NFL DFS FanDuel Ownership Projections: Week 3 Preview
In this space, we’ll preview FanDuel ownership projections for the Sunday main slate of Week 3 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.
There are five chalky ownership points that stand out to me. We’ll discuss them in a larger context to find pivots
NFL DFS Week 3 FanDuel Ownership Preview
- Justin Jefferson ($9,700) – 28.37%
- Calvin Ridley ($7,500) – 25.18%
- Jerome Ford ($5,600) – 14.92%
- Zack Moss ($6,400) – 25.40%
- Kirk Cousins ($7,800) – 19.09%
Week 3 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
Tight Pivots
A pivot from a higher-owned situation to a closely-related situation is what I call a “tight pivot.” This week, with Justin Jefferson, Calvin Ridley, Tyreek Hill, and Keenan Allen projected so well, we want pieces of all four.
But we can’t have more than two, let alone all four, because we live in Dean’s world of a salary. The way to get in on these situations is obvious though, as the next men up on these depth charts are high-quality players.
Justin Jefferson ($9,700) – 28.37%
Jordan Addison ($6,800) – 4.65%
TJ Hockenson ($7,500) – 11.74%
Calvin Ridley ($7,500) – 25.18%
Christian Kirk ($6,500) – 17.91%
Tyreek Hill ($9,600) – 15.19%
Jaylen Waddle ($7,600)- 8.09%
Keenan Allen ($8,800) – 9.31%
Mike Williams ($7,200) – 17.93%
Besides the Chargers situation, we can spend down, stay on the same game and team’s passing stacks, and get an ownership discount.
We can do this from WR to RB and vice versa. For instance, let’s say we stack the Chiefs — Patrick Mahomes to Travis Kelce. We stack up the value RBs, go with a mid-$3,000 DST, and we’re left with ~$7,000 per WR and FLEX. This is enough to go Alexander Mattison or Travis Etienne instead of the Vikings or Jags passing attack and more than enough to go with Joshua Kelley or Raheem Mostert over the Chargers or Dolphins passing attacks.
It is possible to get exposure to what I think are the five best offenses on the slate — the Chiefs, Vikings, Chargers, Dolphins, and Jaguars — in a lot of lineups through tight pivots.
Wide Pivots
The most common pivot is the wide pivot: Divorcing oneself totally from one situation to get into another situation. Going Tyreek instead of Jefferson or Ridley is a clear example.
At RB is where we’re gonna do this most. We’re either playing a rushing game or we’re not.
This week, Zack Moss, Jerome Ford, Joshua Kelley, and Alexander Mattison project pretty well per dollar. They’re also higher owned. A lot of weeks we don’t have the pivots off of these cheap seats to move without sacrificing too much projection. This week, there are options.
Isiah Pacheco ($5,700) – 11.61%
Kendre Miller ($4,600) – 1.60%
Pacheco is a clear pivot from which to start. In single entry, he’s probably my primary path toward spending up at WR. The Chiefs are in a great spot, playing Pacheco is a super cheap tight pivot off of the Chiefs stack, and I still have strong exposure to the highest-scoring team on the slate.
Miller is the tougher sell. He’s cheap at hell, but there is the opportunity cost in passing up guys with better-projected volume. With that said, there is very little guaranteed volume in the NFL.
The Colts should get blown out, which is bad for Moss.
Ford could lose work to Kareem Hunt off the street.
Kelley and Mattison could be left behind in a pass-heavy shootout.
Given that Miller has the play making ability to do a ton with 8-to-12 opportunities, going to him for massive salary and ownership savings is less risky than we might think. We play punt WRs with far less opportunity all the time, especially on DK.
Value Begets Ownership, and Ownership is a Cost
So this is a pretty simple article this week, but they’re simple points that need to be hammered home when we’re discussing ownership. The last point that I wanna review is getting too excited about value. We don’t know many things for sure in DFS. We don’t know who is gonna do what and for how much, but we do know how to project ownership, and that in every slate of every sport we get the same damn dynamic: That value begets ownership, and ownership is a cost.
Ownership as a cost is a concept of which really smart players lose track. It’s the concept that we’re not only dealing with a finite salary cap, but we’re dealing with an ownership cap. An ownership cap that is different for everyone, but the cap has to exist or we become permanent residents of Mincash City.
Kirk Cousins is a great play. He costs 19.09%.
Joshua Kelley is a great play. He costs 23.01%.
Christian Kirk is a great play. He costs 17.91%.
Zack Moss is a decent play. He costs 25.40%.
Raheem Mostert is a decent play. He costs 14.84%.
This isn’t to say that we should fade these five plays due to ownership. They are all worthy of MME pools and single-entry consideration. But once we leave the game world of a salary cap and the theoretical world of pOWN%, we have to use real American (or Canadian) dollars to send these guys into lineups. And these guys cost a lot of lineups to get overweight on the field.
For this, value requires us to take some strong stands on exposure. Locking it all in isn’t stupid. It’s just a level of risk that we don’t need to take in order to get the ROI for which we’re looking.