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Weather and its Impact on Passing Games
So far this year weather hasn’t had a significant impact on the football season but we are starting to get to that point in the year where it may begin to. This week some of the most interesting games are ones that could be affected by Mother Nature.
During season long leagues most people will tell you to just use weather as a tie breaker and start your studs. This is often good advice because you typically only have so many players to choose from. However, in DFS you have so many more options and every player and every factor is a tie breaker that may or may not put you over the top in a big GPP or that 50/50 threshold in your cash games.
How much impact does weather really have on the passing game? Let’s start out by looking at a chart which shows passing attempts compared to that team’s year to date average by wind speed. For example, on the far left hand side you will see that for wind speed of zero a team should be expected to pass about 2% more than their year to date average. However, as we move further to the right they are expected to pass 13% less than their year to date average at 25 MPH winds. You can also see that the chart is fairly close to a linear line that is well explained by the wind factor with an R2 of .73
So now that we know teams don’t like to pass as much when it gets windy how about if it is just cold?
This chart reads the same as the one above. Here we see nearly no difference in expected passing attempts as the temperature rises. Please note that the whole trend line is below 100% because more games are played at 72 degrees inside a dome than at any other temperature and that is the time that teams pass the most often.
Now that we have seen wind is our primary concern for pass attempts what about if we look at pass efficiency?
Here we see that pass efficiency is effected by both temperature and by wind speed but again more by wind speed than temperature. An interesting take away from the graphs above is that pass efficiency is clearly impacted by the temperature but the number of pass attempts are not. This means that teams should consider adjusting their passing game plans for cold weather more than they currently are.
However, for fantasy purposes we don’t really care what teams should do we only care what they do. In this case we see that cold weather is going to decrease pass efficiency but it is wind that we are really concerned about because it decreases pass efficiency and pass attempts at a rate that is much more significant than temperature.
In the coming weeks if you see the weather start to get cold I would be a little concerned as every degree colder has an impact. But if you see it starting to get windy that is when I am going to get really concerned. Because in DFS a lot of players come down to tie breakers and since weather is an important tie breaker it makes it tough to play wide receivers and quarterbacks in heavy wind games.
Fanduel GPP plays
Below are my weekly GPP plays at Fanduel. Throughout the season I will be employing strategies mentioned in Week 1 about contrarian plays. My goal will be to highlight players owned less than 10% to give you a contrarian option unless the player is such a good value that you should play him anyway. But remember that if you think a player will score three times their salary at a higher rate than their ownership level they are still a good buy. It is also important to remember you don’t need to go contrarian on everyone one of your positions. Additionally I will take the approach outlined in my preseason article about the best approach to allocating money in my lineups. In this article, I showed that in general it was best to spend on studs at wide receiver and to a lesser extent quarterback and save your money at running back and tight end.
Derek Anderson $5,000 14% - Derek Anderson is currently the second most heavily owned quarterback behind Johnny Manziel. However, at his price point I think Anderson has the best chance of hitting 3X value at about 50%. Anderson gets a juicy matchup against the Buccaneers whom coincidentally he played in week 1. During that game he threw for 230 yards 2 TDs and ran for another 10. That was Kelvin Benjamin’s first game of his career. We have seen Benjamin progress steadily since that game. If Anderson can compile stats similar to those in week 1 he will easily surpass his value target this week.
Fred Jackson $6,600 3% - The Bills are 5 point underdogs this week against the Green Bay Packers. So why suggest a running back on the Bills since we all know that when teams fall behind they tend to pass a lot more to catch up. However, Fred Jackson is excelling in the passing game averaging 7.1 yards per catch and is receiving a very consistent 3-4 catches per week. Last week though he hauled in 10 catches. Even if the Bills stay competitive with the Packers Jackson received 21 carries the previous week against the Browns. If Jackson finds the endzone this week I am pretty certain he will reach value and he has a greater than 3% chance of doing so.
Demaryius Thomas $9,000 2% - Thomas is nearly always in play in GPPs and when he is being owned by only 2% of the players you have to take a chance on him. Thomas has a slightly difficult matchup against the Chargers. However, the last time they met Thomas recorded 8 catches for 105 yards. Brandon Flowers missed but that game but with how active the Broncos wide receivers are I don’t think he will be on Thomas all game. The Broncos are expected to score 28 points this week by Vegas but are only favored by 4 points. This will force them to keep the foot on the pedal and get the passing game going again. On top of that with C.J. Anderson getting a little banged up last game it would behoove the Broncos to ease his workload slightly in anticipation of the playoffs. Thomas could easily have one of his patented 10 catches for 150 yards and 2 touchdown days.
Jordan Reed $5,200 2% - Last week Reed was one of the highest owned tight ends last week. However, this week he is being picked by only 2% of all owners. Why the significant change? Because last week all those owners who owned him saw him record 3 catches for 25 yards in an extremely disappointing game. But all of the underlying reasons why Reed was a good play last week still exist. The most important one which is Colt McCoy still loves to check down to his tight end. Additionally the Giants are a much more favorable matchup for Reed than the Rams were last week. Don’t fall for recency bias on Reed like the rest of the DFS community.
As always please send any questions to Buzzard@footballguys.com or follow me on Twitter Follow @SteveBuzzard