Sonty's NFL DFS Single-Entry Strategy: Week 18 - Main Slate
Single entry is a different type of game from cash games, as they’re tournaments with top-down payout structures. And they are also different from mass multi-entry tournaments in that we’re only able to fire a single bullet. Yet the common flaw is that a large chunk of the field puts cash-style lineups into single-entry spaces (not enough correlation or leverage), or the field will over-leverage for the size of that specific single-entry contest.
Whether or not we build a chalky lineup or a contrarian lineup is a flawed approach. We wanna maximize the projection in our lineup without absorbing too much ownership. So we’ll have higher-owned players, and we’ll have lower-owned players. The key is that we’re making good plays while differentiating from the field.
In this space, we’ll take a look at the higher-projected plays and discuss how to use these chess pieces to maximize ROI using projection with correlation and leverage. The most important dynamic we see at play is that the chalk absorbs far more ownership than in MME contests from the middle tiers of pOWN%.
First, we’ll look at stacks; then we’ll go position by position.
NFL DFS Picks: Sonty’s Single-Entry Strategy for Week 18
STACKS
FD CHALK – Bills at Dolphins
Sunday Night Football is making a one-week comeback to the main slate in this meaningful game. And it’s FanDuel doing the deed for us and FanDuel only. The novelty of the game only being on FanDuel along with the skill of Josh Allen, the Vegas line, and how damn meaningful this game is makes the Bills seem like the safest stack on the slate.
I don’t believe in the word “safe,” but the field does, and that’s all that matters in terms of projecting ownership. We currently have the Bills at ~14% ownership in MME – which is bonkers, considering Allen’s $9,500 price tag. Usually, I’m pretty conservative with boosting a play like this on a slate this large, but the circumstances and the wealth of value at RB suggest that we could see Allen’s ownership in the 30s with a significant percentage of the field stacking him with Stefon Diggs. On FD, everyone wants a part of the Bills. Even James Cook is gonna catch some ownership near the double-digits.
If I’m eating the Allen ownership, I’m offsetting it with a ~5% Gabe Davis as the pivot off of Diggs and running it back with Tyreek Hill.
PROJECTION — Cowboys at Commanders
The Cowboys are playing to win and they have to play to slaughter, as they shouldn’t leave any breathing room for the Commanders to play spoiler.
The circumstances with the amount of firepower the Cowboys possess against the terrible Commanders make them the stack of the week.
The Commanders have given up the most TD passes and the second-most passing YPG this season, and Dak Prescott comes into Week 18 leading the league in TD passes and fifth in passing YPG. Ceedee Lamb leads the league in targets and receptions, while being behind only Hill in receiving YPG.
The bad news is that the Cowboys are very obvious, so we’ll have to make some ugly value plays to create lineups with some teeth.
Pure spidey senses here, but the Bills and Cowboys could combine for 50-55% ownership on FanDuel and the Cowboys around 25% on DraftKings.
Like the Gabe Davis pivot, Brandin Cooks has seen a 13.6 aDOT this season. His volume is erratic, but he does have four TDs in the last six games. I don’t like leaving Lamb off of our Cowboys stacks, but we could be different by double stacking without a run back, as the Cowboys don’t need a competitive game to pound the metal.
Vegas has the Cowboys as the top-scoring team this week, by far, with a 30.5 implied total.
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