Dinkmeyer’s GPP Leverage: Week 16

Welcome to the 16th edition of GPP Leverage for NFL DFS. This article is going to be a catch-all space for my GPP thoughts during the course of the NFL season. In this space, we’ll mix some macro and micro concepts to help improve your odds in tournaments. The goal is to differentiate your play in an intelligent and correlated way that gives you a better chance to get paid off when you’re right.

I think it’s important to note I’m not a football guy who plays DFS. I’m a professional DFS player who plays NFL. So my play is largely through the prism of using resources around me to do what I do best: Play the game of DFS within the context of the NFL. Whether this is you or you’re a football guy who has a better handle on the schemes and the mismatches, there should be something in here for you to improve your game as a DFS GPP player.

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WEEK 15 ANALYSIS

After weeks of battling correlation failure, we finally found some game-stacks elevating their ways up the leaderboard in Week 15. Tennessee-Detroit looked like a slate-winner until Arizona-Philadelphia started to push up the leaderboards late. Some of the key principles we’ve held onto during the year played out well once again in Week 15:

• Contrarian correlation was rewarded.
• It’s difficult for traditional pocket passers to separate from QBs with rushing capabilities.

However, the biggest takeaway from last week was how slow the field is to adapt to new information. When Ezekiel Elliott was ruled out late, Tony Pollard became one of the stronger plays on the slate. With little competition for RB snaps and an intriguing passing-game role, Pollard was underpriced on both sites and immediately became one of the top values at the RB position. Ownership, however, did not follow. Pollard got stuck in the teens on a play that would’ve likely approached 25-35 percent ownership had the news been known earlier in the week. We see this happen with fringe inactive situations that open up stronger opportunities for secondary players but the point is hit home a bit more when one of the top values on the slate comes with modest ownership because of late news. I’m not sure Pollard, specifically, will see this same fate happen again if the Elliott news breaks late again, but it’s a good reminder if we see a new situation arise like this down the stretch.

For the Leverage column, it was a difficult week. Much of the approach was built around using late swap to your advantages as the late games provided some strong chalk opportunities (NO-KC) and some very strong pivots (PHI-ARI and LAR passing game). The NO-KC game disappointed as Drew Brees posted one of the lowest completion-percentage games of his career. PHI-ARI ended up a great pivot in GPPs but it came with more ownership than expected in higher stakes contests. Ultimately, leveraging late swap to your advantage is improving your expected value but the late games in this main slate disappointed, leaving the macro strategy vulnerable.

WEEK 16 OUTLOOK