The Fade: FandDuel Week 2

Photo: USA Today Sports

As it was written in A Contrarian’s Guide to DFS, every good tournament strategy has three common ingredients: projecting ownership percentages, fading popular plays, and identifying contrarian plays. It is here where we’ll separate the fades from the loss leaders and adjust our lineups accordingly.

The numbers presented in the tables below are taken from a $2 Thursday night GPP. We can use these exposure percentages to assist our ownership projections for Sunday/Monday GPPs. Doing so increases our accuracy and provides a clearer picture of groupthink—something we’ll almost always try to avoid.

Of course, this data isn’t meant to be the foundation of our tournament strategy for the weekend. For that matter, fading any player based solely on ownership percentage is never part of the strategy. Think of this as more of a guide to tiebreakers and pivot plays. In this space, we’ll use that guide to identify a few players that should be faded and few that are worth their chalk-heavy projections. There will be a follow up piece focusing on the contrarian side of things.

Before setting your lineups in stone, be sure to use the Interactive Value Chart as a part of your process. It incorporates the core of your roster with the ease of lineup optimization and top-20 stack rankings. Complete with strategy guides for both cash and tournament games, you won’t find a more comprehensive daily fantasy tool anywhere. Use it and abuse it. You can also check out our Cracking FanDuel blog for more information and updates.

Quarterbacks

The unquestioned chalk play at quarterback is Drew Brees. There’s just something about playing the Buccaneers at home as a 10-point favorite that has everyone all giddy. We don’t blame them. He’s loss leader material and worth exposure in a few tournaments.

The same can be said for Carson Palmer. As much as we’d like to leave these guys in the player pool and hope they drown the crowd, it’s bad process to ignore solid matchups. Palmer was a legitimate top-10 quarterback when healthy last year, and finished second last week. This week he gets the Bears secondary, which isn’t as promising compared to what the Saints offered, but still plenty friendly. Chalk it up.

Marcus Mariota, on the other hand, travels to face yet another bad team and possibly another Heisman winner (if Johnny Manziel starts). But as bad as the Browns might be, their defense presents a much tougher setup than the Buccaneers. This game has one of the lowest over/under totals of the week and there’s not much foundation to build our confidence on where the Titans offense is concerned. We can make a better investment for $7,400 and fade the crowd in the process.

The highest scoring quarterback last week was Tom Brady. Fresh of not being suspended, Touchdown Tom scored five touchdowns, four through the air and one on the ground, and looked as good as he ever has. He checks in as our our fourth most popular option. His $8,300 salary isn’t prohibitive but his matchup is. Check out his home/road splits: 25 fantasy points per game at home versus 18.5 points on the road. Leaving the office had a drastic effect on his fantasy performance last year. Add the fact that he’s playing against what we think is the best defense in the league and you have plenty of reasons spare your lineups of his disservice.

Running Backs

Carlos Hyde was on just 2.2 percent of lineups in the FanDuel NFL Sunday Million. Naturally, after finishing as the best overall running back, his ownership is highest of all running backs in Week 2. By a lot. And since salaries were programmed before the conclusion of the late Monday night game, his price actually came down $300. He is by far the best value in his price range. But that value takes on less meaning when a third of the crowd builds their rosters around it. Everything went right for the 49ers against the Vikings. We’re less confident in their offense on a short week as they travel across the country to Pittsburgh. Fade.

Chris Ivory was the third highest scoring running back last week. This week he gets a soft Colts front that was recently pushed around by the Bills. But now is when we need to consider the negative correlation road underdogs have on rushing production. The Colts are favored to win by seven in a 46.5-point over/under, which means the Jets project to score 16.25 points. We don’t doubt that they’ll be able to reach that projection and maybe even exceed it. But the game script aligns in such a way that those points won’t come from running backs. He’s still in play in redraft leagues, but in DFS, we have better options.

If Hyde can juke and spin his way through the Vikings defense, imagine what Ameer Abdullah can do. He didn’t get a lot of touches last week but it didn’t matter. He led the Lions running backs in snaps and put his talents on display in the process. We’re not bothered by his ownership percentage. His big-play ability combined with his low-cost is worth siding with 13.2 percent of the crowd.

The Saints exposed a level of the Cardinals defense that plays perfectly to Matt Forte’s strengths: pass-catching running backs. Forty-two percent of Brees’s passing yards went to ball carriers. So while we need to respect the Cardinals defense in a way that the Bears aren’t going to punch them in the mouth, we also need to adjust our projections to align with the way the Bears should attack on offense, should logic prevail. Unfortunately, logic isn’t always on our side and Forte’s salary sinks our ability to both separate from the pack, and build balanced rosters. We’ll need him to score 26.7 points to hit value. Let the crowd chase that.

Both Mark Ingram and Justin Forsett are similar in that they have a good matchup with affordable salaries. Ingram especially is in a great position to return his $8,000 investment. If you pass on Brees, Ingram is worth ignoring his potentially high ownership.

Forsett gets the same defense that Jeremy Hill and Giovani Bernard handled with ease last week. The Ravens are limited in the wide receiver department so the natural progression of their offense will go through Forsett. He’s a quality play.

In that same range of exposure is Bishop Sankey, who finished Week 1 as the fourth best running back. This is a situation where we can encourage the crowd to bite hard on recency bias while not exposing ourselves to any Sankey shares. We’ll fade him for all the same reasons we’re going to fade Mariota: there’s a chance that the Titans offense just isn’t very good.

Wide Receivers

You’re not going to hear a lot of DFS analysts tell you to fade Julio Jones. Because you shouldn’t. He’s the most owned player as of Thursday and it will likely be the same for Sunday/Monday GPPs. He’s as good of a loss leader as there is.

The same goes for Antonio Brown. Until we have more weeks to digest matchups, these high-floor receivers are great tournament options. Brown and Jones are liable to catch double-digit passes and score multiple touchdowns in any game. The strategy you might want to avoid is loading your roster with both of them. We get the temptation to do so. But you can protect your roster by not sinking 30 percent of the cap into two players that will always have high ownership.

Jordan Matthews is besties with Sam Bradford. When not checking down, the Eagles quarterback has eyes for only No. 81. The Cowboys lost their best cornerback in preseason and have no answers to cover slot receivers. Matthews excels in the slot and pretty much everywhere else he lines up. We don’t mind his exposure, so long as you find a few contrarian plays to balance it.

On the other hand, despite the fact that Jarvis Landry is going to get all of his quarterback’s attention, his fantasy points from Week 1 were largely influenced by a special teams’ touchdown. You remove that touchdown and he scores fewer points than Rishard Matthews. Fade.

For $300 more, Brandin Cooks makes a lot more sense. He didn’t find much room against the Cardinals but he matches up perfectly against the Buccaneers. His game is similar to that of Kendall Wright, who was dynamic last week against this same defense. Feel free to side with the crowd but also be warned that unless he breaks a big play, his upside is limited to yards and receptions, and not necessarily the multiple touchdowns we require for tournament plays.

Our sixth most popular receiver put together a nice game of 11 receptions and 97 yards in the season opener. At 13.4 percent exposed Julian Edelman might be the only Patriot not named Rob Gronkowski worth rostering. But we’re expecting points to be rare in this contest, so Edelman sort of has Cooks Syndrome in that he’ll, once again, live off of receptions and yards. Without the threat of touchdowns, there’s no reason to jump on his bandwagon.  

A major injury to a top-tier player is often a death knell to redraft teams. In DFS, it creates opportunity and value. Terrance Williams reaps those rewards in Week 2. He’ll see double-digit ownership and needs just 18.9 points to reach tournament value. In other words, we’re asking him to catch seven passes for 90 yards and a touchdown—in an offense that is going to be so efficient that six or seven different players might catch a pass or three. Not happening. He’s this week’s Davante Adams.

Speaking of major injuries, James Jones took advantage of Adams deficiencies as a red zone threat. It would have been a three-score day for Jones had penalties not erased one. We’ll take this opportunity to note that we pegged him as a contrarian play last week. This week, we’ll remind you that he might find it a little harder against the Seahawks. Even if his $5,400 salary screams tournament play, his double-digit ownership screams fade.

Only Jones, Julio scored more points than DeAndre Hopkins in Week 1. As a result, Hopkins has nestled his way into the nine most popular receivers. We have a problem with this for two reasons: the first is a quarterback change. Ryan Mallett is taking over for Brian Hoyer. If you’re into arm talent, then by all means march Hopkins out into every lineup you’re building. If you’re into cognitive reasoning, then wait and see how this offense clicks or fails with Mallett under center. Our second reason comes in the form of everyone’s favorite cornerback sleeper: Josh Norman. Norman isn’t of the “avoid” variety for wide receiver matchups yet, but he’s trending in that direction. The crowd remains unaware. In any case, this contest screams avoid from every offensive angle.

Tight Ends

Without surprise, Rob Gronkowski is the most popular tight end on the board. And it’s so hard to fade him. Just the very thought of fading him means he’ll score three touchdowns. But his salary and matchup and the fact that there are a few great alternative tight end options mean we might be able to get away with it this week.

Tyler Eifert’s exposure is very close to that of Gronkowski’s. His salary, on the other hand, is several tiers lower. But it did jump $900, which is a lot for a tight end. Vegas likes this game for 47 total points and favors Cincinnati by three. Between Jeremy Hill and A.J. Green, you have to wonder how much will be leftover for Eifert. Now is a good time to review how we implement ownership percentages. Eifert needs 17.7 points to hit tournament value. How likely is he to score that many points 15.1 percent of the time? Let’s let the crowd decide.

In case you missed it, check out this amazing play by Kiko Alonzo. That’s the man that will be tasked with covering Grandpa Witten on Sunday. No offense to Jason Witten, who we regard as one of the best tight ends ever, but youth will probably win this battle. And again, without Dez Bryant, this offense is going to spread the ball around. No one player is going to be the funnel. So as much as we otherwise love the situation and the salary, it’s not as appetizing once you peel back the layers.  

Kickers

Like last week, we’re not going over think things here. Josh Brown is the crowd favorite. The Giants offense suggests we should fade the crowd, so we will. In fact, fade all of these kickers and start Greg Zuerlein.

Defense

The St. Louis Rams are an easy chalk play but we could do better in terms of point totals offered by Vegas. For $200 less we’d rather take the Panthers at home in the lowest over/under of the week against a team that just switched quarterbacks and has no running game.

Besides, if you’re going to go chalk might as well go all the way with the Miami Dolphins. They finished fifth overall last week and just missed on a few scoring opportunities. Plus, they have some special teams talent that makes them a nice stack should you choose to start Landry.

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