The key to success in daily fantasy sports is research. With our Trends tool, research is easy.
Description
(Written the Friday before kickoff)
With all our tools, but in particular our Trends tool, we are generally focused on identifying players in positive situations. But identifying negative situations is just as important as — and maybe even more important than — finding positive ones. And the reason for the ‘maybe even more important than’ is that we already have tools designed to identify the top plays. As Editor-in-Chief Matthew Freedman has previously suggested, since Pro Trends load as part of our Player Models, and since they are designed to identify players in beneficial matchups, we should consider using our ‘My Trends’ to find players to fade.
This week, I’ll be creating a FanDuel trend that will look for wide receivers and running backs who will be highly owned but in possession of higher-than-average dud potential.
(Link to this week’s WR trend)
(Link to this week’s RB trend)
I generally like to keep my trends simple, and this one is a little bit more involved, so let’s break down each filter.
The Details of the Trend
Here’s the logic for each filter I’m using:
• First of all, we are looking for the most highly-owned players at the position.
• Next, we are looking for players whose Dud percentage exceeds 33 percent. For reference, this will divide the player pool roughly in half.
• The game must be played on Sunday because our ownership projections focus on the main slates for both sites.
• Finally, I want players with reasonable performance expectations. At the time of this writing, Charcandrick West’s Projected Plus/Minus is +8.15. Regardless of his ownership, he would be a tough player to fade if that number is anywhere close to accurate. Here, I’ll focus on players whose Projected Plus/Minus values are lower than +3.00.
One other thing to note before moving forward: You may be wondering why the ‘Ownership’ figures — the numbers representing actual ownership in the above screenshots — are so low. The answer is that we did not begin projecting ownership prior to 2016. If I applied a filter for the 2016 NFL Season to each trend above, the actual ownership numbers were 11.1 percent for wide receivers and 7.5 percent for running backs.
The Matches
Running Backs
It’s probably going to be more difficult to find the fades at running back. As we saw with the Charcandrick West example above, the highly-owned running backs are often filling in for injured players and come with astronomical Projected Plus/Minus numbers.
Jonathan Stewart’s ownership projection of nine to 12 percent ranks among the top 10 for running backs at the time of this writing. He is relatively cheap, has 44 carries over his last two games, and is coming off of back-to-back 20-plus fantasy point performances. His Projected Plus/Minus of +2.9 falls just below the exclusion threshold, but his matchup is just average by Opponent Plus/Minus and his recent success has been largely based on touchdowns.
DeMarco Murray has exceeded his current implied point total of 12.42 in every single game this year. He is expected to be one of the most highly-owned running backs this weekend and there is certainly risk to fading him. The argument for fading in this scenario probably has to start with concern over his lingering toe injury.
Wide Receivers
At the time of this writing, Ben Roethlisberger is expected back for the Steelers, so we are expecting many to gravitate back to Antonio Brown at a pretty large discount to his normal price tag. That there is plenty of value available at running back this week means players will likely be looking to spend at wide receiver, further enhancing Brown’s anticipated ownership. Still, in a tough divisional game with Ben’s health legitimately in question, Brown’s Projected Plus/Minus is +2.85 despite his lower salary.
With Aaron Rodgers expected to be one of the most popular options at quarterback this week, many people will likely stack the QB with Jordy Nelson. With both Randall Cobb and Ty Montgomery battling injuries to some degree, there should be plenty of targets for Nelson. On the other hand, the Colts are expected to have top cornerback Vontae Davis active, and our Matchups tool is predicting Nelson to be matched up against Davis for much of the game.
Results
(Written Sunday night after games)
Both DeMarco Murray and Jonathan Stewart hovered around their projected range of nine to 12 percent ownership. Stewart fell well short of his implied point total, while Murray exceeded his total by a respectable amount but failed to live up to his top-three salary. Murray probably didn’t help you win tournaments with his performance, so the fade worked out in both cases.
At wide receiver, the Plus/Minus scores among the three fades were as follows:
• Nelson: +1.9
• Beckham: -0.7
• Brown: -1.5
In all cases, the scores were somewhat propelled by touchdown points, as none of the three receivers exceeded 100 yards. Overall, the fade worked out here as well. I certainly wouldn’t have lost ground in tournaments by fading any of the above players, two of whom were rostered in more than 20 percent of lineups. And the fade would have really worked out if Nelson, Beckham, and Brown did not combine for four touchdowns.
Conclusion
We’re only scratching the surface of the concept here, but I do strongly recommend using the Trends tool as a way to sift through the anticipated highly-owned options in a weekend and to look for negative factors that other DFS players may be overlooking. This week, there were several players among ‘the chalk’ with higher than average dud rates. And while there was only one true ‘dud,’ I did not miss out on any must-have performances by zagging away from some of the chalkier plays.
