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 happening again this week.
— Part 5: DraftKings Quarterbacks
— Part 6: DraftKings Running Backs
— Part 7: DraftKings Wide Receivers
— Part 8: DraftKings Tight Ends
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. Also, RotoWorld Senior Football Editor Evan Silva joined Levitan and me for another Roundtable, in which we discuss the DFS implications of the preseason . . . WHICH STARTS TODAY!!!
Let’s rock this mutha.
Monday Night Football, Alas
The MNF games are not in this Sunday-only slate, so . . .
— No Antonio Brown, who is basically modern-day Jerry Rice
— No DeSean Jackson and Tavon Austin, who are favorite tournament plays of mine because of their volatility
— No Torrey Smith, who is presumably stepping into a No. 1 job that has gifted an average of 131.7 targets for 84 receptions, 1,215.7 yards, and nine touchdowns to three different guys over the past three years
If you want to roster these guys, play on FanDuel or wait for the MNF-only slate on DraftKings.
By the way, if repeating a joke is wrong, I don’t want to be right . . .
(You’ve got about 27 seconds before that last link becomes remarkably NSFW.)
Full Disclosure
My level of interest in writing this piece is probably about as low as your level of interest in reading it. I’m like a kid who can’t focus in math class because it’s his birthday and he’s thinking about his party later that night.
Tonight, the NFL season ‘officially’ kicks off with six preseason games, which — like birthdays — are almost entirely meaningless. Still, I’m really excited for football. I can’t focus on this column. I just can’t.
But I’ll try.
$9,000 Is a Lot of Fake Money
On FanDuel, Brown, Odell Beckham, Jr., and Julio Jones join Aaron Rodgers as the only players to be priced at or above $9,000.
On DraftKings, Julio ($9,400) and OBJ ($9,300) stand alone. If you look at the salary scale in our Trends tool, you’ll see that the highest wide receiver salary over the last two years is $9,600:
The cheap part of me — the value investor — wants to shun these guys like the plague.
The 24 wide receivers who have previously been in the $9,100 – $9,600 range have — Brown, OBJ, Jones, DeAndre Hopkins, and Demaryius Thomas — have historically yielded a +1.50 Plus/Minus on 45.8 percent Consistency. The baseline for wide receivers projected to score at least one point (a.k.a. catch a pass) is +0.57 with 41.4 percent Consistency, so the cohort of high-priced wide receivers provides value. Historically, you don’t lose money by investing in them.
But . . .
In general, wide receivers playing against division opponents underperform expectations:
Only three games in this slate are divisional matchups, and Julio and OBJ just happen to be in two of them. That wide receivers as a group tend to do worse against their division isn’t reason enough for me not to roster any given wide receiver — but if I’m paying up for a receiver I’m not thrilled if he’s on the wrong side of a basic split.
Additionally, even if the top-tier cohort exceeds value and is thus investable, that doesn’t mean that the wide receivers in that group are preferable to those in another, cheaper cohort. You have to keep in mind that you are constructing an entire lineup, and these guys are expensive. They will limit your ability to roster players you want at other positions.
Your goal isn’t to maximize one position. It’s to maximize your roster and thereby reach the cash line.
Even if these wide receivers are the optimal players at their position, they might not necessarily be the optimal wide receivers for your lineup.
As a result, you need to be willing to find value in cheaper receivers in case the slate requires it of you.
Plus, there’s always the possibility that these receivers are not the optimal players even at their own position . . .
The $8,100 – $9,100 Cohort
In Week 1, Hopkins ($8,800), Dez Bryant ($8,500), and A.J. Green ($8,600) have the third-, fourth-, and fifth-highest salaries at the position. Here’s how wide receivers in that salary range usually do:
Historically, these guys are preferable to their higher-priced peers. They are more consistent and they exceed their value by a greater percentage of the cost basis while also costing less money to roster.
Hopkins is playing at home as a favorite against a Bears defense that last year ranked 31st against No. 1 wide receivers in Football Outsiders’ Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) metric.
Dez is playing at home as a favorite against a Giants defense that last year ranked 28th in pass DVOA. Yes, like OBJ, Dez is playing against a division opponent, but I can stomach that fact easier since he’s $800 cheaper.
And Green is on a team that’s a two-point road favorite facing a Jets unit that last year was first in the league in run DVOA and against No.2 wide receivers . . . as if the Bengals needed extra incentive to give to A.J. more of the targets vacated by the departures of Marvin Jones and Mohamed Sanu and the injury to Tyler Eifert.
Can you really say that Julio and OBJ are definitely better Week 1 options than these three guys? And that they are good enough to warrant paying the extra expense in salary?
Getting Fitzy with It
You’re d*mn right, that’s a 1997 rap reference.
We’ve come full circle. In my first FantasyLabs piece in January, I recommended that people fade Larry Fitzgerald in the NFC Championship.
And now I’m saying that Fitzy is probably worth rostering. He finished last season ranked 11th in DraftKings points per game among wide receivers. He was 15th in targets and yards receiving per game with 9.13 and 75.94. He was seventh in receptions per game — because he catches such a relatively high percentage of his targets. He wasn’t a full-on scoring machine — but he was 13th at the position with 0.56 touchdowns per game.
For Week 1, Fitz is $6,300, the 23rd-highest salary. And the Cardinals are home favorites implied to score the slate’s third-highest total (26.5 points) against the Patriots.
Per the RotoViz Game Splits App, Fitz has been a solid player over the last two years as long as his starting quarterback has been healthy:
And in that time frame he has more than lived up to expectations when priced as he is now:
Even if you think that his realistic upside is limited because he scored five of his nine touchdowns last year in a two-game span, you have to admit that his 58.8 percent Consistency is enticing.
You could do a lot worse than Ol’ Lar in cash games.
I Can’t Believe That I’m Saying This . . .
Michael Crabtree? Maybe? He’s $5,500 and has the 29th-highest salary. Last year, he was 17th in targets and 26th in points with 9.13 and 15.01 per game.
As great as Amari Cooper was as a rookie and likely will be as an emerging second-year player, Crabtree actually led the Raiders in targets, receptions, and touchdowns in 2015 and is likely to see his fair share of targets this year.
In Week 1 he’s on the road facing a Saints defense that last year allowed 4,544 yards receiving and an NFL-record worst 45 touchdowns through the air. The Saints had the league’s worst pass DVOA and fourth-worst mark against No. 1 and No. 2 receivers.
Last year, Crabtree had a +3.99 Plus/Minus with 50 percent Consistency. Also, last year wide receivers priced comparably performed well against the Saints:
If you’re looking to pay down at receiver, Crabby might offer a lot of value, especially as an arbitrage play on Cooper, who has the slate’s 16th-highest salary at $7,200.
I Feel the Need — The Need for Snead
I don’t want to make too much of this — because it’s not a perfect comparison — but, in terms of age, experience, seasonal production, athletic profile, college production, and what his team invested to acquire him, the NFL player to whom Willie Snead was most comparable last year was . . . 2011 Antonio Brown.
Snead has some upside.
He was woefully underpriced most of last year, so his $4,800 salary (38th-highest) is almost the highest he has ever been priced. If we look at how Snead did last year at his highest $500 range, we’ll see a wide receiver who was consistently undervalued:
In 2015, Snead was 33rd in points and 38th in targets per game, and he’s probably priced near his floor considering that he caught 68.3 percent of his targets yet turned only three of his 69 receptions into touchdowns.
Can Snead convert touchdowns at a higher rate in 2016?
Per the RotoViz AY/A App, Brees was actually his best when throwing to Snead last year:
Even without scoring a lot of touchdowns, Snead was easily Brees’ best receiver by adjusted yards per attempt (which takes touchdowns and interceptions when targeted into account).
It would make sense for Brees to continue to target Snead this year and perhaps even to give him ‘better’ targets (i.e., targets closer to the end zone). With the Saints, Brees has turned 5.5 percent of his attempts into touchdowns.
Snead could end up with five to six scores this year if he’s targeted at a rate similar to the one with which Brees targeted him last year.
In Week 1, Snead is at home, and the Saints are implied to score the slate’s fifth-highest total (25.75 points) against an Oakland defense that last year allowed the league’s third-most receptions (225) to wide receivers.
Even if Snead doesn’t get a touchdown, he has a good chance of making value. And he could score a touchdown.
The Cheapest No. 1 Wide Receiver
First-round rookie wide receiver Corey Coleman is $5,100. If you’re not counting Steve Smith, Sr. — and I tend not to count on 37-year-old receivers recovering from Achilles tears playing in Week 1 — then Coleman is the cheapest No. 1 receiver in the slate . . . just as RG3 is the cheapest starting quarterback . . .
Just sayin’.
———
The Labyrinthian: 2016, 80
This is the 80th 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.
