Earlier this preseason, I wrote “The Low End Theory.” I didn’t actually write The Low End Theory — A Tribe Called Quest did that. I just wrote about low-total football games and their potential usefulness in daily fantasy sports.
Oh, by the way, Eric Decker, Matt Forte, and Tyrod Taylor each scored more than 25 DraftKings points on Thursday night in the game with the second-lowest total on the slate. The trio averaged 28.96 DK points even though the game kicked off with a 40.5-point total.
This weekend there are a couple of real doozies on the slate. (Sh*t . . . is ‘doozies’ the plural of ‘doozy’? Is ‘doozy’ even a word? Or is it just something that my mom says? F*ck it, Freedman will figure it out.) [Editor’s Note: ‘Doozy’ is a real word. Acceptable plural forms are ‘doozies’ and ‘doozers.’]
Anyway, I’ve researched low-total games. What about the high-total affairs?
Week 2 has two games on tap with Vegas totals of at least 50 points. Let’s take a look at these (and similar) games. There’s no better time than the present, unless of course you’re presently sh*tting your pants in the high school cafeteria — only to look down and realize that you’re naked.
So while the DFS universe drools all over itself trying to figure out if it should stack Eli Manning with Odell Beckham, Jr. and Sterling Shepard or Drew Brees with Brandin Cooks and Willie Snead — we will use the magical Trends tool to see if players in particular situations perform better than others and how ownership is affected in these situations.
One quick item: Performance is important, but I’m more interested in ownership. No one is going to win a tournament by having a lineup of guys who all outperform their salary-based expectations by a couple of points. But someone could win a tournament by having a couple of low-owned players who have big games. So I’ll look at production, but really I’m looking for edges in ownership.
Throughout this piece, I’m setting the wide receiver projected floor at 3.5 points to weed out receivers whom DFS players normally would not consider playing in the first place.
Setting the Baselines
DraftKings Baseline
FanDuel Baseline
If You’re Not 15 Minutes Early, You’re Late
There have been some recent grumblings around town about Vegas not being as accurate early in the NFL season as it might be later. Heck, two teams pegged to total 40.5 points on Thursday combined to score 68.
In this first of three sections, we will determine if there’s an actionable difference in wide receiver performance and ownership in games with totals of 50 and higher in September compared to the rest of the season.
The September receivers differ slightly from the baseline, most noticeably in Plus/Minus and ownership. Let’s analyze exactly how the September players compare to those from the rest of the season.
Changing the month filter from “the game was played in September” to October, November, December, and January shows us the following: The 50-point receivers on DraftKings have a +2.47 Plus/Minus (+0.45) with 53.9 percent Consistency (+2.5 percent) at an average tournament ownership of 8.3 percent (+0.7 percent).
While receivers later in the season do provide a little more bang for your buck, they are also played at a higher ownership. September may be the best time to play a 50-point receiver in DK tournaments because of the ownership edge.
In September on FanDuel, the 50-point receivers average a +2.02 Plus/Minus with 51.4 percent Consistency at an ownership of 9.6 percent.
In the remaining months of the year, they average a +1.67 Plus/Minus (-0.35) with 52.1 percent (+0.7) Consistency at an ownership of 8.0 percent (-1.6 percent).
On FanDuel, 50-point receivers in September score more points and provide a better return on your investment, but they do so at a higher ownership percentage in tournaments.
There’s No Place Like Home, Unless You’re a Dog
It often happens that in these high-scoring games the home team is favored and the road team is the one getting points.
Let’s look at home favorites compared to road underdogs in 50-point games.
On DK, wide receivers who are home favorites in 50-point games average a +2.49 Plus/Minus with 55.6 percent Consistency at an ownership of 9.1 percent. Compared to the baseline 50-point receiver, that’s a +0.09 increase in Plus/Minus, a 2.2 percentage point increase in Consistency, and a 0.9 point increase in tournament ownership. There’s more production with higher ownership.
The road dogs on DK average a +2.17 Plus/Minus with 51.2 percent Consistency at 6.9 percent ownership. They take a hit in every area other than ownership, which decreases 1.3 percentage points from the baseline and is 2.2 percentage points lower than the ownership for the home favorites. Less production, less ownership.
If you’re wanting to get some 50-point potential in your lineup for DK’s Millionaire Maker, it looks like the road dog is the way to go in terms of historical ownership percentages.
And on FanDuel . . .
This looks almost identical to the baseline, other than the ownership increase of 0.9 percentage points.
The 50-point road underdogs on FD average a +1.63 Plus/Minus with 50.9 percent Consistency and an average tournament ownership of 6.7 percent.
Compared to the home favorite, that’s a 0.19 decrease in Plus/Minus, a 2.9 percentage point decrease in Consistency, and a 2.5 percentage point decrease in tournament ownership. If stacking 50-pointers in FD’s Sunday Million, one should look to the road dog for an ownership advantage.
The (Hidden?) Implications of Points
In this week’s 50-point games, two teams are implied to score more than 28 points and two are implied to score fewer than 25 points. Let’s see what the historical data says.
This is interesting . . .
On DK, 50-point receivers whose teams are implied to score 28.1 points or more have traditionally produced a +1.52 Plus/Minus with 50.4 percent Consistency at 11.4 percent ownership.
When compared to the baseline, they lose 0.86 points of Plus/Minus and 3.0 percentage points of Consistency, and they are owned 3.2 percentage points higher. That is something you could potentially leverage. They produce less and are owned more.
When their teams are implied to score 24.9 points or less on DK, the 50-point receivers average a +1.59 Plus/Minus with 49.6 percent Consistency at 5.8 percent ownership.
Compared to the receivers whose teams are implied to score more than 28 points, they have an increased Plus/Minus of +0.07. Importantly, they carry an ownership discount of 5.6 percentage points. They are slightly more productive (given their salaries) and vastly underowned.
And on FanDuel . . .
FD receivers whose teams are implied to score 28 or more points actually perform worse than the baseline in every way. They lose 0.84 points of Plus/Minus, suffer a 5.4 percentage point hit in Consistency, and have an increased ownership of 1.6 percentage points.
Those FD receivers whose teams are implied to score less than 25 points average a +1.21 Plus/Minus with 49.6 percent Consistency at 6.0 percent ownership. Here you get a discount on ownership plus an increased Plus/Minus and additional Consistency.
What Does It All Mean?
I think that there are three main takeaways from this study:
- More often than not, the receivers in these 50-point games do what you want them to do. In general, these guys do well on a salary-adjusted basis.
- Don’t be afraid of a perceived Vegas inaccuracy in games played early in the season: It hasn’t affected receiver performance. If anything, receivers offer more value earlier in the year.
- This point is directly applicable to a couple of games this week: If you’re trying to differentiate your tournament lineups and still play 50-point receivers, you can get an ownership edge by rostering the road underdogs and fading the home favorites.
Good luck out there. Don’t get pwned.
