Raybon’s Rollout: Week 1
Like the Mack in 1996, the McRib in the mid-2000s, or Marshawn Lynch this season, Raybon’s Rollout has returned.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, I use this space to I highlight the unconventional stacks and players I’ll be rolling out in DFS each week. The column is largely based on my intensive research on stacking and coaching tendencies, and this year I’m adding a section that features the player with the top projected percentage odds of the week to hit cash game value, which follows the same methodology I use to calculate projected odds of hitting tournament value in my GPP Leverage Score metric.
Unconventional Stacks
QB Aaron Rodgers + WR Randall Cobb + WR Paul Richardson
There’s always going to be a portion of the DFS public that sees “Seahawks” and completely fades their opponent, but the Vegas lines suggest that wouldn’t be a smart move. Seahawks-Packers has an over/under of 51, which as of this writing is the highest total of Week 1. If the Packers score three TDs like Vegas implies, then an Aaron Rodgers eruption is squarely in the crosshairs, as Rodgers scored 86% (44-of-51) of Green Bay’s offensive TDs a season ago. That’s not a fluke—the Packers passed the ball inside the 5-yard line 62.5% of the time last season, most in the league, and did so at an even higher rate in 2015 (65.8%), though they finished second that year. The Seahawks have a talented defense, but their cornerback depth behind Richard Sherman is shaky: Jeremy Lane is coming off a poor season, Shaquil Griffin is a rookie, Justin Coleman never panned out in New England, and Neiko Thorpe has been waived five times in his NFL career. That combined with Seattle bolstering their defensive line with the acquisition of Sheldon Richardson will likely cause the Packers to employ a pass-centric game plan.
Why stack Rodgers with Randall Cobb? Firstly, one thing that stood out as I did offseason research this year was how infrequently QB-receiver stacks with two expensive players showed up in winning large-field GPP lineups. Over the past two years combined, only four first-place lineups in the FanDuel Sunday Million used a QB-receiver stack where both players cost $8,000 or more, and only three first-place lineups in the DraftKings Millionaire Maker used a QB-receiver stack where both players cost $7,000 or more. Intuitively, that makes sense: if you’re stacking with an expensive player, you want the correlation to go to work for you such that you get “expensive” production from multiple players while only paying for it once. Secondly, at $5,900 on FanDuel and $5,300 on DraftKings, Cobb is undervalued after suffering from injuries and bad TD luck last season. And finally, Seattle’s cornerbacks are all lengthy types who tend to struggle against quicker receivers like Cobb, and he’s the one Packers wideout guaranteed to not have to deal with Richard Sherman for the majority of his routes.
For those new to this column, you may or not be aware that players on opposing passing games have a strong correlation to each other, which is why it’s usually a good move to include an opposing receiver in a QB-receiver stack. That’s especially true in this case given the game’s high over/under. Over the past two seasons, the per-game home/road TD splits of Doug Baldwin (0.75/0.56) and Jimmy Graham (0.50/0.08) skew toward home field, so fading them in Lambeau in favor of the cheaper Paul Richardson – who will probably be lower owned, too—provides nice leverage. Including the playoffs, Richardson has topped 80 yards or caught a TD in three of his last four games. Tyler Lockett has never been a full-time player, and it’s Richardson that has been running as the No. 2 receiver and is set to inherit Jermaine Kearse’s 78% snap rate from last season.
RB Todd Gurley + DST Los Angeles Rams
I have a lot of respect for the offensive mind of new Rams coach Sean McVay, who earned himself the honor of being the youngest head coaching hire in NFL history after a wizardous coaxing of Kirk Cousins from turnover-prone RG3 understudy to league leader in completion percentage (2015) and 8.1-yard-per-attempt passer (2016). McVay wants to use Gurley more as a receiver, while the Rams’ additions of Andrew Whitworth and John Sullivan along the offensive line should help Gurley return to his rookie-year form on the ground. For all the disappointment surrounding Gurley last season, he still topped 70 yards in 13-of-16 games. Gurley gets a home-favorite matchup with the Colts, who continue to treat defense as an optional aspect of football. No team ranked worse in run defense DVOA a season ago.
The performance of a running back and his defense are oftentimes correlated due to game script, and this figures to be one of those times. Not only will the Colts start interception-prone journeyman Scott Tolzien at quarterback, but they will also be without starting center Ryan Kelly (foot). Even without a financially dissatisfied All-Pro Aaron Donald in the lineup, the Rams defense is likely to dominate after new defensive boss Wade Phillips had all offseason to install one of his patented, opponent-specific game plans.
Best Odds to Hit Cash Game Value
Le’Veon Bell: 73% on FanDuel and 65% on DraftKings
As I said on the Week 1 DFS MVP Podcast, “Le’Veon Bell is too expensive to hit value” Twitter is the worst kind of Twitter. Points per dollar is a flawed metric, and so are its accompanying target multipliers like 2x, 3x, etc. What those metrics fail to account for is the slope of the line when you measure the relationship between points and salary, i.e., high-salaried players shouldn’t be expected to score as many points per dollar as low-salaried players to be considered a value.
If you want to target the underlying total scores for your overall lineup that linear multipliers like 2x or 3x imply, you need to account for fantasy point expectations that vary based on position and salary range. To account for these variances, I created Cash Game Target Scores. They can be calculated for any overall lineup target score, but for our purposes, I based them on the popular overall lineup target scores of 150 points on DraftKings and 120 points on FanDuel. I’m not a fan of aiming for a static cash line every week because cash lines will vary, but the main point here is to establish an overall lineup target so that we can then observe the different points per dollar multipliers it would take for players at different salaries and/or positions to get your lineup there. Below is an example of the difference in points per dollar multiplier between a punt play and a stud:
Once I have calculated a player’s target score, I use a combination of floor, median, and ceiling projections to calculate implied volatility level in the form of standard deviation. Finally, I perform a probability distribution calculation to find the odds of the player hitting the target score.
As he likely will often this season, Le’Veon Bell comes out with the highest odds of cashing in Week 1. While Ben Roethlisberger is known for his frequent mishaps in road games with early starting times, Bell picks up the slack. Since 2014, Bell has averaged 147.6 total yards and 0.80 TDs per game on the road compared to 135.6 total yards and 0.58 TDs per game at home. While Cleveland defensive lineman Danny Shelton (knee) and Myles Garrett (ankle) are banged up and the rest of the team has been grinding through camp for months, Bell should be well rested. He is likely to play 100% of Pittsburgh’s running back snaps with only rookie James Connor and practice squad journeyman Terrell Watson behind him on the depth chart. Any more of a physical advantage Bell can get over a defense is almost unfair. In addition to Bell’s hyper-efficient patience, his offensive line ranked third in the league last season in adjusted line yards (4.68) while Cleveland’s defense ranked dead last in adjusted line yards allowed (4.85).
Coaching Tendency to Exploit
Mike Shula Turning to Jonathan Stewart as the Goal-Line Back
The 49ers allowed opposing RBs to punch in an absurd 24 rushing TDs last season, and while negative regression is to be expected, research by 4for4’s TJ Hernandez found the year-to-year correlation of bottom-five run defenses to be extremely sticky. Cam Newton used to be Carolina’s de-facto goal-line back while Mike Tolbert would also frequently vulture TDs away from Jonathan Stewart. But over Stewart’s last 26 games spanning the past two seasons, he was fed 38 carries inside the 10-yard line after handling only 26 such carries in 44 games over the four seasons prior. Last season was the first time in their respective careers that Stewart handled more carries inside the 10-yard line (20) than Newton (8), which further reinforces the trend. It’s fair to expect rookie Christian McCaffrey to be heavily involved in the game plan as well, but one TD is worth 60 yards of fantasy points, and Stewart has multi-TD upside playing for the favored Panthers in San Francisco.
Injury Situation to Exploit
Cameron Meredith’s Season-Ending ACL Tear
In 2013, the one year Bears offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains and slot man Kendall Wright were together with Tennessee, Wright was targeted at a clip of 8.7 per game; throughout the rest of Wright’s career, however, that mark dips to 6.0. When Wright hit the market this offseason, Loggains’ and the Bears front office went out and got their man, and now Wright looks set to step back into a high-volume role after Cameron Meredith went down in the third preseason game. Kevin White had to relearn how to run this offseason and is yet to look like the dominant athlete he was coming out of college, and even if the Bears wanted to force feed him, he’ll draw Desmond Trufant and Robert Alford, whose coverage grades from Pro Football Focus were both above 76 last season while slot corner Brian Poole’s was down at 70.9. With the Falcons implied to win by 7 and score upwards of 27 points, Wright has game-script-induced high-volume upside to go along with what should be a safe target floor; he was Mike Glennon’s most heavily targeted receiver in the preseason.