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Sunday, October 4, 2015
Saturday, October 3, 2015
Trust or Fade: Sunday Injury Expectations
Earlier in the week, I made a trust or fade recommendation for the injured players at risk at being limited on Sunday for those constructing lineups for the Thursday night FanDuel slate. After Friday's practice participation report, media interviews, and some Saturday updates, those recommendations sometimes change.
Here's the Sunday morning update on which game time decisions are safe to roster on the FanDuel Sunday slate and which situations you should fade.
I believe Julio Jones, Eddie Lacy, Randall Cobb, Devonta Freeman, T.Y. Hilton, Brandin Cooks, Doug Martin, John Brown, Ladarius Green, and Allen Hurns will see their usual workload today. Your decision to roster them at FanDuel should be based on value and expectation, with little concern for injury.
I'm more pessimistic on Chris Ivory, Demarco Murray, and Dwayne Allen, who may be active but aren't healthy enough to be heavily used. Eric Decker and Davante Adams haven't been ruled out yet, but are not expected to play. None of these players should be in your DFS lineup.
900 ET: Decker is active today but remains a clear fade for me.
That leaves a short list, but all four situations here are critical. I'll update each of these situations with any breaking news on Sunday morning.
ANDREW LUCK | 9100 | Shoulder injury | Questionable
Cash: FADE
GPP:LEAN FADE FADE
You can read my extended thoughts on Luck above the subscriber fold in my Sunday Expectations feature at Footballguys.
In short, until we hear otherwise, I see more reasons to fade Luck this morning than roster him. However, if Luck is healthy enough to convince the medical staff and coaches to start him today, the matchup and upside will change both recommendations above to LEAN TRUST.
That's my general recommendation. Personally, I'm paying the extra $100 for Aaron Rodgers in my cash lineups and limiting my Luck exposure to GPPs only today.
900 ET: Multiple media sources are reporting Luck is out today.
ARIAN FOSTER | 8000 | Groin strain | Questionable
Cash: FADE
GPP: LEAN FADE
Since the details of Foster's surgery were reported, I've written I expect Foster to return between Week 2 and Week 4, with Week 4 the most likely return to play date. I do think Foster meets that expectation today. However, I also wrote that I expected Foster to be immediately ready for a full workload upon his return. I don't think Foster meets that expectation today.
Foster isn't a lock to be active, but his Friday media comments strongly suggested he'll play. Unfortunately, Foster also hinted he'd rotate with Alfred Blue and try to stay as fresh as possible for the Texans' Thursday night game against Indianapolis in four days. There's a slim chance Foster feels good early and is too effective to keep off the field. But I think 7-12 touches is much more likely than 15-20+ today.
MARSHAWN LYNCH | 8600 | Calf strain | Questionable
Cash: FADE
GPP: FADE
I don't think Lynch will be active on Monday night. He should not be in your FanDuel lineup under any circumstances.
DREW BREES | 8400 | Shoulder contusion | Probable
Cash: LEAN FADE
GPP: LEAN FADE
Brees managed three consecutive limited practices and throwing sessions without a setback this week and is expected to play. However, the risk of in-game fatigue or setback or general ineffectiveness due to the injury and time off is just high enough to recommend avoiding Brees in all contests this week.
I believe Julio Jones, Eddie Lacy, Randall Cobb, Devonta Freeman, T.Y. Hilton, Brandin Cooks, Doug Martin, John Brown, Ladarius Green, and Allen Hurns will see their usual workload today. Your decision to roster them at FanDuel should be based on value and expectation, with little concern for injury.
I'm more pessimistic on Chris Ivory, Demarco Murray, and Dwayne Allen, who may be active but aren't healthy enough to be heavily used. Eric Decker and Davante Adams haven't been ruled out yet, but are not expected to play. None of these players should be in your DFS lineup.
900 ET: Decker is active today but remains a clear fade for me.
That leaves a short list, but all four situations here are critical. I'll update each of these situations with any breaking news on Sunday morning.
ANDREW LUCK | 9100 | Shoulder injury | Questionable
Cash: FADE
GPP:
You can read my extended thoughts on Luck above the subscriber fold in my Sunday Expectations feature at Footballguys.
In short, until we hear otherwise, I see more reasons to fade Luck this morning than roster him. However, if Luck is healthy enough to convince the medical staff and coaches to start him today, the matchup and upside will change both recommendations above to LEAN TRUST.
That's my general recommendation. Personally, I'm paying the extra $100 for Aaron Rodgers in my cash lineups and limiting my Luck exposure to GPPs only today.
900 ET: Multiple media sources are reporting Luck is out today.
ARIAN FOSTER | 8000 | Groin strain | Questionable
Cash: FADE
GPP: LEAN FADE
Since the details of Foster's surgery were reported, I've written I expect Foster to return between Week 2 and Week 4, with Week 4 the most likely return to play date. I do think Foster meets that expectation today. However, I also wrote that I expected Foster to be immediately ready for a full workload upon his return. I don't think Foster meets that expectation today.
Foster isn't a lock to be active, but his Friday media comments strongly suggested he'll play. Unfortunately, Foster also hinted he'd rotate with Alfred Blue and try to stay as fresh as possible for the Texans' Thursday night game against Indianapolis in four days. There's a slim chance Foster feels good early and is too effective to keep off the field. But I think 7-12 touches is much more likely than 15-20+ today.
MARSHAWN LYNCH | 8600 | Calf strain | Questionable
Cash: FADE
GPP: FADE
I don't think Lynch will be active on Monday night. He should not be in your FanDuel lineup under any circumstances.
DREW BREES | 8400 | Shoulder contusion | Probable
Cash: LEAN FADE
GPP: LEAN FADE
Brees managed three consecutive limited practices and throwing sessions without a setback this week and is expected to play. However, the risk of in-game fatigue or setback or general ineffectiveness due to the injury and time off is just high enough to recommend avoiding Brees in all contests this week.
Hope variance shines on you today in your FanDuel contests. Footballguys Insiders can read my full breakdown of today's injury expectations.
Medical Check
There are some big name injuries this week including the Colts Andrew Luck. Should you play Luck Marshawn Lynch, and Julio Jones in your lineups this week or is it better to look elsewhere? Find out here.
Fades and Contrarian Plays: Week 4
All of our FanDuel NFL coverage is free this week. So if you're not a subscriber, this is a great chance to look under the hood and see what we're made of. You can follow this link to our FanDuel landing page, which hosts all our weekly features and tools. Enjoy!
One of those weekly features is a tournament strategy piece that analyzes Thursday ownership percentages, and identifies which chalk plays we should avoid and which ones we should target. You can read it in its entirety here.
Since we're open to the public this week, rather than posting an excerpt per normal, I'm going to go into some the thought process and the theory behind fading players.
First and foremost, we should check in to see how the chalk play is doing through three weeks. The table that follows is taken from The Contrarian, which is a follow up piece that analyzes a few under-owned players. Here are the highest owned for each position, per Thursday night GPPs (since that's the data we're basing our strategy off of), and their subsequent fantasy points:
Not great, Bob. Chalk is averaging 13.02 points. There are a lot of factors in play but you get a sense of why fading a popular play might work out in your favor.
But it's more than just looking at projected percentages and bypassing every player that's heavily exposed. We need to be more logical. We need to study matchups and use Vegas betting lines to guide our choices. And when using Vegas, we need to know how to implement that info when building lineups, but also consider that Vegas can be wrong. Last week only four games had an over/under greater than 46 points. Nine games scored at least 47 with four them hitting 60+.
Sometimes, the best way to be a conrarian is to fade Vegas. As an example, the over/under of the Rams/Cardinals game is 44 points with the Cardinals favored by six. This projects a score of 25-19 in favor of the home team. In theory, Carson Palmer should still be in play, as should Larry Fitzgerald. However, we may not be giving enough credit to the Rams defense in this situation. Football Outsiders currently ranks them sixth overall, and ninth against the pass. Thus far, Palmer has been sacked only once, the fewest among all quarterbacks. The Rams have the second most sacks with 13. Something has to give. I think it's a much closer game and Fitzgerald doesn't reach tournament value. Therefore, I listed him as a fade.
And this isn't about "Vegas being wrong". It's about being on the right side of Vegas. It's also about understanding when and why an under-owned player should be in our lineups. This topic came up in a staff email regarding the exposure of Colin Kaepernick and Karlos Williams (I'm going to use Kirk Cousins instead of Kaepernick as an example, since I briefly and uncomfortably plugged him as a contrarian play this week). Maurile Tremblay, mastermind behind the Interactive Value Charts, said it better than I can so I'm going to quote him verbatim:
Nailed it. This is along the same logic John Lee laid out in a Rotogrinders forum last year and something we dug into with more specifics in Week 1. Using that logic, we have even more ammo to fade Fitzgerald. For him to hit tournament value (3x) he'll need to score more than 22 points. He has done that twice already this season, which is fantastic. But he has done it only 32 times in his career over 173 games--18.5 percent of the time (per Thursday GPP data, he is 27.1 percent owned). History is against him doing it three times in four games.
Kirk Cousins, on the other hand, only needs 18.3 points to hit value. Over his limited starts (12 games with at least 10 pass attempts), and I grant you sample size gets in the way, he has scored at least 18 points seven times, including last week--58 percent. So we can comfortably say, according to past performance, Cousins is going to give us 18 points at least half of the time. Whether or not that happens in Week 4 remains to be seen. The Eagles defense may be the play, since they have allowed a quarterback rating of 81.7--seventh best--and have one interception for every touchdown allowed (five). But they have allowed the tenth most passing yards and this game has an over/under of 47 (second highest of the week) with Captain Kirk and Co. home-dogs by 2.5 points. Smells like a GPP to me.
Again, it's all about the process. Outliers win tournaments and they're impossible to predict. Which is why seeking out under-owned players is so important.
Follow @justinbonnema
One of those weekly features is a tournament strategy piece that analyzes Thursday ownership percentages, and identifies which chalk plays we should avoid and which ones we should target. You can read it in its entirety here.
Since we're open to the public this week, rather than posting an excerpt per normal, I'm going to go into some the thought process and the theory behind fading players.
First and foremost, we should check in to see how the chalk play is doing through three weeks. The table that follows is taken from The Contrarian, which is a follow up piece that analyzes a few under-owned players. Here are the highest owned for each position, per Thursday night GPPs (since that's the data we're basing our strategy off of), and their subsequent fantasy points:
| Week | Position | Player | Own % | Price | FPs |
| 1 | QB | Sam Bradford | 14.8 | $7,500 | 15.44 |
| 1 | RB | Eddie Lacy | 23.2 | $8,500 | 16.9 |
| 1 | WR | Davante Adams | 27.5 | $5,500 | 7.9 |
| 1 | TE | Greg Olsen | 18.5 | $5,900 | 1.6 |
| 1 | K | Brandon McManus | 14.7 | $4,500 | 18 |
| 1 | Def | New York Jets | 16.9 | $4,400 | 17 |
| 2 | QB | Drew Brees | 13.9 | $8,900 | 13.1 |
| 2 | RB | Carlos Hyde | 33.4 | $7,000 | 8.1 |
| 2 | WR | Julio Jones | 37.7 | $8,800 | 20 |
| 2 | TE | Rob Gronkowski | 16.8 | $8,300 | 20.8 |
| 2 | K | Josh Brown | 13.7 | $4,500 | 9 |
| 2 | Def | St Louis Rams | 17.2 | $4,900 | 4 |
| 3 | QB | Tom Brady | 31.5 | $8,700 | 22.72 |
| 3 | RB | Dion Lewis | 20.9 | $6,700 | 15.2 |
| 3 | WR | Julian Edelman | 38 | $7,700 | 12.5 |
| 3 | TE | Rob Gronkowski | 32.3 | $8,400 | 12.1 |
| 3 | K | Stephen Gostkowski | 11.1 | $5,000 | 17 |
| 3 | Def | New York Jets | 17 | $4,500 | 3 |
Not great, Bob. Chalk is averaging 13.02 points. There are a lot of factors in play but you get a sense of why fading a popular play might work out in your favor.
But it's more than just looking at projected percentages and bypassing every player that's heavily exposed. We need to be more logical. We need to study matchups and use Vegas betting lines to guide our choices. And when using Vegas, we need to know how to implement that info when building lineups, but also consider that Vegas can be wrong. Last week only four games had an over/under greater than 46 points. Nine games scored at least 47 with four them hitting 60+.
Sometimes, the best way to be a conrarian is to fade Vegas. As an example, the over/under of the Rams/Cardinals game is 44 points with the Cardinals favored by six. This projects a score of 25-19 in favor of the home team. In theory, Carson Palmer should still be in play, as should Larry Fitzgerald. However, we may not be giving enough credit to the Rams defense in this situation. Football Outsiders currently ranks them sixth overall, and ninth against the pass. Thus far, Palmer has been sacked only once, the fewest among all quarterbacks. The Rams have the second most sacks with 13. Something has to give. I think it's a much closer game and Fitzgerald doesn't reach tournament value. Therefore, I listed him as a fade.
And this isn't about "Vegas being wrong". It's about being on the right side of Vegas. It's also about understanding when and why an under-owned player should be in our lineups. This topic came up in a staff email regarding the exposure of Colin Kaepernick and Karlos Williams (I'm going to use Kirk Cousins instead of Kaepernick as an example, since I briefly and uncomfortably plugged him as a contrarian play this week). Maurile Tremblay, mastermind behind the Interactive Value Charts, said it better than I can so I'm going to quote him verbatim:
"Suppose we have a 100-person contest with a tournament-style payout
structure (you can make it winner-take-all for simplicity; it doesn't
matter), and each lineup consists of a single player -- either the
Broncos defense or the Raiders defense. Suppose the Broncos defense is a
2-1 favorite to outscore the Raiders defense, and suppose that 80% of
the entrants will own the Broncos.
It is easy
to see that the lineups with the Raiders will win money, on average,
while the lineups with the Broncos will lose money, on average.
(Two-thirds of the time, 80% of the lineups will split the prize pool;
one-third of the time, 20% of the lineups will split the prize pool. The
latter group is the one that is +EV.)
The Raiders defense was more unique, and that's the one that was profitable. Does that mean that uniqueness is beneficial?
No.
What made the Raiders defense profitable was that its 33% win rate was
greater than its 20% ownership, and in that sense they were under-owned.
But it's not at all the case that unique players are inherently
under-owned while chalk players are inherently over-owned. Change the
numbers from the example a bit -- make the broncos 7-1 favorites to
outscore the Raiders rather than 2-1 favorites, and now it's the
Broncos, at 80% ownership, that are under-owned while the Raiders, at
20%, are over-owned.
In general, uniqueness
might be correlated with under-ownedness. That's an interesting
empirical question that is worth looking into. But the correlation would
not be perfect in any case, and there may be plenty of situations where
60% guys might be under-owned because they are actually 70% likely to
outscore similarly priced players at their position -- and that may well
be the case with Karlos Williams this week."
Nailed it. This is along the same logic John Lee laid out in a Rotogrinders forum last year and something we dug into with more specifics in Week 1. Using that logic, we have even more ammo to fade Fitzgerald. For him to hit tournament value (3x) he'll need to score more than 22 points. He has done that twice already this season, which is fantastic. But he has done it only 32 times in his career over 173 games--18.5 percent of the time (per Thursday GPP data, he is 27.1 percent owned). History is against him doing it three times in four games.
Kirk Cousins, on the other hand, only needs 18.3 points to hit value. Over his limited starts (12 games with at least 10 pass attempts), and I grant you sample size gets in the way, he has scored at least 18 points seven times, including last week--58 percent. So we can comfortably say, according to past performance, Cousins is going to give us 18 points at least half of the time. Whether or not that happens in Week 4 remains to be seen. The Eagles defense may be the play, since they have allowed a quarterback rating of 81.7--seventh best--and have one interception for every touchdown allowed (five). But they have allowed the tenth most passing yards and this game has an over/under of 47 (second highest of the week) with Captain Kirk and Co. home-dogs by 2.5 points. Smells like a GPP to me.
Again, it's all about the process. Outliers win tournaments and they're impossible to predict. Which is why seeking out under-owned players is so important.
Follow @justinbonnema
Get Chalky With It: Week 4 Projected Ownership Preview
In addition to mining the Vegas data, projections, and matchups, ownership data is vital to making FanDuel lineup decisions. Here is a preview of the Projecting Ownership article at Footballguys.com this week:
The Packers are hot and so is Aaron Rodgers' ownership as the clear No.1 quarterback of the week. Getting San Francisco on the schedule seems unfair the way Green Bay's offense is carving up defenses. With Davante Adams on the mend and not much at tight end, stacking with Randall Cobb, James Jones, or both makes plenty of sense as both receivers are in the top-6 of wide receiver ownership for Week 4 as well.
Karlos Williams, Latavius Murray, and Devonta Freeman are the three most popular running backs - all for $7,500 or less. Their workload floor is comfortable with minimal competition for touches. The salary savings allow for a stud quarterback plus an extra stud wide receiver in lineups.
This trio is not highly-owed at receiver, but represents quality upside as WR3 options this week. Monitor Andrew Luck's status, but the Colts have a 'get well' game at home against Jacksonville and Moncrief is emerging into a top target. Sammy Watkins is out, Tyrod Taylor has been a pleasant surprise as a passer, and Percy Harvin has shown shades of the old Minnesota version in 2015.
Hurns is the 'Vontae Davis will minimize Allen Robinson' hedge in Jacksonville's passing game against the Colts. At $5,700 and $5,300 respectively, Harvin and Hurns allow salary flexibility while still having 2-3x production potential.
For the rest of the Week 4 early ownership highlights, check out the full article, only at Footballguys.com.
Follow @ChadParsonsNFL
All About Aaron Rodgers
Go Cheap at Running Back
Percy Harvin, Donte Moncrief, Allen Hurns, Oh My!
Hurns is the 'Vontae Davis will minimize Allen Robinson' hedge in Jacksonville's passing game against the Colts. At $5,700 and $5,300 respectively, Harvin and Hurns allow salary flexibility while still having 2-3x production potential.
For the rest of the Week 4 early ownership highlights, check out the full article, only at Footballguys.com.
Follow @ChadParsonsNFL
Week 4 FanDuel Show on The Audible
Check out the Week 4 FanDuel show on The Audible. Every Friday morning Cecil Lammy, Alex Miglio, and Austin Lee dig into the Vegas lines, cover the key WR/CB matchups, dissect some unique tournament stacks, and make their out-on-a-limb picks of the week.
Listen here or subscribe to The Audible on iTunes and never miss an episode.
FanDuel Week 4 Starting Stacks
I just posted my FanDuel stacks of the week, covering less common stacks, defensive stacks, and twists on highly-owned stacks. Here's one stack idea. Be sure to check out the full article for tons of other stacks.
Tyrod Taylor ($7,600) + Percy Harvin ($5,700) = $13,300
I'm using Taylor all over cash games and tournaments this week. I prefer him over the more expensive Cam Newton ($8,300). Pairing him with Harvin is a bit more gutsy. With Sammy Watkins likely out for this game, Harvin should be the primary target.
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