In the first installment of this series I wrote about Vince Lombardi and my douchebag hat. Next, I wrote about Jimmy Conway and learned more than I cared to know about Frodo and the Tower of Amon Sûl.
The Company Picnic
I’m the youngest of six brothers. That’s part of the reason my name is Kelly. My parents had already named so many dudes that they decided before I was born that no matter what I would be called Kelly. It’s a f*cking unisex name.
I’m also a lot younger than all of my brothers. My parents slammed out five kids in about six years and then took an extended hiatus before accidentally having me.
One year when I was about 10 years old one of my brothers took me with him to his company picnic. And when I say “company” I mean the small little sh*thole Italian restaurant in Rhode Island where he worked.
Toward the end of this picnic a touch football game broke out. It was a bunch of Italian cooks, servers, dishwashers, and my brother and me. I was way too young to be playing in this football game. Everyone else in it was at least 18 years old and the majority of them were really big, fat, and greasy. Nearly all of them had been slamming beers all day. Quite predictably, nobody wanted me on their team. I wasn’t picked to play, so my brother got stuck with me.
Eventually the game was tied, and the imaginary clock had ticked down in the fourth quarter. We had just one final play before we would be forced to go into overtime. My brother was the quarterback. We huddled up. He looked at me and said, “Go deep” — which is what he had said to me like 30 times previously that day.
They would draw up all these elaborate plays with guys doing this and that and then before we broke the huddle they’d remember the small person standing there and say, “Go deep.”
I went deep a whole bunch of times that day and was not targeted once. It seemed “go deep” was actually code for “stay the f*ck out of the way and don’t get hurt although if you do get hurt just suck it up and keep going deep.”
But I had the enthusiasm of a 10-year-old boy who was playing in his first ever Millionaire Maker tournament, so deep I went — over and over again. And on that final play, the craziest thing happened. My brother threw me the ball.
Apparently, after you go deep 30 times and never get thrown the ball, the defense eventually forgets about you. Either that, or they’re too fat and drunk slow to cover you (in my memory, I prefer the latter). Whatever the case may be, on that final play I was nude and streaking down the sideline as fast as I could.
My brother launched a hail mary, and I was racing to keep up with it. I couldn’t catch very well, and the ball was bigger than my head. Somehow I caught it and floated into the imaginary end zone untouched. The game was over.
That story has lived on in that small Italian restaurant’s company picnics every year since. Unfortunately, that was the highlight of my football career.
Is There a Point to That Story?
Guaranteed prize pools are like company picnics. All it takes is one unexpected play (or player) to become an immortal winner.
In our Player Models each week you can find our FantasyLabs ownership projections for both the DraftKings Millionaire Maker and FanDuel Sunday Million. These projections have been incredibly accurate.
In addition, we have historic tournament ownership data available in our Trends tool, which you can utilize to pinpoint historic ownership in exact situations with countless filters.
In the two previous pieces in this series I’ve used our Trends tool to examine past ownership data to see if we can uncover any spots that can give us an advantage when building GPP lineups.
This piece: Vegas spreads and wide receivers.
Vegas Favorites
DraftKings
I broke down Vegas favorites into four ranges according to the spread. Because I’m concentrating on tournament ownership and concerned only with the ownership of players who will help us win, I set the projected ceilings of each FanDuel and DraftKings sample at a minimum of 15 and 16.5 points. Since DK has points-per-reception scoring and offers three bonus points for wide receivers who reach 100 yards rushing or receiving, the increased ceiling on DK was a necessary adjustment. These are the results I got for the favorites:
Not surprisingly, average WR ownership increases as the spread increases. The Plus/Minus increases as well.
The most notable finding from this grouping of favorites is the relatively disappointing performance of the WRs favored between four to seven points. These WRs have both the lowest Plus/Minus (+1.75) and average points per game (15.15).
According to the numbers, the only ownership advantage you could potentially gain here is by playing WRs in the lowest spread games.
That said, the WRs playing in games with spreads of at least 10.5 points have performed exceptionally well. They outperform their salary-based expectations by a good margin (+3.32), average a healthy 16.49 points per game, and do so with 57.9 percent Consistency. Combining this data with our weekly FantasyLabs projected ownership could give you an advantage in GPPs.
FanDuel
The results on FD and DK are nearly identical. Favorite WRs playing in games with spreads of four to seven points have historically been the players to avoid.
Large favorites are owned most heavily (14.5 percent) but also produce the highest Plus/Minus (+2.72) and FD points per game (15.0). Most impressive is the Consistency (64.1 percent) with which these large favorites exceed their salary-based expectations.
Once again, this data can be combined with our FantasyLabs projected ownership to gain an edge in GPPs or cash games:
Vegas Underdogs
DraftKings
Don’t try to get cute and mess around with huge underdogs — they nearly broke my fancy graph-making machine. Their average ownership (3.7 percent) is pretty similar to that of the WRs playing in games with a spread of 7.5 to 10 points (4.6 percent) — but the huge underdogs produce a negative (-0.26) Plus/Minus while the latter cohort still manages to produce a +1.57 Plus/Minus.
The sweet spot for underdog WRs is spreads ranging from four to 10 points. In terms of salary-based performance, this is where you can find both low average ownership and a solid return on your investment.
You can also get solid production from underdogs in games with a slight spread, but there’s also a risk of inflated ownership with those games. However, this risk can mitigated by relying on FantasyLabs ownership projections.
FanDuel
Normally what we see on DK is what we see on FD. That’s not true in this case. These results are unique.
On DK you should avoid WRs playing as large underdogs at all costs, but on FD you should seek them out. In terms of the relationship between Plus/Minus and ownership percentages, the WRs playing as gigantic dogs have generally afforded the largest return on FD.
And whereas on DK the range that is traditionally most profitable is four to 10 points, those are the spreads you should intentionally avoid on FD.
The Anti-Climax
About eight years after the company picnic I found myself in a very similar situation streaking down the sideline hoping to outrun a desperation pass.
But this time I had a high-school uniform on, and I was playing against our most hated rival. I never caught up to the ball. I stretched and dove, but the ball wasn’t in my hands. And my team lost.
GPPs, like life, are pretty f*cked up.
– Use FantasyLabs projected ownership to help you select WRs who are favorites of 10.5 points or more on both DK and FD.
– Stay away from favorites of four to seven points on both sites when feasible.
– Treat DK and FD as polar opposites when it comes to big underdogs. If a WR is an underdog of at least 10.5 points, steer clear on DK and instead seek out WRs with spreads of four to 10 points. On FD, seek out the huge underdogs and avoid the four- to 10-point spread.
Next time, we’ll look at TEs.
