NFL DFS FanDuel Ownership Projections: Week 12 Preview
In this space, we’ll preview FanDuel ownership projections for the Sunday main slate of Week 12 of the NFL DFS season. We’ll look at chalk. We’ll look at contrarian plays. We’ll look at plays that should be owned more than they will be. We’ll look at plays that should be owned less than they should be.
This isn’t a comprehensive look at ownership throughout the slate, but a peek into what stands out. The reasoning behind the analysis can be applied to dozens of other players on the slate.
NFL DFS Week 12 FanDuel Ownership Preview
- Jalen Hurts ($8,000) – 20.52%
- A.J. Brown ($8,800) – 23.79%
- Patrick Mahomes ($8,700) – 9.90%
- Jonathan Taylor ($7,500) – 35.09%
- Saquon Barkley ($8,000) – 11.46%
- Kyren Williams ($8,200) – 10.92%
- Houston Texans DST ($3,300) – 19.01
Week 12 NFL DFS ownership projections for FanDuel are accurate at the time of publication and subject to change. Sign up for Premium to get updated ownership projections all the way to kickoff.
FanDuel Ownership Notes
Eagles Megachalk is Pretty Good Megachalk
The Eagles are tied with the greatest implied total on the slate (25.75) with a tight spread against the Bills at home. It really is a perfect storm for Philly to break the slate through the extremely heavily owned Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown.
It is surprising to see this sort of ownership on FanDuel for such an expensive stack because punts aren’t as cheap as they are on DraftKings, but here we are.
There’s an obvious direct pivot off of the Hurts-Brown stack that saves us some money and still captures a lot of upside – DeVonta Smith. We sacrifice about four median projection points going down to Smith, but we also save $1,400 and still have a top-five WR on the slate.
The more indirect pivot is to abandon the Eagles stack altogether for the Chiefs. Patrick Mahomes in the ~10% range is always juicy. When he is tied for the highest implied total on the slate at half the ownership of Hurts, he becomes more appealing. Sure, Mahomes is expensive, but he’s $100 cheaper than Hurts; Travis Kelce is expensive, but he’s $500 cheaper than Brown.
The field is gonna largely attack the Chiefs blowout with Isiah Pacheco. And this makes sense if we’re just looking at gamescript, but the Chiefs running up the score is enough in the cards for us to just bomb our lineups with Mahomes to who ever, at ownership this low.
This Running Back Clusterfrack
Jonathan Taylor has a 2.34 point-per-dollar projection, which is the highest on the slate by a sizable margin. At an affordable $7,500, he’s naturally going to be very highly-owned. There is some sticker shock on his actual pOWN%, though, which could give us pause.
My inclination is just to eat the chalk and be different elsewhere. There are four other RBs with at least 22% pOWN – James Conner, the aforementioned Pacheco, Rachaad White, and Javonte Williams. But after those five, the next-highest pOWN% is a cluster of Josh Jacobs, DAndre Swift, Bijan Robinson, Saquon Barkley, Kyren Williams, and Derrick Henry all in the 10.80-to-12.90% range.
My point is there’s nothing wrong with playing Taylor, but we can (and should) avoid the other ~20-to-25%-owned RBs where he play him.
Defense Ownership is (Still) Silly
Nearly 20% of the field is gonna play a kinda’ bad defense against a decent offense, despite it being nearly 20%, because it’s a super-cheap DST. I’m all for going cheap as a rule, and we don’t have to avoid chalk when it’s cheap, but 19.01% for any DST is batspit crazy.
19.01% against the fourth-highest protected QB on the slate in Trevor Lawrence just makes no sense. Lawrence isn’t Dan Marino, but we’re still talking about a low’ish 1.8% INT rate and a middle-of-the-road 7.0% sack rate. The point is that this isn’t some obvious money spot where we’re just gonna lose if we don’t latch onto it.
Yet, the field is treating the Texans this way. Bizarre.