Most of us realize that when a Vegas line is moving one way or the other, that is significant. We realize that generally when a team’s point projection is decreasing, that is bad. But from a fantasy perspective: how bad and for who? Here, I’m going to take a look at reverse line movement through the lens of the Vegas Trends we have at Fantasy Labs.
When the majority of the bets are coming in on one side and yet the line is moving the other way, that’s reverse line movement. This is usually caused by sharp money coming in on the less popular side and it’s something to definitely watch out for.
For quarterbacks, being on the wrong side of the reverse movement has resulted in a loss of 0.4 points over the past couple of seasons. These are the results when I isolate teams getting 60% or more of the action while the line is moving the other way:
Conversely, when a team is getting 40% or less of the bets and the line is moving in favor of their team, the results are quite good.
It’s interesting to note the difference in “Average expected points” between the two groups. By reverse engineering the average expected points into a salary figure, the average price for a favored QB was around $6400 and the average price in the second group was around $5200 on DraftKings. The more expensive, favored QB is still likely to produce more raw points, but more value can be generated from taking the underdog who is benefitting from the line movement.
Interestingly, the results at running back weren’t really affected by the line movement:
Opening Underdog:
Opening Favorite:
Wide receivers followed the path of the QB though where the opening underdog generated over a half point more value. This is the category where the “actual points” column is the closest. Though value was lost, the WRs on the favorite still scored more overall, but the difference was less than a point.
Surprisingly, the team defense benefitting from the reverse line movement actually LOST over a point of value compared to the opening favorite. I think this is the case because although the line is moving in the other direction, many of these teams still close as favorites overall. The salary differences showed that these teams also have more highly regarded QBs, who are probably less likely to turn the ball over.
The position that benefitted the most from reverse line movement is QB. If you look at the past results, it seems like a lot of times these teams have second or third tier QBs who may be in a better spot to succeed than initially anticipated. Here are a few of the most recent matches, as an example:
Smith was the most expensive QB to benefit from the trend in Week 4 and he was still only priced at QB15. It’s a QB-centric league and it makes sense that as the QB goes, the team goes. Running back gained no real bonus from reverse line movement and the team’s fantasy defense was surprisingly hurt by it.
