NFL Trend of the Week
The best things in life are free. Unfortunately, not many things are free these days. The best we can do is dig through the bargain bin hoping to find Led Zeppelin I among the pile of Lawrence Welk and John Denver albums. It’s rare, but it happens.
In the world of DFS, we all hope to find a cheap player who outperforms their salary and carries us to the DFS Promised Land. Let’s put on our fur coat and use the Trends tool to go thriftin’ and see what we can find.
Projections > Proj Pts > 5 to 21.2
We’ll start as we often do — using projected points to eliminate backups from our results. This sets a DraftKings Plus/Minus baseline of +1.53.
Trends > Bargain Rating > 60 to 100
Our Bargain Rating metric uses DFS player salaries to identify value options on a specific site. In this trend, we’ll focus on players with a rating at or above the 60th percentile on DraftKings.
It’s fun to find an awesome deal, but just because something is cheap doesn’t mean we should always buy it. With that in mind, let’s take our group of cheap options and see if it includes players with multiple Pro Trends.
Trends > Pro Trends > 4 to 14
By setting a minimum of four Pro Trends, the Plus/Minus improves to +2.92 and Consistency jumps over six percentage points. Now we can feel more comfortable with our selection of bargain players.
Current Matches
Apparently Golden Tate isn’t dead after all. After failing to top 41 receiving yards in a single game through the first five weeks, Tate finally erupted for 165 yards and a touchdown against the Rams in Week 6. He is averaging at least seven targets in the past 16 games, but his poor start has dropped his price into bargain territory.
Kenny Britt appears to be a thing . . . again. Over the past 16 games, he has averaged 12.1 yards per target and is currently on pace for a 1,300-yard season.
The past several months have been an interesting journey for Torrey Smith. He essentially went from being an unopened copy of The Beatles’ Abbey Road in the offseason to a dusty old copy of Until You by Terry Bradshaw (you read that right . . . Terry Bradshaw released a country album). Smith had his best game of the season last week with Colin Kaepernick at quarterback, and his DraftKings salary for Week 7 is just $3,800.
Tyrell Williams is currently averaging a Plus/Minus of +3.96 and his DraftKings salary is $4,400. He faces the Atlanta Falcons, whose pass defense ranks in the bottom-half of the league.
An Interesting Outsider
One player who failed to make our final list is Ty Montgomery. With only three Pro Trends currently, Montgomery just missed the cutoff. Regardless, his $3,000 salary is literally at the bottom of the barrel; he has a 99 percent Bargain Rating on DK. He piled up a career-high 13 touches in Week 6 while seeing snaps both out wide and in the backfield. He is a great bet to get more work this week, as both Eddie Lacy and James Starks are inactive due to injuries and Davante Adams is questionable.
