For many DFS players Vegas’ projected team score is the single most important predictor for DFS success. With a quarter of the season of the books (hard to believe), it’s time to look at where Vegas has been successful and where they have come up short in 2015. The benchmark for a “good score” I’ll be using throughout the article is a projected point total of 24 or more. This will give us roughly the top 10 teams each week.
It’s been hard to feel great about the QB position in 2015 so far. Ben and Luck are dealing with injuries and no one really knows what to make of Peyton or Brees. Before I ran this trend, I expected QB to grade very poorly in 2015 even when Vegas had a team in a favorable spot. What I found was quite the opposite:
With the elite quarterbacks mostly humming along in 2014, I was also surprised to see that the 2015 numbers are smashing the 2014 numbers in the Vegas category in Plus/Minus.
| Season | First 4 Weeks +/- | First 4 Weeks Avg Raw Points | Full Season +/- | Full Season Avg Raw Points |
| 2014 | +1.06 | 19.46 | +0.82 | 18.65 |
| 2015 | +2.58 | 19.31 | ?? | ?? |
Here’s the thing though, if you look at the “Raw points” category, quarterbacks are performing just a little bit worse than they were last year in the 24+ point games. However, the Plus/Minus in 2015 is over twice what it was last year.
I think this goes back to my “Quarterbacks for Sale” article I wrote a couple weeks ago. Many QBs are being priced down on DraftKings in 2015, so even with nearly identical raw performance, there is still a dramatic value jump due to pricing. Case in point: Tyrod Taylor, the season’s fifth highest scoring QB in terms of DK points per game, is STILL the 13th most expensive QB in Week 5 at $5800.
You would kind of expect Vegas to be a better predictor for QB success as the season progresses, but that was not the case in 2014. In fact, from Weeks 8-17, quarterbacks playing in games where Vegas projected their team to score 24+ points actually LOST value. It’s pretty crazy to think that over the entire second half of the season, picking QBs in these games did more harm than good, but here are the results:
The good news in 2015 is, with the pricing market down, there will still be value even if raw statistical performance follows the same path as 2014.
Moving onto running back, Vegas has been a good, not great indicator so far in 2014, which I found somewhat surprising. Running backs are generating only half the Plus/Minus value comparing to last year:
What types of RBs do we generally like in DFS? One whose teams are favored and projected to score a lot of points, right? That will generally lead to a game script that says the team’s running back will receive extra carries and will also likely have more chances in the red zone to punch one in.
When I search for running backs priced $6000 and above on DraftKings whose teams are projected by Vegas to score 24+, the results have been horrible in 2015:
The “favored” bit is implied because to date in 2015, there has not been a team projected to score 24+ and be an underdog. Only three of 14 backs (21.4%) have exceeded value in this scenario. Honestly, this likely has more to do with the actual players in the result set.
CJ Anderson, DeMarco Murray, and Jeremy Hill are all listed more than once and have all struggled in general. Still, this is a reminder that premium backs in good Vegas spots aren’t necessarily auto-plays. It’s easy to turn up our noses now, but many of us were on these players a couple of weeks ago.
We’ll look at pass catchers and defenses in an upcoming article, but the results for Part 1 of this series really surprised me at both positions. But for me, the main takeaway is trust your process over results. Have premium priced running backs been bad in 2015? Absolutely.
Does that mean auto-fade Devonta Freeman against the Redskins this week? No. I doubt there are very many trends out there where Murray, CJA, or Hill are adding positive value. The pricing market will adjust, Vegas will adjust, and there will definitely be good plays in the future.
