NFL Trend of the Week
Paying up for wide receivers could be a popular strategy in Week 17, with players like Jordy Nelson, T.Y. Hilton, Doug Baldwin, and Michael Thomas all having high FantasyLabs ownership projections.
Rather than pay up to eat chalk, let’s use our Trends tool to pinpoint players with low projected ownership and high ceiling projections.
Projections > Proj Ownership > 0 to 8
We’re starting this trend by filtering out any players projected to be owned in nine percent or more of DraftKings tournaments.
Projections > Projected Ceiling > 75 to 99
Setting the Projected Ceiling Rating to a minimum of 75 allows us to exploit the low ownership projections by pinpointing players with historically high ceilings. Unsurprisingly, this filter improves the cohort raw production, Plus/Minus, and Consistency. It also, however, increases the actual ownership. It’s a balancing act.
As a bonus, let’s narrow this trend further by adding in the Vegas Score filter.
Vegas Filters > Vegas Score > 60 to 99
Using games with Vegas Scores above 60 improves the cohort production. At the same time, actual ownership has increased. Nevertheless, to have players with this production and historical ownership of less than 10 percent is good.
Current Matches
There’s a healthy number of WRs who match for this trend this week. I’ll touch on a few of them.
Julio Jones and Willie Snead: Four catches and 60 yards is not what everyone hoped for in Julio’s return last week, but his prospects are looking up. He’s one week healthier in Week 17 and playing in a game with the highest Vegas over/under of the week. He’s projected to be owned in only five to eight percent of tournaments. Those playing Jones may want to look at the other side of the ball, where Snead currently has a projected ceiling of 26.2 DK points. The presence of Brandin Cooks and Michael Thomas drops his ownership percentage to just two to four percent.
Sammy Watkins: Last week, Sammy finally had the performance everyone knows he’s capable of having. Unfortunately, it may be tough to build on that, as the Bills will reportedly start E.J. Manuel at quarterback in Week 17. Monitor our NFL News feed for any updates on this situation.
Adam Thielen: He continues to surpass expectations each week. Over the past month, he has exceeded his expected points 60 percent of the time, averaging a ridiculous Plus/Minus of +7.86.
Tyreek Hill: Along those same lines, Le Freak has exceeded his expected points in 80 percent of his games with an average Plus/Minus of +3.86.
Good luck this week!
