiving depth. Dorsett should see a lot of snaps this year, and he is likely to build upon what he did in his rookie season, as second-year receivers tend to do when they are selected with similarly high picks (courtesy of The RotoViz Screener):
Perhaps as early as Week 1, Dorsett will contribute.
As for the Seahawks receivers . . .
2015 second-half superstar Doug Baldwin is priced at $6,700. He’s tied for the 25th-highest salary at the position. He finished last year ranked 13th with 14.37 FanDuel points per game — and that includes all 16 games. So even if we focus on Baldwin’s entire season and not on his unbelievable stretch run, he’s still undervalued.
But depending on the narrative you want to use, he could be immensely discounted.
If your narrative is something like . . .
Once Marshawn Lynch was injured and inactive, the offense shifted away from the run and toward the pass, and so Baldwin became more of a focal point and should still be one now, since Lynch is gone and the backfield is unsettled.
. . . then you’d be happy to know that last year Baldwin scored an average of 9.33 points in seven games with Lynch and an OBJ-esque 18.29 points in nine games without him.
Or if your narrative is something like . . .
In Week 9, the Seahawks had a bye, and during their week off they revamped the offense to make it more explosive — and it worked — and they’d be idiots in 2016 to go away from what worked in 2015.
. . . then you’ll point to Baldwin’s average of 7.75 points in the first eight games of the season and his better-than-Antonio 20.99 points in the eight games after the bye.
Those narratives might work — but you don’t need them. He’s the No. 1 wide receiver for a team implied to score 26.75 points against a road team that last season was dead last in pass defense DVOA to No. 1 wide receivers. That he’s coming off a career-best season in which he accumulated over 1,000 yards and led the NFL in touchdowns receiving is just a really nice bonus.
That Baldwin is the same price as Steve Smith, Sr., is a lowdown, no-good, doggone, straight-up #Shame (Note: The 27-second NSFW countdown caveat still applies).
And now let’s talk about Tyler Lockett, who is $6,200. Little known fact that should blow your f*cking mind . . .
Lockett led all rookie wide receivers last year in total touchdowns: Not ‘once-in-a-generation prospect’ Amari Cooper. Not out-of-nowhere Stefon Diggs. Not big-bodied back-to-back second-round picks Dorial Green-Beckham and Devin Funchess. But the little 5’10” and 182-lb. third-round selection who was pigeonholed as ‘only’ a return man.
1) That’s bullsh*t.
2) NFL teams don’t spend third-round picks on return men — except for the Bills . . . and the Vikings — but for them it’s a first-round pick.
3) Lockett led the 2015 rookie receivers in touchdowns because of that which people thought would hold him back or delimit him: His capabilities as a return man.
Remember, upside lies on the periphery. Two of his touchdowns were as a returner. (He still led the rookie class in touchdowns receiving.) The Seahawks open the season at home against one of the worst teams in the league at covering kicks and punts.
Lockett absolutely carries risk. But he also has a lot of upside.
The Chosen One
Amari is good. He’s not God — but he’s good. It’s rare for NFL rookies to have 1,000-plus yards receiving. It’s even rarer for them to do it as 21-year-old newbies. Again, he’s good.
And the Raiders really like him. Cooper is the most-heavily targeted 21-year-old in rookie history: More than Sammy Watkins, Mike Evans, and all the others. The Raiders want to use him.
And use him they likely will in Week 1, when they face a Saints team that last year allowed 4,544 yards receiving and an NFL-record worst 45 touchdowns through the air. They had the league’s worst pass defense DVOA and fourth-worst mark against No. 1 receivers.
He has a lot of potential at $7,100.
He’s Chip Kelly’s No. 1 Wide Receiver
Torrey Smith ($5,600) is cheap and Kelly’s new No. 1 receiver. Over the last three years, that gig has led to an average of 131.7 targets for 84 receptions, 1,215.7 yards, and nine touchdowns — and that’s with three different guys playing the role each year.
In Week 1, Smith faces the Rams . . . who ranked No. 2 last year in pass defense DVOA against No. 1 receivers. So Week 1 probably won’t be Smith’s Kelly-fueled reemergence, but he’s the same price as rookies Sterling Shepard, Tyler Boyd, and Will Fuller, all of whom are hoping to be No. 2 receivers for their teams.
Smith should probably be a little more expensive, and they should probably be a lot cheaper.
The Cheapest and the Best?
Let’s ignore the fact that over the last two years John Brown has been the best DFS receiver on the Cardinals:
Instead, let’s consider the type of player he is.
He’s a big-play, 1,000-yard speedster who can move around the formation and exploit soft matchups when defenses are focused on the big-bodied receivers and running back who allow him to run deep relatively uncovered.
When J-Bro scores . . .
. . . he provides a lot of value. When he doesn’t, he doesn’t. Brown is the type of player who must be played at the right time.
Week 1 could be that time. The Cardinals are home favorites implied to score 26.75 points against the Patriots, who last year had the fifth-worst pass defense DVOA against wide receivers other than the No. 1 and No. 2 options.
Brown is $6,500. Larry Fitzgerald and Michael Floyd are $7,200 and $6,900. They’re not exorbitantly more expensive than Brown, but against the Patriots he might actually be the cheapest and the best Cardinals receiver.
The No. 3 Wide Receiver?
Davante Adams is $5,300. Jeff Janis is $5,200. One of these guys is likely to open the season as Aaron Rodgers‘ No. 3 receiver. Whoever wins the job will deserve some exposure in Week 1 tournaments against a Jacksonville defense that last year ranked 31st in pass DVOA.
The Three Words No Guy Wants to Hear on Sunday Morning From the Girl He Met the Night Before
Tavon in tournaments.
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The Labyrinthian: 2016, 76
This is the 76th installment of The Labyrinthian, a series dedicated to exploring random fields of knowledge in order to give you unordinary theoretical, philosophical, strategic, and/or often rambling guidance on daily fantasy sports. Consult the introductory piece to the series for further explanation.
Previous installments of The Labyrinthian can be accessed via my author page. If you have suggestions on material I should know about or even write about in a future Labyrinthian, please contact me via email, [email protected], or Twitter @MattFtheOracle.
