It’s Groundhog Week
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 the days that followed, I released The Freedman Files, a series in which I uncontrollably spewed my thoughts systematically analyzed the FanDuel salaries on a position-by-position basis.
— Part 1: FanDuel Quarterbacks
— Part 2: FanDuel Running Backs
— Part 3: FanDuel Wide Receivers
— Part 4: FanDuel Tight Ends
FantasyLabs co-founder Jonathan Bales added some reason to the proceedings with his macro perspective on Week 1 FanDuel salaries.
Right after publishing the FD tight ends piece on Friday, I packed a suitcase, got on a plane, slept the entire flight, landed in Dallas-Fort Worth, and saw that DraftKings had just released its salaries.
In other words, what happened last week is basically what’s going to happen this week.
Be sure to check out the recent Daily Fantasy Sports Roundtable in which FantasyLabs co-founder Peter Jennings and FantasyLabs writer Adam Levitan joined me to talk about . . . what else? . . . Week 1 FD & DK salaries. What they have to say about anything is more important than what I have to say about everything.
And, between the pieces last week and this week, I’m going to talk about just about everything . . . or die trying.
Monday Night Football, Alas
Whereas the FanDuel slate has 15 games, the DraftKings slate has ‘only’ 13 games. You can complain about that now, but . . .
— During the bye weeks we’ll nostalgically look back at this Week 1 slate and think [insert clever comment here]. We really will.
— The two missing Monday Night Football games will surely be represented in their own slate, which should be a lot of fun.
And let’s look at those games for a minute. Missing on DraftKings will be Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers’ 26.5 implied points (currently the fourth-highest total out of all Week 1 games). When Roethlisberger teams up with Antonio Brown to remind everyone that politics isn’t all that sucks in Washington, D.C., you’ll need to get your main slate exposure on FanDuel.
The other Monday Night quarterbacks are Kirk Cousins, whichever Rams passer Jeff Fisher hates least that week, and whoever ends up winning the Chip Kelly sweepstakes in San Francisco.
To borrow from Office Space: I wouldn’t say I’ll be missing them, Bob.
If you want to hate yourself for starting Blaine Gabbert, you’ll need to play either on FanDuel or the Monday slate on DraftKings. Or both, if you really want to hate yourself. Anytime you can roster a guy with a 55.8 percent career completion rate and 10 touchdowns passing in his last eight starts, you really want to get as much exposure as possible.
Not even Sam Bradford is that bad.
That’s What We Call a ‘Segue’
With a really quarterback-friendly coach last year, Bradford was 30th in DraftKings points per game, right behind Brian Hoyer and ahead of Brock Osweiler and Kellen Moore. This year, Bradford is almost certainly going to be less productive, if his career numbers with and without Kelly are any indication (courtesy of the RotoViz Game Splits App):
I get that Bradford is playing at home and the Eagles are six-point favorites currently implied to score 24.75 points against the Browns, who last year ranked 27th against the pass, per Football Outsiders’ Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) metric. So Bradford (probably) is in a good spot, but new head coach Doug Pederson simply tends not to throw the ball that much. In his three seasons with the Chiefs as offensive coordinator, Pederson oversaw offenses that performed thus in team passing percentage:
— 2013: 57.31 percent (19th)
— 2014: 56.34 percent (24th)
— 2015: 54.09 percent (27th)
This f*cking slays me. In a league that throws the ball more and more each season, Pederson has chosen to run the ball at an increasing rate. And he was doing that while coordinating under Andy Reid, who loves to throw the ball. He was doing that with Alex Smith as his quarterback — and Smith isn’t great, but, as far as career paths go for disappointing No. 1 quarterbacks, his life is pretty much Bradford’s wet dream.
Look at it this way: In 2015, Pederson loses starting running back Jamaal Charles, one of the best all-around players in the league: A guy who had scored 38 touchdowns in his 35 games under Pederson. And what does Pederson do? He runs the ball more than he ever has.
And it doesn’t help Bradford that last year Pederson’s offense played at a slow pace, running the second-fewest plays in the NFL.
In other words, Bradford — even in a good spot for Philly — looks like a bad play at $6,400, tied for the 20th-highest salary at the position. According to our Trends tool, when Bradford was similarly priced last year . . .
Even if you don’t know that a -1.74 Plus/Minus is bad, you certainly know that it’s not good when a guy’s trend is painted red.
A lot depends on the particulars of the contest in which you’re playing, ownership percentage, strategy, etc. — but Marcus Mariota and Bradford have exactly the same salary, and last year the Maserati was 17th in DraftKings points per game.
Smith and Ryan Fitzpatrick are only $100 more than Bradford. Jay Cutler and Brock Osweiler are only $100 less expensive.
All of those guys have two main things that give them the edge over Bradford:
— They’re not playing for Pederson.
— They’re not Bradford.
Then again, no one is.
You Can’t Spell ‘Elizabeth’ Without ‘Eli’
That’s just an observation.
Another observation: At $7,500, Eli is the fifth-most expensive DraftKings quarterback in this slate. Fifth. That’s fine if Eli’s playing in a two-game slate — #NailedIt — and I’ll admit that Eli over the last years has been much better, ranking 12th and 13th in DraftKings points per game in 2014 and 2015 — but there are other quarterbacks playing in this slate.
Let’s consider Carson Palmer, who is $400 cheaper. In 2014, he was 11th in DraftKings points per game. In 2015, 7th. In Week 1, he’s playing at home and the Cardinals are 5.5-point favorites and implied to score 26.5 points (the slate’s third-highest total) against a Patriots team that has a backup quarterback starting and a defense that last year was just average (15th in pass DVOA) against the quarterback position.
Meanwhile, Eli’s Giants are 3.5-point road underdogs implied to score only 22.75 points against a Cowboys defense that gave up only 19 touchdowns passing last year and was much more exploitable via the run (29th DVOA) than the pass (17th DVOA).
Over the last two years, Eli has a +3.28 Plus/Minus in Ben McAdoo’s offense. Against the Cowboys, that drops to a +0.21. And when he has been comparably priced over the last two years, he has flat-out sucked:
Of course, over the last two years whenever a quarterback comparable in salary and spread has found himself playing on the road against a division opponent, that quarterback has tended to well:
So maybe Manning won’t suck.
But, by that same measure, whenever a quarterback comparable to Palmer in salary and spread has been at home against a non-division opponent, that quarterback (to quote the voice over in Anchorman) “was the balls“:
Make that wolverine purr.
#Sarcasm
Eli and Matthew Stafford have a lot of similarities in Week 1, and although I think that Eli might be aggressively priced I am totally right there with DraftKings on Stafford’s salary.
Anytime you can give a top-eight salary to a guy whose team is a five-point road underdog, you must do so:
It’s not as if the typical quarterback priced in Stafford’s range has a +1.90 Plus/Minus with 56.8 percent Consistency over the last two years or anything . . .
They do know that Calvin Johnson retired, right?
If you want Stafford in Week 1, it’s probably better to roster him on FanDuel, where he has only the 16th-highest salary.
Always Put the Slate’s Cheapest Starting Quarterback in One GPP Lineup
On FanDuel, Robert Griffin III and Josh McCown have the same salary: $6,900. It’s as if the site was saying at the beginning of August, “We don’t know, but maybe the odds are 50 percent???”
What’s intriguing is that these quarterbacks share a FanDuel salary with Jimmy Garoppolo and Sam Bradford, and they are more expensive than Teddy Bridgewater, Jared Goff, Jay Cutler, Colin Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill, and Blaine Gabbert, all of whom have either established roles as starters or decent odds to start in Week 1. (It’s also intriguing that FanDuel values the CLE quarterbacks above the San Fran quarterbacks, but that’s a different matter . . .)
Now, on DraftKings, RG3 is $600 more expensive than McCown. When the site released salaries on August 5th, it clearly assigned to him the better chance to start in Week 1. And, of course, the Browns named RG3 the starting quarterback just yesterday.
Here’s the payoff: Whereas FanDuel has RG3 priced above at least eight quarterbacks who will start in Week 1, DraftKings has him priced above . . . McCown and a lot of other $5,000 backups. At $5,600, RG3 is the lowest-priced starter.
FanDuel probably got RG3’s salary correct relative to other quarterbacks in the league. DraftKings got RG3’s salary correct relative to the other quarterbacks on his team. But neither site nailed his salary completely.
DraftKings’ pricing of RG3 is eminently exploitable. On the aforementioned Daily Fantasy Sports Roundtable, Peter mentioned RG3 as a contrarian stacking option with Corey Coleman.
Abso-f*cking-lutely.
If you play GPPs and you’re not stacking the cheapest starting quarterback with his No. 1 wide receiver in at least one lineup, you’re probably playing DFS incorrectly. You’re not positioning yourself to benefit from a possible Black Swan.
The Cleveland-Philly game might have a low Vegas total, but that’s OK. You can roster quarterbacks from games with low Vegas totals.
As a cheap YOLO option with rushing capabilities, RG3 has out-of-this-world Konami Code upside.
I’m actually going to go beyond what Pete said on the pod. RG3 might extend past contrarianism and into the mainstream. Don’t be surprised if a lot of people play RG3 in cash games in Week 1.
In 2014, his last season of action, RG3 averaged just over four rush attempts per game. Unsurprisingly, quarterbacks with similar salaries and per-game rush attempt averages tend to slay:
This is a guy who has averaged 20.64 DraftKings points per game across his four-year career. Andrew Luck has averaged 23.95. As a superstar rookie in 2012, he averaged 25.70 points per game. Last year, NFL MVP Cam Newton averaged 24.47.
The odds are decent that in 2016 he will never be cheaper than he is now — and after Week 1 his potential in head coach Hue Jackson’s offense will probably be much more definable and thus less exploitable, as uncertainty is the Black Swan’s breeding ground.
I don’t know what else to say. I’m not saying that you must start RG3 in at least one Week 1 DraftKings lineup . . . but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
Let’s Pace Ourselves
I could go on for another 2,000 words, but I’ll leave you with this thought.
Players priced around $7,000 typically don’t do well when they’re quarterbacking seven-point road underdogs implied to score 18 points (and there aren’t many of them in the first place):
If you like Philip Rivers in Week 1, I guess that’s OK? —but I’d probably rather have Tyrod Taylor ($6,900), Tony Romo ($6,800), or Andy Dalton ($6,800) at slight discounts.
———
The Labyrinthian: 2016, 78
This is the 78th 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.
Matthew Freedman is the Editor-in-Chief of FantasyLabs.
