Routines are less likely to be disrupted at home, where players are more comfortable — but does that comfort always translate to daily fantasy production? What about ownership in tournaments?
In Part 1 of this four-part series, we’ll use the Trends tool to look at the most consistent quarterbacks over the past two seasons.
Perhaps there’s value in examining patterns with home/road splits (and the further impact of Vegas favorites/underdogs) that can help us uncover value or contrarian situations to target in the future.
Baseline Trend and Backup Quarterbacks
Our signature metric at FantasyLabs is Plus/Minus, which shows how players perform in the context of their salary-based expectations.
Backup quarterbacks who see just a few snaps in garbage time — or don’t play at all — are still responsible for their salary-based expectations. These players are typically priced at $5,000 on DraftKings, so it makes sense to exclude them from our baseline trend. Historically, quarterbacks with salaries of at least $5,100 have traditionally performed above expectations:
On a macro level, what happens if we break things down by home/away splits, but also by favorites/underdogs according to Vegas?
What stands out right away is that quarterbacks who played on teams favored to win were owned roughly twice as much as underdogs, although they typically provided the most value at home.
Interestingly, home underdogs carried the lowest ownership, but there was no significant drop off in value outside of home favorites. In fact, home underdogs had the second-highest Plus/Minus and Consistency Rating. That could be an edge in guaranteed prize pools (GPPs).
Home
When the season starts, be sure to keep an eye on our NFL Matchups Dashboard as well as our NFL News feed to see which quarterbacks are still starting (I’m looking at you, Colin Kaepernick), but let’s start with the most efficient quarterbacks priced above $5,000, with a count of five or more games, and playing at home over the past two seasons:
Rookie Dak Prescott’s hyper-efficiency took the NFL by storm last season, and he finished with the third-highest Total Quarterback Rating (81.7). According to our Trends tool, he was also criminally underowned, while hitting or exceeding his salary-based expectations in all eight Dallas home games.
Of the most consistent home quarterbacks, only Drew Brees provided more value than Dak — and he played in the Coors Field of NFL DFS.
Ben Roethlisberger’s home/road splits are far from a secret — he was one of the highest-owned from this group — but in 16 games on the road over this same period, he provided a Plus/Minus of -3.13 and Consistency Rating of 43.8 percent. Incredibly, there doesn’t seem to be an ownership edge in rostering Roethlisberger on the road, as he has historically been slightly higher-owned away from Heinz Field at 9.9 percent.
Another thing that stands out is that Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady didn’t make the cut. Both players hovered around a 60 percent Consistency Rating at high ownership, but they did have solid Plus/Minus numbers. It’s possible high-priced quarterbacks carry more upside in terms of raw points — and that matters — but it’s also tough to hit salary-based expectations consistently.
Let’s take this one step further. Here are the trends for those same quarterbacks, but this time as a Vegas favorite or underdog:
Small samples are a huge problem in NFL, but in regards to game theory, we can still find some potential takeaways.
A few things stand out that could be actionable:
- Andrew Luck carried higher ownership as a home favorite, but in a small sample he provided more value as a home underdog similar to our baseline trends.
- Brees and Roethlisberger were rostered heavily as home favorites, but given their high Plus/Minus values they were still valuable, especially in cash games.
- Some players were much better as home favorites (Matt Stafford), but be on the lookout for players like Matt Ryan, who carried just as much (or more in a small sample) upside as an underdog.
Away
Outside of lower ownership, is there any reason to be excited about rostering a quarterback on the road?
The Consistency Ratings were lower across the board on the road, but what can we learn from this?
Blake Bortles is probably #bad, but he’s usually priced that way. Again, these numbers are over the past two seasons. In 2016-17, Bortles regressed to a 71 percent Consistency Rating, which is still much more respectable than I anticipated. Don’t go all in on Bortles, but his low salaries and ability to rack up points at the ends of games still proved valuable.
Kaepernick was a player who lived in poor game script but consistently hit value on DraftKings last year in part to his rushing ability; he led the position with 43 rushing yards per game in 2016.
Finally, here’s how the road quarterbacks performed, separated as favorites and underdogs:
Actionable takeaways:
- Marcus Mariota completed 62.9 percent of his red-zone passes last season for 18 touchdowns and zero interceptions; he saw low ownership on the road regardless of his favorite/dog designation.
- Andy Dalton and Carson Palmer — like Andrew Luck — provided more value as an underdog and did so at lower ownership.
- Kaepernick probably won 1.7 percent of the field a lot of money as a road dog this past season . . . and still no Brady or Rodgers to be found on the road while sorting by Consistency.
Conclusion
- Quarterbacks at home and favored by Vegas historically provide the most value, but home underdogs could be intriguing tournament considerations.
- Quarterbacks on the negative side of massive splits like Brees and Roethlisberger don’t always see a massive ownership discount.
- High-priced quarterbacks like Brady and Rodgers may have huge upside, but their salaries make it tough to hit value consistently.
- Garbage time, poor game scripts, and a rushing floor can provide quarterback consistency at low ownership — especially when they’re cheap.
