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.

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