NFL Weekly Roundup for Week 2 NFL 2016 by DFS101 contributor James Gagnon.
Overlay galore for week one!
All I have to say is wow to the overlay! Oh yeah, and Drew Brees. We’ll get to the football in a minute but I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the overlay since there were some huge numbers and because DFS is about more than just football. Some of you know this and will skip this section. But some of you are still unaware and need to know that when you play on DFS sites, there needs to be more to your formula than just picking football players you like.
Overlay is when a guaranteed prize pool(GPP) tournament doesn’t fill and the site has to spend money out of their own pocket. The more people who don’t enter, the better your chances of cashing are. DailyFantasySports.codes actually explains it pretty well, and they even refer and link back to us here at dailyfantasysports101.com; give both links a look since overlay is very important and usually happens the most at the beginning of the season.
As I called in last week’s preview of Week 1, the overlay ended up being ridiculous. There was actually almost no overlay in the big FanDuel tournaments as they temper their expectations.
DraftKings, on the other hand shoots for the moon with “that huge check dream” as their payout structure tends to be a lot more top heavy. Ahh, but those bonus points for yardage and full points per reception though.
DraftKings $3 tournament with a $5 Million Pool and $1 Million going to first had the entrants maxed out at 1,960,700. 1,436,510 entered to fill it to 73% capacity, meaning the contest was over 500,000 short of filling and cost DK about $691K to our benefit. Their $20 tournament filled to about 80% but still missed about 30K of the “expected” 145K and cost them almost a quarter of a million dollars.
What this really means is that if the tournament filled you had to finish in about the top-28% to cash in those tournaments, but with the overlay and lack of entrants, the numbers jumped to 38% and 35%. Those numbers actually get you closer to Double Up tournaments than GPP tournaments, but with the chance at the huge payouts obviously, so this is something very important to keep an eye on. And if you still didn’t cash in these tournaments, keep reading…and then go read some more…and maybe submit a lineup of players you hate this weekend.
Week 2 NFL Contests at DraftKings and Fanduel
Football week 2 Draftkings Tournaments
Annnnddddd…..DraftKings comes back to Earth. Their Week 1 tournament with an expected two million entrants was just absurd. DraftKings still has a tournament with a $1M payday, but it’s a $20 entry tournament instead of the $3 they typically try to do. The good news here is to cash, you get to finish lower than the normal 20% in three of the four tournaments.
NOTE: DraftKings has not included Monday Night Football Games in their big tournaments yet this year and I don’t see that changing. This shouldn’t be a big deal unless you like to have MNF player as part of a “late game strategy” or if your favorite NFL team plays and you like to have a player from your team in your lineups.
Big Money Winners and Lineup and Player Breakdowns
The Big Winners From Fanduel and Draftkings from Week 1
As you can see, Drew Brees won a lot of people money this weekend…as he’s done plenty in the past. And these winners used the QB/WR stack to their advantage, with 3 of the 4 using a QB/WR/WR stack of Brees/Cooks/Snead. Spencer Ware was extremely highly owned at almost 30% among both sites with the last minute scratch of J. Charles along with Ware’s low price tag. Another thing to notice here is the difference in running backs. Both FanDuel winners had DeAngelo Williams, however, he wasn’t available in DraftKings as Monday Night games were held out of Week 1’s big tournaments. The RB2 in the DK tournaments were both backs that are generally heavily involved in their team’s passing game. This matters in DraftKings because they offer a full point per reception whereas FanDuel only offers half a point per reception. (see scoring chart here)
Top Players at Each Position (with points scored and percentages owned per site)
Last year, DraftKings was awesome with their weekly recaps and most of this info could be found on their page easily. It seems as though they’ve let some people go and started with their writers because their “strategy” section now sucks. I’m a firm believer in history helping predict future performance, so here you go.
QB Ownership Week 1
Luck, Brees, Stafford, and Big Ben should be mainstays atop the QB leaderboard this year. Alex Smith is a hot and cold play and if his Kansas City defense is all of a sudden as bad as they looked in week 1, then he might be a sneaky play. Keep an eye on that defense of his.
Week 1 RB Ownership
Maybe I was wrong as we’re starting to see a pattern here with MNF players being in the top players lists. I’m sure you’ll figure things out though. The other thing to notice here is the amount of backs who catch the ball well out of the backfield.
NFL Week 1 WR Ownership Report
Will Fuller has arrived and outperformed DeAndre Hopkins in Week 1…well at least in the stats category. While DeAndre draws double teams and over-the-top coverage, Fuller should benefit to the tune of cheap stats while DraftKings and FanDuel try to catch up with his salary.
Tight End Ownership Week 1
Two Colts TE’s in the rankings and neither is named Coby Fleener. The word on the street is that Indianapolis’ O-Line is so bad they’ll be running all sorts of 2-TE sets. This could make Doyle someone to keep an eye as he actually played 39 of 70 Colts offensive plays. Eric Ebron is another guy to keep an eye on, but for different reasons. There was a good chance he wasn’t going to be playing in week 1 but he ended up on the field and obviously played pretty well and didn’t seem to have any lingering injury effects.
Defense Ownership Week 1
Defenses woefully underperformed this weekend. Don’t let these performances fool you into thinking defenses are worthless, however. You can pay for a solid defense and it’s not more expensive in relation to the rest of the position to have a better shot at points from the position. If you feel like punting, use another position, where you can save far more money, and have a way better shot at an explosive offensive performance. For example, in week 1, Theo Riddick was ridiculously cheap and even at basic numbers, should’ve gotten around 10 points. That’s a good punt. Especially considering top RB’s were over $4,000 more. If you punt a D, you’ll only save a couple thousand at best and have a decent shot at a goose egg or even negative points.
That’ll do it for week 1. Or is this Week 2? I don’t know. Good Luck To You All.
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