Playing NFL DFS on Rosters: Week 5
Have you ever bought a DFS lineup? Luckily, no one has ever asked me that question. A little over four years ago I discovered DFS during the NBA playoffs. At the time, I was exactly the type of person that I imagine every new player is. I’ve been a diehard Philadelphia Eagles fan all my life. Since the NFL season is only 16 games it’s easy for even the most casual fans to follow. The problem for me when I started playing DFS was that NFL didn’t start for a few months (it was mid-June) and I really wanted to play. I quickly learned that NBA playoffs were way too difficult, so I clicked my way over to the MLB lobby. “How hard can this be?” I said to myself. You just pick guys batting at the top of the order, right? Maybe even try to get a left-handed hitter against a right-handed pitcher. I’ll spare you the details, but I hadn’t stumbled across the ultimate lineup building system. In fact, It was becoming increasingly obvious that everyone else knew something I didn’t. Actually, it wasn’t just something; they knew a lot more than I did.
At that point, I was left with a tough decision. My lineups were getting destroyed, but I still wanted to learn the game. I headed off to Google and what do you know, the top link was some guy selling lineups for only $2 per day. I bought five days’ worth and I played in a $2 50/50 each day. At the end of the week, we won three out of five days. My $10 in 50/50s returned $10.80 to my bankroll. The site I was playing on collected 10% rake so they made a $1 off my $10. The person I bought lineups from made $10. Meanwhile, I made a whopping $0.80. That can’t possibly be the way! I headed back to Google and found a site called RotoGrinders.com, you may have heard of it. The rest is pretty much history, I dove into both the free and premium research on this site and eventually developed my own research process.
Let’s go back to lineup sellers for a minute though. This has been a hot topic over the last few years. Do I think lineup sellers should be banned? No, I actually think lineup sellers serve a purpose. They allow people an opportunity to win which may prevent them from quitting right away. The problem with buying a lineup though is that it’s a Band-Aid fix. Most of the time, you have no idea who the person is that created it or why they settled on that lineup. They might be a winning player or they might be an 18-year-old college kid who created the lineup in five minutes. Either way, you’ll win some and you’ll lose some but you probably won’t do any better than you could have on your own. Especially not when you have to make back the money you spent for the lineup before you can realize a profit. There’s a lot more value in learning to build your own lineups.
If you want to try this on your own, what’s the best way to do it? Well, that’s a bit complicated. There are some really valuable tools available in the DFS industry. Right here on RotoGrinders you can buy courses in RotoAcademy, you can sign up for site-specific advice, or you can even buy one-on-one coaching. Do you need all of that or even any of that to win? I’ll say that it certainly helps. Even before I wrote for this site, I would use the tools or articles to cut down my research time. The reason I think most people give in and buy lineups though is that they simply don’t understand how to fully utilize the free tools available.
Since I’ve been given an opportunity to write a weekly article for Rosters (and no one told me I had to do it a specific way), I figured this is a great place to highlight some free tools here on RotoGrinders. If you click on the Daily Research Tab you’ll find a variety of tools available for each site. The ones that are colored orange are premium but the ones in blue are completely free. The two I’ll be focusing on today are Defense vs. Position (DVP) and Usage Rates. If you are reading this article on a computer, go ahead and click on each of those links to open in a new tab so you can follow along.
Quarterback
Carson Wentz ($11,000) – Let’s start things off with the Defense vs. Position (DVP) tab. Since most teams have played four games at this point, I like to change the filter to “Season” in order to view 2016 stats. Next, I like to click on the “Points” category to filter by the largest total. If you did it right, you’ll see Atlanta, Detroit, and the Raiders are the three worst teams versus QB at 27.56, 24.80 and 23.01 points per game. The QBs who face those teams are Trevor Siemian (or Paxton Lynch), Carson Wentz, and Philip Rivers respectively. I’m skipping over the Denver situation because Rosters is not a late swap site. I don’t want to be locked into Siemian if he ends up sitting out. So what about this Carson Wentz kid? The Lions have allowed at least 16 points to every QB while giving up an average of 24.8 through four weeks. The Eagles also have the sixth-highest projected team total on the slate. An $11,000 price tag is an excellent deal for a QB who should break 16 points with ease.
Philip Rivers ($12,200) – If I can’t interest you in Wentz, the next best DVP matchup goes to Philip Rivers. The Raiders have allowed three top-six QB performances through four weeks. Vegas has San Diego at Oakland as the highest over/under of the week. Rivers has scored the following totals on Rosters this season 14.62, 24.8, 12.4, 19.84. There’s absolutely nothing about this matchup with the Raiders that scares me. Rivers provides both safety and upside here.
Running Back
Terrance West ($8,600) – If you click the RB filter on the DVP tab and sort by points, you should see New Orleans (37.4), San Diego (34.98), and Washington (33.43) as the three best RB matchups. Sadly, New Orleans doesn’t play this week so we’ll have to wait until next week to play a RB against them. How about that third-worst team? The Redskins are the only team in the league to allow 100+ yards rushing in every game this year. On the other side of this game, we have Terrance West. The Ravens made Justin Forsett inactive last Sunday and then cut him on Tuesday. That opened the door for West to see 80% of the Baltimore rushing attempts last week. When the numbers tell me that the 25th-most-expensive RB has the second-best matchup I pay attention.
Jordan Howard ($9,700) – I’m skipping over a couple of teams to highlight the guy facing the fifth-best matchup versus Colts. I do need to mention something about the second-best matchup (Chargers) though. The Raiders have been using four RBs this season which has made their backfield a situation to avoid. News broke yesterday that Latavius Murray is doubtful this week. That should leave most of the work for DeAndre Washington ($5,900) and Jalen Richard ($5,000). If you want to go dirt-cheap, Washington is worth a look. Anyways, back to Jordan Howard’s matchup. The Colts have already allowed five top-16 RBs this season and they’ve only played four games. Jordan Howard is the new Bell Cow RB for the Bears. He saw 26 touches last week while rushing for 111 yards. He’s an excellent option if you don’t trust West but still want to go cheap at RB.
Wide Receiver
T.Y. Hilton ($13,700) – At the beginning of this article, I mentioned we will also be using Usage Rates along with DVP to identify some strong plays. Looking at DVP isn’t helpful with WRs because it shows the total allowed to all WRs. Instead, we want to look at WRs who see a large share of their team’s targets. Rosters awards one point per reception (PPR) which means T.Y. Hilton and his eleven targets per game are valuable. Hilton is one of only two receivers to see 10 or more targets in each game this year.
Eddie Royal ($7,700) – I’m cheating a little bit here. If you have WR Usage Rates filtered by targets, you have to scroll a long way before you get to Eddie Royal and his 5.5 targets per game. So, why the recommendation? Kevin White was placed on injured reserve this week. If you scroll up to White, you’ll note that he was averaging nine targets per game. Those targets are going to get divided up somehow, right? If the Colts decide to use Vontae Davis to shadow Alshon Jeffery, the path of least resistance for the Bears is going to be targeting Eddie Royal. We already saw last week what can happen. Royal was targeted seven times. He caught all seven for 111 yards and a touchdown. I’m not expecting 24.10 Rosters points again out of Royal, but we don’t need anything close to that. His $7,700 price tag will let us get either top-tier RBs or top-tier WRs. Royal has totals of 15.7, 15.2, 5.1, and 24.1 on the season. We would take any of those except for the 5.1 at this price.
Tight End
Kyle Rudolph ($5,700) – There are two tight ends who have scored in the top-12 at the position every single week this season. One is Greg Olsen and the other is Kyle Rudolph. Olsen isn’t in the player pool for the main Rosters slate as they’ve removed the Monday night game. If he was, he would certainly be more expensive than the $5700 we have to pay for Rudolph. Let’s go back to the Usage Rates but click on TE. If you filter by targets, you’ll notice Rudolph is averaging 8.25 targets per game. He also has a 30.3% share of his team’s total targets. Those numbers would be good for a WR. Getting that kind of volume from a cheap TE is a steal.
Zach Ertz ($6,200) – It pains me to pay $500 more for Ertz than Rudolph. That makes this recommendation a tournament play. If you go back to the DVP Page and click on TE, you’ll notice the second-best matchup for a TE this season is the Lions. They allow 21.93 points per game to the position. They’ve actually been bad against TE for a while now. The Lions have allowed a TE to score a touchdown in 18 of their last 20 games. A lot of people are going to skip over Ertz because he hasn’t played since Week 1. In that game against Cleveland, Ertz had seven targets before injuring his rib. He returned to practice this week and should slot right back in as one of Carson Wentz favorite targets.
Where do we go from here?
Above are a couple recommendations at each position to get you started on Rosters. Obviously, you can’t build an entire lineup from the players I just mentioned. Luckily, I’ve given you enough cheap options to fit almost anything else you want. Here is what I recommend. If you don’t already have a Rosters account, sign up through the RotoGrinders link. If you deposit $10, you’ll receive $20 for free. The bonus is posted manually but it should be in your account within a few hours. This should leave you with $30 in your account. After that, sign up for the $5 Rush that starts tonight (Thursday). Because Rosters is not a late swap site, you will be able to see ownership and lineups for your opponents. Go through and research the highest-owned plays. Were these players you liked? Is there a reason you didn’t play the highest-owned players? Hopefully it was intentional. Even if it wasn’t, you now have access to all the free lineups you can handle. See, I told you that you don’t need to buy lineups in order to improve your game! Now go take the remaining $25 in your Rosters account and build the best lineups you can for Sunday using what I’ve given you here plus the knowledge of who your opponents like.