Fantasy Football Daily - 2021 Week 7 DFS Recap

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) and Jordan Tohline (@JMToWin) from One Week Season (@oneweekseason) discuss lineups and results from Week 7 DFS action. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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responsibly. It's time for the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoints.com. Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room, with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. What is going on Fantasy Fam? Jam to win here with my good friend, friend. life friend, Scott Barrett from FantasyPoints.com. Scott, how are you doing? Yeah, I don't know if if I qualify as a real life friend when you didn't pick up my phone call on Saturday when I called

you at the worst possible time super late at night with no one. You called me at like 930 your time, 7.30 my time as I actually didn't even see the call because I was putting my son to sleep. And then once I got out of his room, saw that I had missed your call and told you. Sorry, man. We're not talking this week. I think we count as real life friends, even though you haven't come and crashed on my couch yet. Once you do that, then we're officially real life friends. Oh, that's going to happen. Hey, how tall are you, by the way? I am, I thought for the longest time, I thought it was six foot flat. I like, my friend was, I was the same height as my friend. And he said he was six foot. So I'm like, okay, I'm six foot. And then I went.

I wanted a date with a girl. Beforehand, she asked me how tall I was. I'm like, oh, I'm six foot. And I went on a date with her, and she was like, you are not six foot. My ex was six, five or something. And you are nothing compared to him. Not a great way to start a first date. And yeah, so I remasure it.

I don't know. I'm either like five, ten and a half or five eleven, somewhere around there. Probably five, ten and a half, if I'm being out. Have you had this experience where you, Meet somebody in real life who you only know through podcasts or screens, and then they're very different height than you expected them to be. Oh, and by the way, my friend lied the whole time. He thought he was six foot two, six foot also the whole time.

And yeah, he wasn't at all. So he screwed me up. But yeah, yeah. Why? Are you like five, three? And it's going to like blow my mind. Yep. I am five, two and a half.

No, I'm six two. but two people who look tall and are not tall are levitan and bales uh yeah yeah levitan's like you met levitin in person right levittan's like five six five seven handsome guy in person handsome guy in person i'll tell you who's a handsome guy is bales bales is a beautiful specimen of a man but also like i don't know five nine maybe he could do ten thousand pushups at once yeah and then sylva's like six So, but yeah, no, it's just a, it's a funny thing talking about being, being internet friends and then being real life friends after that. No, let me complain about my height more because my dad was 6-2.

His brother was 6-4, 6-5. His grandfather was like 6-6. Mother's grandfather was like 6-8. And then I don't know what it was. I never drank water growing up and I never drank milk. I was one of those kids who drank soda all the time. Oh, that's all. Yep.

Yep. I'll go play with on that. I'm with you on that. So I've been told in the past that people like podcasts where they feel like they're hanging out with the two people. So maybe you guys love this podcast day since we are three and a half minutes in and we have talked about different people's heights so far. I guess we should get to some.

football stuff. Did you play DFS this last weekend? And if so, how did things go and or any thoughts from this last weekend? Yeah, I played and I did not do well. And it was a bad process, bad results week. I mean, if you just like picked and choose from the guys I wrote up, you definitely could have had, you know, the Millie winning lineup or whatever. But just personally, what I play, was way worse than, you know, the best of my article. I ate the chalk and the chalk tasted bitter and stale and sad. And Mahomes had his worst game ever. And, you know, maybe I should have seen that coming with Kelsey and Tyreek, both a little banged up.

But, yeah, just just not good. And Johnny came into the chat Sunday morning and told everyone to stay away from Kansas City, which is smart and saved a bunch of our subs. One sub, I think played the, when were you, like 25 cent entry? And he won that for 15,000. He had a really sharp lineup. We could review it later on in the pod. I'm going to guess you had a similar.

Oh, and we also played, we do a lineup at the end of our live stream. and we all make a lineup. And one of the lineups was a Hollywood chaise stack that I'm sure did really well. But I'm guessing you did not have a good week because you were not wearing your magic hat. That is not why I'm not wearing the magic hat. I actually didn't wear it specifically because it's such a distinctive hat that I was like, well, if I wear it two weeks in a row, it's here on my desk. It's like my...

We're back, baby. we're back baby i got it on now but yeah no i um that is not why i didn't have the hat on but the yeah my weekend i only ended up building three lineups so lately i've been doing the two like the largest size power sweep and the mid-sized power sweep and the juke which is about like a 4500 entry a 1,000 entry and like a 300 entry um about two grand in entry fees total across those nine entries and i've been doing like seven to nine rosters and kind of spreading them out but this week I actually went ahead and did just three rosters. Part of that was because there was a lot of late news. And so it was kind of a busy week on my end. And I didn't want to have like nine

rosters where I was needing to pivot things, potentially pivot things. And so I simplified things by going with three rosters. I also really liked the, the Dolphins and Falcons game. And I felt that from a salary cost standpoint, salary and upside standpoint, that that was one of the sharpest places to be. Apparently, huge chunks of the field felt that that was a sharp place to be as well because I was thinking that I was going to get Matt Ryan at like 3% ownership or 4% ownership, but he and 2 were both like 10% owned or higher. So I thought that there'd be a lot of Calvin Ridley just because it stands out that he's at that price tag. But I thought there'd be less Kyle Pitts, obviously less Corderole Patterson, which was one that I was on,

which ended up being a super short play, even though it didn't pay off in a big way. But they came out of the buy with basically he had taken over the leadback role. A lot of Waddle and Giseki. I mean, those were my titles were Gaseki and Pitts. So that foundation was fine. It wasn't as sneaky as I thought. So I thought that was going to be one of my separators. And then I could kind of do some different things from there.

but yeah I had basically kind of like a middling weekend from a production standpoint. First weekend in a while where none of my rosters cashed, but lately I've been doing nine rosters and it's been kind of consistent that three or four have cashed. But obviously we don't care about cashing. We care about first place. And so I'd almost rather have all three not cash if that meant that I could look and say, well, that's fine. They didn't cash because I was doing some first place stuff.

I felt less like I did some really sharp stuff for first place when ownership showed Like as soon as games kicked off and I could see ownership on that Falcons Dolphins game, I immediately was like, okay, I'm probably not winning this weekend. But yeah, I actually felt really good from a process standpoint. I think that one of the things I was most disappointed in myself in was not just taking both bucks whiteouts on every roster. I'm such a proponent of that. I talk so often about guaranteed.

touches, guaranteed targets, concentrated distribution. So teams where they spread the ball out to six or seven guys, and you don't even know for sure that they're going to put up a bunch of points. And then if they do, you have to guess right on who those points go to. I'm not really into that that much. So teams where I even wrote up, before Antonio Brown was out, I wrote up the Bucks whiteouts as so my tiers for any who are not on OWS, I have my blue chips and then my light blue chips and then my build around spots,

which is like games and teams. and then my bonus one-off plays. So I had the Bucks whiteouts listed as light blue chips even before Antonio Brown was out, just because Gronk was out and it was likely that they were going to be passing and attacking the Bears secondary. And my thought was,

one of these guys is going to go for 25 to 30 points. One of them is going to go for like 15 to 22, and one of them will probably disappoint. And that was if all three of them were playing. And I said, if Antonio Brown's out, then Godwin and Evans both become borderline blue chip, plays. But we knew that they're going to be passing. We know that they're not going, that Gronk's not there. We know that Antonio Brown's not there. We know that Brady is going to go to his

favorite wide outs. So I think the sharpest thing somebody could have done this last week and was just say, hey, here's a bunch of guaranteed points, take Doddwin and Evans together on every roster and then move on from there. And I ended up with them on none of my rosters. They just weren't like my starting point. So I ended up with Tyler Johnson as kind of a salary unlocker on several rosters or I guess on all three rosters and that didn't work out but I think that the um that was a disappointing process point especially since I had listed those guys as borderline blue chip plays I think the sharpest thing there would have been to just go with both of them um I don't know any thoughts on that spot or any other spots like that you felt like you kind of like

identified but misstepped in the way that you actually put it together on your rosters uh I'll just say Evans was really sharp uh it was another bad process I felt like I was a really good breaking down the entire slate and the games and the plays. And then just when it came time to take a conviction, my brain just broke. But yeah, so I was all in on Godwin. It was just like a perfect slot funnel matchup. But Saturday night, I came so close to writing up Evans as like more of a contrarian play. and then I just didn't.

And yeah, he certainly with Grunk out has that multi-touchdown upside. And I mean, a ton of the borderline plays I really loved, but I just gravitated towards a different guy, like Adams over a cup and I, you know, ate the chalk there. But yeah, why wouldn't he just continue his historic pace and smash again? Jamar Chase, too, the exact same thing. It's like, hey, this guy has been, you know, looking like not just one of the best rookies of all time, but a top five wide receiver. Damien Harris, Johnny put me on that on the live stream where if you looked at Damien Harris's numbers, he was a bell cow with positive game script.

He had like 30 touches when New England had a lead of three or more. points. Next closest was like James White at four and then next closest was someone else with two. And so we didn't see that last week with like all three running backs actually smashing. But the other thing I brought up was Bill Belichick's absolute hatred of the New York Jets and how he like hangs 50 to their eight every single time he plays them. And so we both thought Damien Harris plus Patriots defense is one of the better plays of the slate. and give me a second to pull up the rest of my lineup, see if there's anything sharp there. Yeah, I texted my dad for anyone who doesn't recall.

I grew up in New England. We are Patriots fans. And he texted my dad and said, new plan, let's just play the Jets every weekend the rest of the season. That would be probably the best thing for the Patriots production overall. Yeah, Belichick's still really pissing me off. Like, I think this could be a good team. Like they really made that a close competitive game against Tampa Bay.

They made that a really close competitive game against Dallas and then the absolutely obliterate the Jets. But they have resigned themselves to really, you know, Mag Jones is Alex Smith 2.0 playing insanely conservative and just like take the training wheels off a little bit. And this could be a solid team. But if you're not going to do that, you're not going to be one of the better teams. I mean, look at look at Seattle and New Orleans. last night where they, you know, neither team wanted to win that game, just like killing themselves with how conservative they are. But like, Mac Jones has looked great. Like, sure, he can do the Alex Smith thing really well as one of the quickest releases in all the football, really smart,

high IQ guy who hits the open man. But just like release the reins a little bit. Like when he went for the kick against Dallas, like go for that fourth down. Mac Jones had completed like 16 passes in a row. and he looks awesome. So I'd really like to see them just, all right, Mac, like let's see what you got. Be a real QB instead of like the 7.5AD, never throwing beyond the sticks quarterback he's been. Yeah, so looking back at my lineups,

and a ton of Derek Henry, dumb, ate the chalk. When I didn't have Mahomes, I had Tua or Ryan. But yeah, like you said, you know, that was the sharp contrarian play that wasn't contrarian because it was so sharp. Had a ton of Jalen Waddle, ton of Jalen Waddle, lots of Jusiki too, Ridley over Pitts, not sharp. And then a lot of the punt wide receivers, he really didn't do anything.

You said Ty Joe. I thought Deshawn Jackson was a super, super sharp play, just because the Lions are the league's second worst offense at defending the deep ball. So he'll get like four targets, but 2.5 of those will be deep targets. And whatever his Millie Maker ownership was, like I felt like the odds of him landing in the Millie lineup were at least going to be like 8x that.

But he scored zero points. And yeah, so just wasn't a great, a lot of Darrell Williams, tons of Darrell Williams. Man, you just absorbed all the chalk this last week. You painted your body in chalk. Yeah, it was a horrible, horrible, process. Because we, what did we talk about last time in the show is, yeah, go contrarian.

You have to go contrarian. Go contrarian. And then on the live stream, I was like, I want to eat the chalk. I like this chalk. This looks tasty. And I got meme to oblivion by some of our subscribers who came up with some good memes about, like, oh, you know, like Scott talks about how the chalk keeps flopping. But this time, it's not going to fly.

I just thought it made so much sense, like, what are the chances? like Kansas City's never doesn't score 28 points. So like what's the best way to imagine Derek Henry failing and the past catchers failing? And that's like Darrell Williams getting two rushing touchdowns in a blowout win and just, no, it turns out Kansas City scored three points for the first time in, you know, Patrick Mahomes' career. Yeah, but same thing is like your Deshawn Jackson thing where you said like that's sharp, right, to say whatever his Millie Maker ownership is,

he's going to be in the winning millie maker lineup like eight times as often as that um like what are the chances that the chiefs fail or whatever like it's higher than the field is giving it credit for in that spot especially because if my homes puts up i mean i liked mahomes by the way like mahomes was my it was if i didn't have matt ryan on a roster it was going to be my homes i just didn't end up like the salary didn't make sense to me to get up there when i liked met ryan the way i did but like the way that they have to put up such a big score to like bury you for not playing them. You know, like Mahomes has to, which they can against the Titans. But like I just think that the more we can think about the ways that plays can fail that everybody thinks will hit.

And the more we can think about the ways that plays will hit that everybody thinks will fail or that everybody's kind of ignoring, the better position will put ourselves. And I've actually been thinking about this. So one of the things that we've done at OWS is here, I've talked to you about this, but we've taken some of the writing off of my plate and some of like the research off of my plate. And one of the things I used to be good at was, and I'm still good at it, but I'm like above average at it. And I used to be excellent at it was just thinking through every game on my own. I never looked at Vegas lines until at least 2017. Like never was even part of my process. I would think through each game on my own, think through how each coach would try to win, think about what that would mean for production in the game, and I would play rosters in that way.

So I'd never had to think about ownership projections. I never had to think about Vegas lines because my rosters were going to be different from what other people were doing. And as I started doing more research, I started more and more getting that point where it's like, yeah, but this makes less sense than this. also as I started writing more and more and then, you know, running OWS where I was the only voice on the site. And so I had to be basically like super sharp as far as what was likeliest to happen. I got into this rut where it became easier for me to say, well, yeah, but this is likely to happen. And so I would go with that. And so one of the things that I'm getting back to this year in particular, and I've been getting better and better at the last couple of years,

but especially now that we have so many other voices on the site and that I'm less deep in the research. is thinking through these games and thinking, like, what could happen that people just aren't thinking about? So, like, I wrote up in the Sunday morning email this last week that I was, I said I was only doing three rosters, but if I was building more than three rosters, I would have some rosters built around the bingles and ravens game. The over and under had dropped two and a half points, and I highlighted that as being very similar to that Browns Chargers game that had dropped two and a half points heading into Sunday morning. And I said that, look, Bingles and Ravens are not going to go for 90 points because their teams aren't constructed

that way, but they can go for 55 to 65 points way more often than the field is going to assume and way more often than this dropping over under would tell us. And so finding spots like that and then pulling the trigger on those spots. And so I feel like I'm close on some of those things. Like I didn't end up using McLaurin. I didn't end up using any Bingels. McLaurin I would have preferred him as part of it. of a like bring back from the Packers because optimally you're saying Devante has a huge game and

the McLaurin comes back. So if I'd had McLaurin, I would have had Devonte and it wouldn't have, it wouldn't have helped me as much as having McLaurin solo. But yeah, I'm still like a little bit, I'm like 80% over to like the side of just thinking for myself, but you really have to get like 95% over there and be willing to be on these plays that people laugh at you for playing after the fact if they don't hit. And they wonder how you play them after the fact if they do hit, because that's kind of what wins tournaments, right? Is like finding the spot where you could say, yeah, but the bingles can score 40 plus points.

Let me stack Burrow and Chase when they're the like two, two, three percent own whatever stack that people just don't have, you know? And so yeah, it was an interesting week for me because I felt like I've been sharp, but not as sharp as I need to be. I've been thinking for myself, but not as much as I need to be thinking for myself. And so, yeah, it was just,

it was instructive basically as a whole. Do you have any thoughts on that side of things of like break? Because I know that's hard for you, right? Because you have to be so deep into the stats, because you produce so much that is stat based. Is it hard for you to then do the illogical stuff that's like illogical by the stats and by what has happened in the past

at times when you kind of know too much and you know like, oh, well, this isn't sharp because of this, that and the other thing, but that's kind of what makes it sharp. Yeah, I think part of it is just like, so my content I thought was really good. And then just like the convictions I took at the end this week were really bad. Again, it's on me. Bad process, bad results this week.

I don't usually say that. Usually, you know, blame variance or whatever. But part of that probably is like, you know, just the content demands. So the content, like I said, I thought was really good. didn't give enough time for me to maybe really sit down with my lineups and construct things a more optimal way. Jake Tribby is our young, new writer, who's freaking awesome. He's absolutely killing it. He took DFS values off my plate, though it's kind of like a 50-50 piece. Or he does more than that. So that's helped. This week, I'm not sure what happened. I think part of

the two is also our projections where we just never ended up bumping down, Tyrese. for the injury or or bumping up AJ Brown and Julio Jones more because it seemed clear they were going to play or bump bumping you know some other guys like that where we just were slow to react to the injuries in a way we're usually not so I just kept seeing Tyree Kill all the way at the top where if this is a 100% healthy Tyree Kill this is like the dream matchup and so I never really backed off of it as much as I clearly should have but enough with like, you know, beating myself up and poor results. Let's look at the lineup that won the 25 cent. I think he beat like 300,000 players or lineups. This is Darren from our Discord, one of the

nicest guys, one of the, you know, highest volume commenters in our Discord. So a huge shout out to him, he finished first place, won $15,000, had the fantasy points Avey and posted the screenshot on Twitter. So in addition to 15,000, he also gets some cool swag from us. But this was just such a sharp lineup. And I'm really mad at myself for not landing on it in particular, especially because I had these lineups or similar lineups early on in the week. And it was, I had so much Swift, DeAndre Swift early on in the week who is really looking like Austin Echler 2.0, Alvin Kamara 2.0, especially in terms of usage, but also production. And so I had too much exposure to Leonard Frenette, chalk, Darrell Henderson, chalk,

James Connor, not really chalk, Darrell Williams, Derek Henry, where it's just like, all right, these are the massive high total games. And you can just imagine it being a blowout because like the Vegas spread was like 14 points. And then they soak up all the scores. Then you don't have to worry about the past catchers. But heading in, I had D'Andre Swift as like a top two play. And then you factor in, you know, the game script and implied point total. And he dropped to about four or five.

And so I ended up not having too much of him. But so is D'Andre Swift correlated with Matthew Stafford, Cooper Cup, and Van Jefferson. And what I wrote up in my Deshawn Jackson analysis was, hey, this is like a super, you know, Yolo play. In case I'm wrong, though, I do like Van Jefferson. He's the play that makes more sense on paper. And so he had Stafford plus Cup plus Van, plus Swift. He had Damien Harris, who he loved to.

is a GPP play, although he played Giants' defense instead. He had Jamar Chase, who makes all the sense in the world. Chris Godwin, you know, top three play for me, no Antonio Brown, dream slot funnel, mispriced. And then he played Dallas Goddard. I mean, I loved Goddard earlier in the week. And then once Parker was ruled out, I swapped to Giusecchi, who out scored him. But, I mean, just an absolutely super sharp lineup, scored 236 points. way to go,

way to go Darren. Yeah. And I think that one of the key things there too is something we talk about, which is give yourself an opportunity to get several things right at once. So if the lions are able to keep the game competitive against the Rams, then Stafford Plus Cup ends up becoming an almost shoe and stack. and Swift is likely to be scoring points, like with a high floor because of his past game work

and plenty of ceiling because of his big play-up side. Van Jefferson, obviously, you get a guy who's on the field a lot in that game and has an opportunity to score points as a result of that. But then from there, you already have four spots covered, take out defense, right? You have four of your eight spots covered, and you can kind of mess around with whatever you want to mess around with from there. So, yeah, I love that setup, and I love any roster that starts out from that point. it starts out saying, hey, let me bet on this spot and see if I can get this spot correct

and get a bunch of points here and then fill in the blanks from there. So yeah, shout out for that roster. You said it's Darren. Yep. Shout out to Darren for that roster. Yeah, it's super sharp roster. And again, like the mix of kind of obvious wide receiver plays in Godwin, you've already entered two Rams and then the less obvious in Chase, where you've got guys who can go for 30 plus

points. Like if you're taking wide receivers above 5K in price tag who can't go for 30 plus points, you're probably not going to win tournaments. And so super sharp to fit those guys in and figure out a way to kind of jam all of that onto a roster. He also went full fade on Darrell Henderson. He was just like, well, he's going to be obscenely chalky. And then of course, that also made sense with this build. Yeah. Do you, here's a question for you. how much do you think about fading players versus how much do players just sort of not end up on your builds? Does that question make sense? Yeah, I don't know. So I'm fairly shook after this week, like really beat myself up after bad

process weeks. And I don't know, I think I should just be doing that more. Just look at the top five highest own guys and just, why not just full fade them every week for tournaments? Well, I mean, a lot of times high-owned guys are high-owned for a reason. Like, they're still in good spots or whatever. But for me, like, I think that people think about fading players way too much. I don't think about fading players because it's so rare that a player can bury you for not having them. Like, Devante Adams puts up 50, you get buried. Tyree Kill puts up 50, you get buried.

Derek Henry puts up 45, you get buried. But, like, more often than not, a guy puts up a good game, and it's fine to not have them. And I think that people think too much about, like, who they're fading versus who they're playing. And I think that the best DFS players typically are just thinking about who they want to play. They're thinking, what's a roster that can give me 200 plus points? And if there are other roster constructions that could also get you 200 plus points, fine. That doesn't, like, you can only fit so many guys onto a roster. You know what I mean?

So I think that there's like a shift in mindset, too, that's super valuable to say, I'm not fading guys so much as these are the guys I'm playing. and that ends up leading you to kind of focusing more and hey how do I maximize like sharp builds on my end so yeah I don't know I've over the last like a couple years I don't think I've talked about that much but over the last couple years like the thought of fading a player hasn't even really entered into my mind so much as it's just like oh these are the guys I am playing and that inevitably means I'm leaving a ton of guys off my roster because there's 10 11 12 games whatever but yeah I mean I think of that shift in mindset can be super valuable as well because it redirects the thought process from the fear of like, oh, well, everybody's on this guy and what if he has a big game? Over to like, okay, maybe this guy has a big

game, sure, but also I think this guy's going to have a big game and this is the way I'm building. So yeah, just an interesting thought to throw out there. Yeah, so I said before the show started, I kind of don't have much for this week and way of notes, but I do have one early, early look at the week eight slate. Our boy, J.M. to win. Our boy, Deontay Johnson, 11th in D.K. salary among wide receivers. Your thoughts on that. I thought you were going to say,

our boy, our son, Josh Allen. Well, there's that, too. Highest total of the week. Yeah. I built one roster last night, just getting a sense of salary and everything. And it was a Josh Allen, Emmanuel Sanders, Cole Beasley stack. But, yeah, Deonte Johnson, I kind of went through the slate and made my initial list, and I added Deonté Johnson, just because anybody who gets that much work is somebody you want to look to. I also added Chase Claypool because Chase Claypool is the kind of guy who people are going to look at all the numbers and logic and say,

oh, well, he's not the better play here. And we know that Claypool can go for 30 to 35 points in a spot where nobody's on him, nobody's thinking about him. So I think that with how condensed that offense is, I think that he's a super, start play. I love that Deonti Johnson still goes under the radar, right? Because Draft Kings doesn't release their pricing algorithm, but it's pretty obvious that it's not just production, but also ownership that gets taken into account. And so a player like Deonti Johnson, who just never gets owned, their price doesn't rise as fast as other players' prices rise. And so, yeah, that's something to watch out for, right? Anytime we can figure out an

identify players who are fundamentally mispriced that's going to help us with our build and with the ways that we're putting things together. Have you looked forward to this next week? Much. Do you have any other thoughts on this next week? No, I just mean like you and I, we've been super all in on Deonté Johnson so many weeks he's been underowned and underpriced. And so I just talked about, you know, I finally learned my lesson, no more eating the chalk. And it's like, well, what if Deonti Johnson, my guy is chalky? He leads all players at all positions in XFP per game. In his last 20 games with Big Ben under center, excluding the games, he got hurt in the

first quarter bench for drops at one time. Double-digit targets in 15 of 16 averages 19.6 fantasy points per game. Anyway, you want to slice it up. Like, he's not far off Cooper Cup or Dup. Devante Adams. He's seeing better volume, more consistent volume than either, and then just production not too far off. He's priced like wide receiver 11. So what if, what if he's chalky, J.M? What are you going to do? What if he's the highest own wide receiver on the slate? You just said you like Chase Claypool, which I don't. Maybe I should, but it's just like,

it just seems so clear the offense runs behind him and Harris. So maybe Harris is a play and Big Ben's arm is cooked and I don't know. Yeah. So I don't really, let's say that Deonte Johnson's 30% owned. It won't happen because people don't go to Deonti Johnson, but let's say that he gets talked up a bunch and he's super chalky this week. He's not really involved in any story I'd be telling on the sleep, right? Because it's not like I'm building around the Browns and Steelers game going off. So he's just a one-off play.

So I would just be playing him for production. So then the question for me would always become, can he post a score that would bury me for not playing it? Well, he's $6,700 if memory serves. $6,700, he needs at least like 30 plus points because like other guys in that 6K to 7K range, there's going to be other guys who score 25 to 30. So if he scores 25 and you don't have him, you'll be like, oh man, I noticed Deonté and he had a good game. Too bad I didn't roster him. But it doesn't kill you. It's not like you can't win without him. So, yeah, my thought on a one-off player like that is he has to fit into my story.

He's not going to be a starting point for me. He's on my list. And if he fits into my roster or the story I'm telling, great. But if he's like, shocky, then I immediately start thinking about, A, what's the likelihood of him failing pretty low? He's probably not hurting rosters that roster him. What's the chances of him putting up a score that buries me pretty low? And so then I'm not concerned, right?

Like, I either play him if he works out or don't play him if he doesn't work out. But yeah, then Claypool becomes sort of the direct leverage off. because again, yes, definitely the offense doesn't run through Claypool. The offense runs through Naji and Deonti. But the point is that, like, once every four games, once every five games, once every six games, Claypool is going to have a huge game and people just aren't going to be on him. So, yeah, that would be kind of the way I would look at it. But again, the thought about like fading is if Deontes not like a core piece because he's

not part of my game focused builds, then I don't need to worry about like what his ownership is or whether or not I'm playing him because I've already identified that he's probably not hurting rosters that play him and he's probably not burying me if I don't play him. So if I end up with him great, if I don't end up with him also great, I'd love to end up with him more as part of some sort of story, but there aren't many stories to tell around a Steelers Brown's game at this point. It's hard to see it shooting out, right? Like Case Keenham's probably under center again. and O'Dell Beckham's like 4,600, right? So you could sort of stack that game up.

You could go, Najee, Deonte. You could say, hey, the offense flows through these two guys. Najee plus Deontay plus Odell Beckham. But yeah, I'd kind of probably look to offset the ownership with something like that or get some leverage by playing Claypool because, again, all the smart people are going to be like, well, Claypool is not the play. And so then nobody ends up playing. You know, it's like he'll still have a higher percentage chance than people will give him

credit for. although I think he's 6,300, right? So it's like, that's pretty expensive for a guy that you're just taking a flyer on. But, but yeah, that's an interesting spot. In any place where we can get kind of concentrated offense, especially if we can overstack it, like Deontay plus Naji is actually super viable. I actually wrote them down on my list together this last week, because I don't like Naji in a vacuum,

but when you can just say, well, the offense flows through these guys, that's where points might go. You have any thoughts on that? If not, if not, I have an interesting point I want to bring up to you as well. It's kind of a macro thing on the NFL season. Yeah. So I think that was sharp, you know, well, he is a one-off in, you know, on an offense that it's hard to get excited about. Well, let's talk about a few of the offenses this week that do cause some excitement.

So bills have the highest implied total, 13.5 point spread. you know, could Zach Moss go underowned? And then he's sort of, you know, the leverage play off of the past catchers. You said you already built a lineup without digs, but without some of the ancillary pieces. Rams, it looks like the exact same situation as last week for Darrell Henderson, right behind the bills in total. And then the spread is 14.5. Could we see Henderson going underowned because he flopped his chalk last week?

I don't think so. But that was like a great opportunity this past week to fade him and play Stafford, Swift, Cup, Jefferson like Darren did. And then the next two games are off of the main slate, or next three games, off the main slate, chiefs, Cowboys, Cardinals, and then Buccaneers in a, you know, Saints are killing the opposition with their slow pace, but that's still, you know, two pass funnel defenses going against each other. So, you know, Brady could just go nuclear and they just not throw the ball at all. Any thoughts on those? I'll give you my thoughts on that Bucks one is I think that the,

Marshall and Lattimore has been nails against Mike Evans in their matchups so far. One of the worst ways to try to predict. By the way, I hate wide receivers. I don't know what it is, like, just like cocky, obnoxious pre-Madonnas who are like super narcissistic and selfish. But I love when cornerbacks are like that. I just love a badass court, like Akib, Talib, snatching Michael Crabschie's chain talking shit. And so it was awesome last week or last, last night to watch Marshawn Latimore throw around D.K. Medcalf. This is one of the most intimidating players in football at any position towering over you. And he was just going at him. So shout out to Latimore. Favorite players in football, favorite position in football is like an obnoxious,

cocky, elite, shadow, CB1. And so big Marshawn Latimore fan after last night. Love to see that. It's one of the best. Last year, D.K. Metcalf like punked Stefan Gilmore on national TV. I don't know if you remember that, but he like got super physical with Gilmore all game and kind of shoved him around. So yeah, what goes around comes around, it's always great to see the cornerback kind of get the better of a spot like that. Because I was, I was scrawny growing up. You know, maybe it's all that soda I was drinking. And so, like, love the undersized.

scrappy guy shoving around a dude who's, you know, 60 pounds, five inches taller than him. Yeah, Latimore's been super vocal about his ownership of Mike Evans as well. In the media, two Mike Evans on the field, one of the worst ways to try to predict what will happen in the future is to just take what happened in the past and assume it will happen again. But we do have a pretty large sample size of Latimore doing really well against Mike Evans. And we know that the Bucks want to pass, and we know you can't run against the Saints. We know that you can't run against the Bucks either. So that should open extra plays for the Bucks and almost function as another funnel.

So if Gronk is still out and if Evans is being covered by Lattimore, that should filter targets toward Godwin and Antonio Brown. I think that Antonio Brown in a week, I think he's 6,100 this week, in a week where he's coming back from injury will be kind of somewhat overlooked in that game. and I think that's a super interesting spot to look to this week. Yeah, so just for context, in Latimore's last three games against Evans, he shadowed him on 71% of his routes, and Evans had a combined zero yards on five targets through, again, three games.

So, yeah, really owns him to a ridiculous. Yeah, it's been unbelievable. And that's kind of like they literally got Latimore because that division was full of bigger wide receivers, Julio Jones, and Mike Evans being kind of the two main guys. If you're going to play these guys twice a year, you want a cornerback who can match up with him, and they got Latimore feeling like he was a good matchup for these guys.

That's proved to be the case. So, yeah, I think that that's a really interesting spot. And I think that there's, like, it's a good week. I really like this upcoming week. I think that there is, there are, enough paths to like being different this week while being intelligent, right? Like being different without trying to be different, which is always my favorite, where you're going through the slate and you're like, what do I like? How do I see this slate playing out?

How would I put together a roster? And then, you know, you reach Friday and kind of come up for air and look to see what everybody else is talking about. And you realize that, oh, like I'm on a different track than everybody else. That was when I was like much more bubble player where I had few, content responsibilities and I would show up on that Friday night podcast with Levitan and Hefe and like without fail like every other week they'd bring up a super chalky player and I'd be like oh I hadn't thought about that guy like literally hadn't

considered him and it doesn't mean that that was a bad play right it's just that being in that type of mindset where there are super chocky players that you haven't even considered that haven't even made it close to your builds is an is the easiest way to be contrarians the easiest way to be contrarians the easiest way to be different is to just think for yourself, think to the slates, come up with good plays and good rosters. And I think this is a good week to do that. There are a lot of, you know, Carson Wentz and Michael Pittman. Well, Wents's past attempts have been down the last couple of games. He had the rain. Then they had the blowout win. Pitman's targets have been down as a result of that.

People are going to be scared about Tyre Hilton coming back, but they're playing the Titans. Titans are probably putting up points like Wentz plus Pittman plus A.J. Brown. That's not a roster that a lot of people will have, but it's super interesting. Could Justin Herbert have a huge game against the Patriots? Absolutely. And like we've actually seen several quarterbacks have huge games against the Patriots, but another player who's probably going to go overlooked? If Herbert has a huge game, who are those targets likely is going through?

Probably Austin Echler, because the Patriots are going to force the charges to move away from those wide receivers as much as possible, and the Patriots don't really have anybody who can cover Austin Echler. So finding spots like that where it's like, oh, this is like the sort of, of week where you can think through the slate, think through what makes the most sense. Like take out the stats and like the deep logic, but just how these two teams match up and how they might play leads to some really interesting things. Jerry Judy's coming back. Who's going to play Jerry Judy at 4,900 in his first game back?

And so, yeah, finding spots like that are, that's one of the best ways to win in DFS. And this is a good week. It sets up well for just kind of thinking through independent of the noise and the numbers. and to kind of find some super sharp plays this week. So I'm actually pretty excited about this week. And I'm actually, I'm traveling tomorrow, flying across the country with two kids to see my parents for the next week, knocking out like 14 hours of content on Thursday,

doing a little bit on Friday, and then building on Saturday and kind of having the front end of next week off. So hopefully you and I'll come back together next Tuesday and celebrate our big weeks from, again, what I think is a really interesting week and a week that I'm really looking forward to from a standpoint of what this upcoming slate offers. Well, you said you had one more interesting point you wanted to bring up. Yeah, so we, one of the things that I do at OWS is I send out a Sunday morning email every week. And a quick breakdown of inactives and then also late line movement.

So what we typically hit on is lines that have moved. moved two or more points from where they opened. Okay, so week one, three games had moved up two or more points. Two games had moved down two or more points. Since then, across six weeks, this is just main slate, so it doesn't take into account like Sunday night, football, Monday night, Thursday night, whatever. But in the last six weeks, only five games have had upward line move. of two or more points.

And 13 games have had downward line movement of two or more points. I haven't looked at like a breakdown of what has been more profitable betting-wise, like betting overs or betting unders. But it feels like everything has trended downward this year in terms of scoring. Teams are there are a lot more teams playing conservatively. There are a lot more injuries. There are a lot more teams taking things safe with players with a 17-game season, like health-wise.

So do you have any thoughts on kind of like the downward trajectory of scoring this year and the fact that like all, like 13 games have seen their lines move down compared to only five games with their lines moving up? No, but I do know some of that line movement was really dumb, like Cincinnati, Baltimore, which never made any sense to me. I was like, is someone hurt? And then I also saw an article recently. that apparently the public has been absolutely hammering Vegas the past three weeks at a

totally unprecedented level. I really don't have too many good takes and don't really know what's going on, but I think that's certainly interesting. Yeah, I think that there's been just sort of an auto setting of lines like a little bit higher than they should be across the board. One of the things that, you know... Maybe like historically. historically we've seen, you know, points scored going up and up and up.

It's like more and more an offensive dominated game. And then just maybe this year, like you said, you know, they're not taking into account, you know, all the rookie quarterbacks were playing and performing so poorly, the more conservative approach, the injuries. I think that's sharp. The coaches who are out there. Yeah. I think it's a super interesting just thing to note.

And then also a lot of our. sharpest DFS competition, the people who are going to make the most money over time, the people we have to compete with for first place because they have large bankrolls, they're putting in 150 lineups and doing a good job putting in 150 lineups. They leverage Vegas lines to a pretty heavy extent. So things like Matt Brown's Chargers line moving down two and a half points the week that ended up combining 47 to 42 was the final score, or Ravens Bengals, moving down two and a half points and the bingles come out and score 41. If we can identify spots like that,

we know that that downward line movement leads to our sharpest competition saying, oh, okay, well, Vegas lines are, like, over time, this is going to be one of the best things we can look at. And so when lines are moving down, their interest in those games kind of starts moving away. So if we can find those spots where the lines move down and we can say, oh, this is probably bad downward line movement, or this doesn't affect Jamar Chase, right?

Like finding things like that, that can be super helpful as well. And so, yeah, I think that there's, you know, like I often say, there isn't one thing or one stat or one element that we should look at that kind of answers everything. But if we can add little tools to our, you know, backpack of tools, I guess,

then we kind of keep gaining small edges. And I think that's, you know, one of the small edges is just pay attention to these little things like that. because, yeah, this has been an interesting year. Like, it's been a straight, I noticed it this last week when I was writing up to the line movement. It was like, boy, a bunch of downward line movement. Again, it was all four games that had seen significant line movement on the main slate this last week, was downward line movement.

And so, yeah, 13 out of 18 games since week one have seen downward line movement. And I think that there's a lot of ways we can use that, an understanding of that scoring is a little bit different this year in the NFL, and then also recognizing that downward line movement, pulls our sharpest competition away from those games. So if we can find things in those games to still like, that can benefit us as well. I like it.

You got anything else today, or are we turning our mics off a little bit early? Usually we go about 55 minutes to an hour, but we're 50 minutes in. I'm actually pretty good on, I think we did a good job covering this last week. It's weird, right? Like, this last week was a pretty sluggish slate.

There weren't that many exciting games. There's not really that much to talk about. Wasn't really a great week for football. I didn't watch any football on Sundays, which that's not super unusual for me because usually I catch up on Mondays and Tuesdays when it's more efficient. I don't I'm just sitting through commercials and all that. But my wife on Sunday was like, don't you want to put the games on? I was like, no, I'm good.

They're pretty boring today. And then she actually wanted them on just because it felt more like Sunday in the fall to have them on. So put them on and then I wasn't even in the room for like an hour of that time. So, yeah, it was a weird kind of uninspiring slate this last week, but I think we did a good job covering it and looking forward a little bit too to this next week. You got anything else to add before we get out of here? No, I think that's it. I think we could wrap up early this week, and I'm excited for next week.

I'm excited for next week. I tend to do well on travel weeks because it's harder to play because there's basically got to be more intentional and focus. focused with the time that you have for building. So I'm looking forward to celebrating a huge weekend next week when we get on this pod. With that for Scott Barrett from FantasyPoints.com here on the Fantasy Points podcast feed for J.M. To Win from One Weekseason.com. I am J.M. To Win. Thanks for hanging out. We will see you back here next week. And we will see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points Podcast. Remember to subscribe, rate,

and review on your favorite platform and come join the roster at fantasy points.com.