Jeff’s Hardcore Core- NFL Week 8

For those of you DFS Football players that like a ton of players to choose from, great bargain players, and the overall pricing structure to allow you to build high quality teams, you might as well make plans to hang out with your family this Sunday. Thanks to teams on a bye, the London game, and Draftkings being greedy and excluding the Sunday night game from the main slate, we only have 9 games to work with this week for the main slate. Plus, the pricing structure on DK is extremely tight and compounded by the fact that we do not have a ton of low priced options to choose from.

Before we get into Week 8, I wanted to touch on  a concept that we have seen come to light the last two weeks and that is the idea of fading the popular (chalky) players that will have high ownership. As we saw last week, the masses are drawn heavily to the plays that appear to be obvious based upon volume. Last week it was Chris Ivory who was owned by a staggering percentage throughout GPPs. The week before it was Mark Ingram and Jerick Mckinnon. Two weeks ago you would have needed Ingram and McKinnon in your lineups if you wanted to do damage in GPPs, based upon their huge performances for their price. Last week however it would have behooved you to fade Ivory. So, how do we know when to roster a chalky guy vs. when should we fade him?

Remember in my first couple of NFL columns, when I discussed volume as a key factor when deciding what players will outproduce their value. With the running back position, it is much easier to estimate volume than it is with any other position. Generally, the hand-off (or a short dump off pass) is the only thing that needs to happen for the running back to get a touch. With the wide receiver or tight end position there are more factors including the strength of the defender and the ability of the quarterback to actually get them the ball. Thus, in a week where we know that a starting runningback is out, like Fournette was last week, and we know that Chris Ivory is the guy who will fill in and receive those carries, it makes it really difficult to be able to fade that situation. In this particular situation, it turned out that Ivory played terrible, was ineffective rushing, and fumbled, causing the Jaguars to feature T.J Yeldon (who in turn had a really nice game, further substantiating our decision to like Ivory). In this case I believe the decision to play Ivory was correct, but the result just did not work.

On the other hand, when trying to predict volume because of an injury at the wide receiver or tight end position, when it appears they will be popular/chalky, I think the play is to fade them. The reason is the downside is so much greater for a wide receiver/tight end because there are so many other factors involved in determining their success. An example of this from last week is Bennie Fowler. With Emmanuel Sanders out, and Demaryious Thomas shadowed by Casey Hayward, the volume in the passing game was sure to funnel to Fowler. However, the poor play from Trevor Siemian prevented Fowler from receiving that volume and thus he did not have the positive production that we assumed. Now, Fowler was not that highly owned/chalky, but if we thought that he was going to be, I think the play would have been to fade him. We need to start incorporating these strategic fades, because several times this season it would have been extremely beneficial.

Onto this week’s action-

Jeff’s Strategy and Hardcore Core- NFL Week 8
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