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Description
(Written the Friday before kickoff)
This week, I’ll be taking a closer look at price points on FanDuel. As a player performs well, we would expect his salary to increase over time, and we’d expect a player’s salary to decrease if he performed below expectations. But surely there will be some players who find themselves in a ‘salary sweet spot.’ These would be players whose salaries have not drastically changed and who have a history of success at their current price points. At both the wide receiver and running back positions, I’ll be using the Season Consistency and Season Salary Change filters to locate these players.
Let’s take a look at what’s going on here.
• We are excluding players who will not play much by setting a threshold of at least five projected points.
• Players must be no more expensive than they were at the start of the season.
• Players must have at least a 50 percent Consistency Rating.
The 50 percent Consistency may seem low, but it will actually give us the top 15-20 players in that category each week using this metric. Putting everything together, we are looking for players whom — based on past performance — we know can return positive value at their salaries.
The Matches
RB
(Link to this week’s RB trend)
At RB, the most intriguing match is Todd Gurley, whom we might not expect to have high Consistency. But while Gurley has disappointed through the lens of his preseason expectations, he has been sufficient when considering his recent salary-based expectations:
Perhaps rejuvenated by a quarterback change and in a dream matchup, Gurley seems like an acceptable play at $7,500 this week.
Devonta Freeman is another player who doesn’t seem to be crushing value, but at his salary, which has steadily dropped over the course of the season, Freeman has met value at a decent clip. This week’s $7,000 price tag is just $100 above his season-low mark. (Of course, Tevin Coleman needs to be taken into account.)
Jeremy Hill perplexingly finds himself at a season-low price point despite owning a high Consistency Rating that should be further enhanced by Giovani Bernard’s absence. The matchup will be difficult, but Hill’s price and expected workload are the two primary factors driving his projected ownership to 17-20 percent (at the time of this writing).
Doug Martin also has a difficult matchup against the Seahawks. Now seemingly healthy, Martin finds himself in the discount bin after consistently costing $8,000 last season, even though he was playing in a crowded backfield. Over the past two seasons, Martin has exceeded 8.5 points (his current salary-based expectation) 70 percent of the time, including games in which he suffered an injury
WR
(Link to this week’s WR trend)
At WR, Larry Fitzgerald finds himself at the exact same $7,200 price point with which he opened the season. He has at least five receptions in every game this year and remains a steady option. By contrast, Kelvin Benjamin has three or fewer receptions in four games in 2016. Interestingly, both players have an identical 50 percent Consistency Rating coming into Week 12.
Julian Edelman owns an impressive 60 percent Consistency Rating and is down $900 since Week 1, while the rookie shine seems to have worn off of Corey Coleman, whose price is down $1,200. Both Randall Cobb and Emmanuel Sanders have disappointed recently, but they have had enough success over the season to buoy their Consistency Ratings.
Results
(Written Sunday night after games)
RB
Each RB was rostered by less than seven percent of the field despite being available at beatable price points. Two-of-five plays exceeded expectations, which was a little disappointing. But on a low-scoring Sunday, Freeman turned out to be one of the better plays at the position. Freeman had been returning value at his price point without an abundance of touchdowns on the season. He had five touchdowns in 10 games entering Sunday and scored two against Arizona.
If you can find players who have been valuable at their price point in general, that’s good, but if you can find these same players who have been returning value without scoring touchdowns, that’s even better. Once the touchdown total regresses to the mean, that player will be in a position to return enormous value.
WR
Fitzgerald posted his worst game of the season in a week when he was highly owned. The Cardinals were implied to score 22.8 points in this game, and once Falcons cornerback Desmond Trufant was ruled out many DFS players fired up Fitzgerald at $7,200. I would still maintain he was a good play this week, but it just didn’t work out. Blame tight end Jermaine Gresham and his unexpected 10 targets.
Coleman and Benjamin were both saved by touchdowns, and Edelman was held back from a huge day as a result of not scoring a touchdown. Either way, all three players were within a couple of points (in either direction) of their implied totals.
Review
Even though this trend offers quite a few players with low ownership, it is probably best for cash games. Even in a week that was somewhat low scoring, there were very few scores that would have truly sunk lineups in cash games. On the other hand, the only score that would have contributed to a tournament-winning lineup was the 20.7 points Freeman posted.
