Sonty's NFL DFS Single-Entry Strategy: Week 5
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 5
STACKS
DK CHALK – Dolphins vs. Giants
The Giants aren’t getting much of anything right to start the season. Teams haven’t really had to throw against them.
Fast forward to this week against the Dolphins, who are a team much evolved to passing first with an efficient QB and an elite WR1 in Tua Tagovailoa and Tyreek Hill. A lot is being made of De’Von Achane and Raheem Mostert scoring TDs, but let’s not forget that the Fins have ten TDs through the air on top of their ten on the ground.
Tua’s 71.3% completion rate with Tyreek’s 40 targets and 13.4 aDOT forms a passing game that creates as near an unstoppable force as there is in the league. Their 29.5 implied total is the highest on the slate.
We have them as the highest-owned stack on the DK slate but with an even higher Opto%, suggesting that they’ll be a tad under-owned in MME. We’re talking single-entry, though, where Tua’s ownership can balloon to 25% and Tyreek’s around 35%. Even if we make the tight pivot from Tyreek to Jaylen Waddle, we’re talking about giving up around 40% median projection for his ~12-15% ownership.
The Dolphins are the most likely to succeed, but that isn’t always the best play. We might have better luck with their ownership on FD, where Philly is sucking up a lot of the air with Kansas City.
FD CHALK – Eagles at Rams
According to our Opto%, there’s a ~26-27% chance that either the Eagles or Dolphins are in the optimal lineup, meaning there’s a strong will for the field to stack one of the two in single-entry. On FD, Jalen Hurts will be in the neighborhood of 25% owned in single-entry.
How much of that is naked and how much of that will be in a stack, I’m not sure. But we know that the field doesn’t really like to one-off A.J. Brown or even DeVonta Smith over the alternatives, so seeing them at 16.67% and 10.57% respectively tells us that the field is gonna stack Hurts a large portion of the time.
I still say that we shouldn’t play him naked. He’s just too much money and this spread is too tight (-4.5) that we shouldn’t play the “Eagles are just gonna run all second half” game this week. The Eagles should be throwing as much in this game against this horrid defense as they will all season.
Ignoring ownership, I prefer the Dolphins. Factoring in ownership, I’m leaning toward playing them both, taking the ownership discount on both sites, stacking the Dolphins on FD and the Eagles on DK. This is hard to stomach when Tua’s only $7,100 on DK, but $8,000 on FD is a discount too.
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