GPP Leverage: Week 3

Welcome back for the third NFL GPP Leverage column of the season. If you missed the Week 1 edition of GPP Leverage, I recommend you take a minute to read the intro from Week 1 to get a feel for the goals of this column.

Week 2 turned out to be a great tournament week for contrarian DFS GPP players. It was a week where the consensus cash-lineup construction was particularly strong, yet we saw very few of the cash pieces in lineups at the top of leaderboards. This is a good reminder that even when the chalk is very strong, we can still find paths to beating our opponents by playing contrarian. First, we can win when the chalk simply fails and our contrarian pieces produce mediocre or better results. Second, we can win when the chalk hits but our contrarian pieces produce even stronger results. Last week, the chalk RBs produced very solid results, but it was ultimately a 4%-owned Alvin Kamara that turned out to be the crucial piece needed to win most GPPs.

In Weeks 1 and 2, we highlighted opportunities to gain leverage on the field using information uncertainty to our advantage. Now that we have more definitive information to work with rather than educated speculation, there is a little less opportunity to gain leverage in this manner.

In Week 3, I want to highlight some leverage spots that arise from our ability to utilize late-swap. For those that need a refresher, late-swap refers to our ability to edit specific players for roster slots in our DFS lineups up until the moment each player’s game kicks off. NFL main slates provide the unique opportunity, due to their games generally being played in two distinct kickoff waves that only slightly overlap, where we can use information from the early window of games to inform us of how we should approach the late window of games with respect to our lineups. If our lineups are off to extremely hot starts through the early games, we should be more willing to play the chalk in the late games and “block” our opponents from catching up to us. On the other hand, if we get off to slow starts through the early games, we should be swapping away from the chalk to contrarian pieces that will provide us with a sure path to catching up to our opponents that isn’t blocked.

This week, we’ll dive into specific game situations rather than going position-by-position to examine a handful of leverage opportunities. As we go through specific games, keep in mind that if we want to utilize late-swap to its maximum potential, we should be playing at least one contrarian piece in the early window in order to gain information on where we stand relative to our opponents. Similarly, we should also keep at least one or two roster spots available in the late window that can be utilized for either chalk or strong contrarian pieces, depending on how hot of a start our lineups get off to.

HOU at MIN (1:00 p.m. ET)

• We’re expecting Joe Mixon and Dameon Pierce to both miss this game, leaving Cam Akers to be a massive value at just $4,700 on DraftKings and $4,000 on FanDuel. He will likely be one of the five most-owned players on both sites.
• One way to gain leverage off of Akers is to simply fade him. Just by fading Akers and his cheap price tag, we can set ourselves up for an entirely different roster construction that naturally differentiates us in several roster spots.
• We can gain additional leverage off of Akers by also playing C.J. Stroud and the Texans’ passing game. If the Texans are scoring all of their touchdowns through the air, Akers will have a tougher time reaching his ceiling this week. Nico Collins and Tank Dell will both carry a bit of ownership this week, but it shouldn’t be high enough for concern and it will certainly be low relative to the ownership of Akers. Stroud and Stefon Diggs are not expected to carry much ownership at all.
• Another way to gain additional leverage here is to roster the Vikings’ D/ST. If the Vikings are able to control the game and establish a lead, it will likely limit opportunities for the Texans’ offense as a whole, and Akers in particular. We expect that if the Texans have to enter catch-up mode, it would likely be Dare Ogunbowale taking snaps over Akers at RB. The Vikings’ defense under Brian Flores has blitzed at a league-high rate, and high blitz rates are the perfect recipe for creating defensive opportunities like sacks and turnovers. They’re projecting for single-digit ownership on both sites and are priced at just $2,400 on DraftKings.