If you aren’t familiar with this weekly column and need an intro, here’s a link to the original post.
Every week I’ve done this column, I’ve talked about how we should treat each individual NFL DFS week — really, every individual slate of any DFS sport — as its own entity. Prices and matchups change and as a result, our thinking should as well.
The big difference in Week 6 as opposed to the former weeks of the season is the incredibly high totals on games. If we include the Thursday night game between the Falcons and Saints (I’m not including the data below, by the way), there were four games that had a total of at least 50 points or higher. Any one of those would’ve been the first of the year, and we have four in one week.
As a result, while we should always be price sensitive to the site we play at, I think perhaps a week like this is one to be a little less price sensitive. The difference between the high total games (the Patriots-Colts opened at 55) and the lower total games (the Redskins-Jets is at 40.5) is huge — much bigger than we usually see in most weeks. Because of that, I think it’s okay to spend up even to forgo a bit of value to get exposure to those contests.
Anyway, here’s the table of team rankings and I’ll give you my quick thoughts below.
On DraftKings, the number-one team by quite a bit is the San Francisco 49ers. Say what you want about Colin Kaepernick, but he’s currently a minimum-priced QB and has 30 fantasy point potential like he showed in Week 1. Also, his top receiver, Anquan Boldin is coming off an 8-107-1 game against the Giants and is only $4,300. They get a struggling Ravens team this week and could end up being very nice, cheap GPP plays.
On FanDuel, the Patriots are massive values — their FanDuel multiplier at 2,232 is the highest we’ve seen this season. That means they’re a team with very high value players and also projected to score a lot of points by Vegas. Interestingly, Antonio Gates was much higher owned than Gronk in FanDuel Thursday contests — I don’t know if that will hold come Sunday, but if so, the Patriots will win people a lot of money in tournaments.
The Packers are the only team that are top-10 on both sites. Eddie Lacy looks to be an incredible play, especially on FanDuel, but I think he’s underpriced on DraftKings as well. He has a ridiculous 17 Pro Trends on FanDuel this week — the highest we’ve seen. Rodgers is playing at home, favored by 10, they have a total above 50, and they’re going against a bad Chargers defense. What more do you need?
As always, good luck in Week 6!
