NFL DFS FanDuel Ownership Projections: Week 5 Preview
In this space, we’ll preview FanDuel ownership projections for the Sunday main slate of Week 5 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 5 FanDuel Ownership Preview
- Jalen Hurts ($8,600) – 16.54%
- A.J. Brown ($8,200) – 13.73%
- Travis Kelce ($8.789) – 22.44%
- Rashee Rice ($5,000) – 6.44%
- Cooper Kupp ($8,500) – 5.88%
Week 5 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
Stacking Chalk
Jalen Hurts is the chalk. Whether or not he’s “good” or “bad” chalk is a discussion in itself. For here, we’re not gonna talk about whether or not to play Hurts as chalk, but how to play him as chalk.
Hurts is also pretty expensive, so we need to get some value, and remember that value begets ownership, so playing Hurts doesn’t just mean one chalky piece but the multiple chalky pieces that have to go with him to get raw points into our lineups.
One way to play him is to surround him with lower-owned pieces when we do spend up. Say, Garrett Wilson at 7.12% instead of Amon-Ra St. Brown at 15.18% (if he plays); or David Montgomery at 10.43% instead of Bijan Robinson at 18.74%; or Dameon Pierce at 7.20% instead of Isiah Pacheco at 16.60% when still hunting for value.
Another way we can approach a chalky QB is to stack him up. Especially a mobile QB. The field doesn’t stack enough as it is. Give a highly-projected mobile QB to the field and the gut reaction is to play him naked and jam in all of the value with a stud or two from a different game. We should zig when the field zags like this.
Whether or not we stack Hurts with A.J. Brown or DeVonta Smith depends on our risk tolerance and the ownership product of our lineup. If our product is on the higher end, we ask ourselves if sacrificing nearly four median points is worth the 13.73% ownership drop from Brown to Smith’s 9.70%. We shouldn’t get bogged down in the Brown-Smith debate in our heads. We should just have it in our minds that Hurts might be too chalky to play naked, and we should be stacking him a lot.
The best way to combat chalk is to simply game stack the situation. Pick one out of Cooper Kupp, Puka Nacua, and Tutu Atwell. Just having a Rams piece deepens our contrarian approach, lowers the ownership product of our lineup, and better puts us in a position to win tournaments versus min-cashing and such.
The onslaught of two Rams with an Eagle or two with Hurts is very contrarian, but there is a lot of negative correlation going on. I think we’d want smaller fields and a tighter spread than 4.5 with a higher total than 49.5 to do this.
Hurts isn’t gonna be megachalk. Other QBs are going highly owned as well because bye weeks have condensed the player pool a bit. Patrick Mahomes is currently at 14.22% with Tua Tagovailoa at 12.11% and Joe Burrow at 12.12%. I focused on Hurts because he’s the most tempting to play naked, and there’s more to why we stack than simple correlation.
Tight Pivot For Value
Travis Kelce carries a ridiculous gimmick price tag this week, but it isn’t completely batspit crazy considering that he’s the only TE projected over 12 median and 17 ceiling points at 14.74 and 21.40. The gap between him and the field is pretty wide.
Mahomes’ ownership feeds into Kelce’s high ownership, though many will be playing Kelce as a one-off, it seems. There’s a high risk of absorbing his salary and ownership without correlation, but do what thou wilt.
For now, we’re still talking stacks. Sure, we can play a lot of better-projected players for more than $8,500 — Justin Jefferson, Tyreek Hill, JaMarr Chase, David Montgomery, and Derrick Henry — as wide pivots. But where we really want the situation of the Chiefs passing attack in our lineups, we want Mahomes and we want Kelce.
There is a tight pivot that’s so cheap it allows us to comfortably play Mahomes in a moderately-priced, low-owned stack: Stack Mahomes with Rashee Rice. The rookie is min-priced and has seen 12 targets over the last two weeks. His 19 targets on the season lead Chiefs WRs. His 5.8 aDOT has to see some positive regression, and his success rate should be higher than 57.9% when having Mahomes throwing to him.
Rice is currently seventh in median-per-dollar projections with a ceiling over 3x.
Is he likely to succeed? No, but when he does, we get a huge value boost at 6.44% ownership. When he doesn’t, who cares? He was only $5,000. We spend hundreds more than that on TEs who do nothing and we don’t bat an eye.
What to Do With Cooper Kupp
What to do with Kupp isn’t a simple situation. He’s been a target monster in the past and Matthew Stafford loves when a WR supplies comfort. The problem is that we don’t know Kupp’s snap count and Nacua might have established a degree of trust to significantly cut into Kupp’s volume.
That’s the footbally stuff.
Ownership says that we play Kupp at under 6.00% because he’s Copper Frickin’ Kupp. That if he’s out there — when he’s out there — he’s out there to get balls thrown in his direction.
There’s a lot of risk and salary involved in playing Kupp. There’s a temptation to wait and see. But beware: The wait-and-see approach blows up in our faces if he has a great game that raises his salary and ownership.