Friday, September 11, 2015

FanDuel Week 1 Ownership Rates

Most of last season, I penned a weekly feature FanDuel piece at Footballguys.com 'Playing the Percentages'. The premise was to collect ownership data from contests which lock on Thursday night and construct the highest-owned lineup, while maximizing the salary cap possible. The results were well above-average throughout the season and look for a similar piece at Footballguys.com to begin Week 2.

For the opening weekend of action, this post will serve as a proxy. Thursday night's game saw Rob Gronkowski and Antonio Brown as highly owned commodities to no surprise and DeAngelo Williams and Dion Lewis supply value compared to their low salaries from the running back position. Using collected data from those Thurday night contests, here is the most-owned lineup combination for the rest of Week 1:

*Format is Player-Salary-Ownership Rate*

Player Cost Own
QB Sam Bradford 7500 14.8
RB Eddie Lacy 8500 23.2
RB Lamar Miller 7300 14.0
WR Davante Adams 5500 27.5
WR Jordan Matthews 6800 20.2
WR Julio Jones 9000 15.7
TE Greg Olsen 5900 18.5
K Brandon McManus 4500 14.7
DST New York Jets 4400 16.9
59400 18.4

The most owned players by position work well this week in terms of getting close to the salary cap of $60,000. Here are the options with decisive advantages over their positional peers:

Sam Bradford: Nearly 2:1 advantage or No.2 quarterback of the week, Tyrod Taylor.

Eddie Lacy: More than 50% higher than any other running back. Lamar Miller in a cluster with higher priced Adrian Peterson, question mark Doug Martin, and DeMarco Murray.

Davante Adams, Jordan Matthews: Both are clearly the top-2 receiver options in terms of ownership. Julio Jones in a tier by himself as well. Dez Bryant, Odell Beckham Jr., and Brandin Cooks are secondary options.

Greg Olsen: Another auto-play option, especially with Rob Gronkowski now out of the mix for Sunday lineups. Olsen has a 3:1 advantage over No.2 Jimmy Graham with less than 6%.

Brandon McManus: Like Olsen, McManus holds a dominant edge over the rest of the kicker pool. A high-powered offense plus a strong over-under with a $4,500 price point. Kicker is a perfect position to spread exposure around, but when a low-cost option is this highly-owned, they are strong plays in the 50% or higher range.

At DST, the Jets and Dolphins are 1A and 1B options for the week. Being $300 apart allows for an exposure split for owners who play multiple lineups and contests. Both fit under the salary cap with the lineup above.


3 comments:

  1. Love the post and the concept of this article, Chad. The lineup you presented is identical to what I plan on entering into my cash games, but I keep trying to toy with it so as not to waste $600 of cap space. In week 1, are there just so many good values, that you think it's okay to leave some money on the table in favor of the best values?

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  2. Move up 5000 to the Seahawks defense and you have a full cap lineup.

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  3. Is there a link to the entire list?

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