NFL DFS FanDuel Ownership Projections: Week 8 Preview
In this space, we’ll preview FanDuel ownership projections for the Sunday main slate of Week 8 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 8 FanDuel Ownership Preview
- Patrick Mahomes ($9,000) – 14.91%
- Tua Tagovailoa ($8,200) – 7.03%
- Zay Flowers ($6,500) – 22.23%
- Tony Pollard ($7,600) – 20.74%
- Seattle Seahawks DST (4,300) – 17.89%
- Joe Mixon ($6,500) – 18.82%
Week 8 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
Don’t Discard All Chalk
The number-one ownership story of the week is wowow-Chiefs. Patrick Mahomes is projected to be really high-owned for a QB at nearly 15% and Travis Kelce is projected at 14.01% himself. The question of whether or not to fade the Chiefs is a false premise. The question of how we should play the Chiefs is a far more relevant conversation to have.
At first glance, I would wanna be underweight on the Mahomes-Kelce combo unless with a low-owned runback. My next thought would be to play Mahomes-Kelce with Rashee Rice at under 10%. Rice is second on the team — and leads Chiefs WRs — with 34 targets. He played a season-high 40 snaps last week.
So, Mahomes-Kelce-Rice with a Jerry Jeudy or Courtland Sutton runback or Mahomes-Kelce with a ~2% Sutton is probably the way to approach the Chiefs chalk.
The Chiefs have an implied total of 27.5 — which is great — but the Dolphins are at 28.0 points for about half the ownership. Sure, Tyreek Hill is gonna be really high-owned, but as a one-off. The ~7% projection for Tua Tagovailoa suggests that the stack will be heavily under-owned.
Not a Lot of Megachalk After the Chiefs Stack
Zay Flowers and Tony Pollard are the only players on the slate projected for over 20% ownership, so we can play whoever we want more than most weeks.
The relative megachalk we should touch on is the Seahawks DST at 17.89% against the Browns. I don’t like using the terms “good chalk” or “bad chalk,” so we’ll just call this weird chalk. The Browns can’t really do much, but the Seahawks defense isn’t good, and they’re over $4k. The $3,900 Falcons’ 9.07% ownership makes a little more sense against the Titans backup QB.
We should avoid the DST chalk before we avoid the great value in Flowers or the great volume spot for Pollard.
Speaking of Weird Chalk
Let’s take an RB who’s a 4.5-point underdog, averaging 3.8 YPC and fewer than 20 opportunities per game, and pit him against one of the best defenses in the NFL. Would you say that 18.82% ownership is warranted?
That’s the situation in which Joe Mixon finds himself this week. And people are gonna play him because he’s cheap.
I’m mostly aboard the defense-doesn’t-matter train, but the 49ers defense matters enough. This is weird chalk.
Alvin Kamara projects for only 0.03 less points per dollar at $8,300. Jonathan Taylor at 0.09 less points per dollar at $7,100. I can be sold on Mixon as the best RB under $7,000, but that tells me that I wanna spend up at RB before it tells me that we should jam in more Mixon.