If you aren’t familiar with this weekly column and need an intro, here’s a link to the original post.
I think in addition to seeing the data compiled this way, it’s also helped me notice certain trends among the two main sites, DraftKings and FanDuel. For example, there’s a big difference between the top and bottom QBs on DraftKings, whereas on FanDuel, they’re all fairly expensive and I think it may make sense to pay up for QBs on FanDuel more often than DraftKings.
There’s a bunch of things like this – site pricing quirks we’ll call them – that are useful observations to make. I talked to Renee Miller on a podcast about a month ago and she told me something that’s really stuck with me since – it may sound obvious to some, but she treats each NFL week as it’s own individual market. It’s sometimes easy to think, “Ok, I need to get the top receivers in my GPP lineup because that’s just how you build GPP lineups.” And while that’s heuristically true and still could be for that week, I think it’s better to first judge the weekly market and then fall back on the heuristics if there’s some confusion.
Anyway, enough of my rambling…here’s the chart for Week 5.
From a DraftKings perspective, the 49ers are priced very well and thus represent the number-one ranked value on the week, despite the low implied point total at 18.3. They play Sunday night at the Giants, who have been a sneaky good team this year – they’re currently 6.5-point dogs and I’m not sure if I trust Colin Kaepernick to be good again, but it’s interesting to note their pricing on DraftKings.
The Falcons and Eagles are the two teams this week that are in the top 10 on both sites. Devonta Freeman is still relatively cheap, especially on FanDuel at $7,600, and that resulted in him being over 40% owned in FanDuel Thursday contests. Julio Jones is expensive on both sites, but the matchup against a porous Washington pass defense is just too good to pass up. I’ll have a lot of Falcons this week and some Eagles sprinkled here and there.
On FanDuel, the number-one ranked team is the Green Bay Packers and it’s not really close. Actually, their FanDuel multiplier (average Bargain Rating times implied points) is over 2,000, which is the highest we’ve seen this year. Lacy is a tremendous value at $7,600 and their three wide receivers are all reasonably priced as well. I’m expecting to see a lot of Packers at the top of leaderboards this weekend.
Good luck in Week 5!
