Last week people seemed to try and find value with guys like Derek Carr, Tyrod Taylor and Blake Bortles but two of them (Carr/Taylor) underperformed, hurting their owners. Is it worth rolling the dice on value like that or does a more stable choice make more sense and perhaps be less of a danger to your entries?
Jene Bramel: I'm looking to maximize points in cash lineups. I strongly prefer to roster the higher floor quarterbacks at the higher salaries, but there are times when the value is too good to ignore because it allows you to pay up at other positions. But that value has to be really good. I'm not rostering a value QB so I can improve a little at RB2 or WR3. If it gets me to a top five value at multiple positions, fine. Otherwise, I'm taking the higher priced, higher floor quarterback.
Andrew Garda: Totally agree with Jene here – you can’t just kinda, sorta get better. You have to really get better by a lot. So it’s not just about rostering a value quarterback—you need to hit to nail on the other head elsewhere.
So if you go value at quarterback it’s probably a bad idea – in cash or GPP – to chase value at WR and RB as well. Don’t get too cute.
Maurile Tremblay: It's always worth looking for value based on projections. Even the best projections will be wrong a lot, so the projected value may fail to materialize in a given week, but that's what makes DFS profitable. (If projections were completely accurate, everyone would tie for first in every contest and we'd all just pay rake.)
Over the long run, with any set of projections that are better indicators of value than a DFS site's pricing, perceived values like Carr and Taylor last week will be good plays more often than not. That's what makes them good values in the first place.
Don't be discouraged by a few whiffs here and there. They're going to happen from time to time. The key is to whiff less often than your opponents, which is an achievable goal, in my opinion.
Alex Miglio: It really depends on what we're talking about here -- cash games or GPPs. You should obviously be as safe as possible whether looking for cheap guys or picking up the most expensive ones in cash games, but I will have no qualms looking for good values from week to week. Sometimes you get burned, other times you find paydirt.
Calvin Johnson has been dropping in cost, while receivers like Larry Fitzgerald and Amari Cooper are on the rise? At what point does Megatron become a value play again? Or is this offense too dysfunctional to trust?
JB: Johnson becomes a value when he (a) is targeted as an elite WR1 is targeted and/or (b) his salary drops to a level equal to his current production. For me, I'm not rostering Johnson until condition (a) is met. That means the offensive line has to improve and Johnson has to start running sideline fades and deep dig routes in addition to his short slant routes. Based on what we've seen so far, I'm not optimistic.
AG: A lot of people are going to get sucked into Calvin Johnson in the hope that this week will REALLY be the week he breaks out. I will say that if you’re waiting until he’s targeted like an elite WR1, it’s already happened.
According to our own target data, Johnson has been targeted 45 times (and that’s including a garbage Week 1 of four targets) which puts him seventh in terms of wide receiver targets and just five targets behind Demaryius Thomas (50) and Julio Jones (52). Everyone looks silly next to DeAndre Hopkins and his 60 targets (not including Thursday night) so he really is the outlier here.
Back to Johnson though, he’s had 41 targets over the last three weeks which is comparable to all the other receivers.
Why avoid him then? Shouldn’t he break out any minute?
Well, the problem is his receiving percentage the second lowest of the most targeted receivers at 60 percent (Hopkins, the outlier is at 51.7) and the overall lowest of that group in yards per catch is the second lowest in the top ten at 9.4.
That combination of things has led to him having the lowest yardage total in the top ten targeted receivers, per Footballguys.com.
For whatever reasons—poor passes, good coverage, bad timing—he’s not taking advantage of the targets he’s getting and when he does, they aren’t opportunities for big yardage.
Which is the long way of saying, he’s just not playing well now and I would fade him until I see an upward trend in all of those areas.
MT: Calvin Johnson has averaged double-digit targets so far this season. Over the last three games, he's actually averaged 14 targets per game, which is magnificent. At $7,100 this week, I wouldn't call him a value play -- I'd say he's on the cusp of being playable in cash games. But his high volume of targets makes him a nice GPP play because it gives him 100-yard, multi-touchdown potential (even if he's been having trouble reaching that potential lately).
AM: Certainly not this week against Patrick Peterson and the Arizona Cardinals. That offense isn't any good for him, though he was about two feet away from a real nice game last week. Once he posts another dud, though, his price might drop to the point of being a nice value against the lowly Bears next week.
Devonta Freeman is officially no longer a dark horse play. So who are some players you’re looking at to be the next great unknown?
JB: I'm not sure Freeman was an unknown. The volume he's seen over the past two weeks was a known factor. But there were concerns about whether his talent would be enough and the Falcons' offensive line would play well enough to allow him to take advantage of that opportunity. Todd Gurley would come to mind here, but I think people are already expecting him to be a high volume player soon. T.J. Yeldon has my attention. By season's end, I think the most likely "unknown" to see a 15+ touch floor might be David Johnson.
AG: Well I disagree with Jene in that many thought Tevin Coleman would be the ‘man’ in Atlanta, not Freeman. That said, if Coleman doesn’t get hurt, do we see Freeman emerge?
Like Jene I am struggling to see anyone who could surprise us (which makes it a surprise anyway!), but I like Yeldon a lot. That offense is actually showing signs of good play and if Blake Bortles-Allen Hurns-Allen Robinson keep it up—and Julius Thomas plays well when he returns—Yeldon could see some softer fronts.
He’s already seen the fourth most carries in the NFL per ESPN.com, though his yards per attempt is sub-optimal at 3.7. If we see this passing offense keep building though, I think it goes up.
MT: My philosophy is not to look for unknown players in DFS. Even in GPPs, where having under-owned players can be helpful, I look for players in obviously good situations more than I look for surprising breakout candidates. I did have Devonta Freeman in a bunch of my lineups over the last two weeks (and I will again this week), but I wouldn't call it a surprise that he ended up being a decent value. I'm not going to say that I saw his huge (multiple-TD) production coming, but he didn't have to produce at nearly that level to be a decent DFS value. With Tevin Coleman out, he was going to get a lot of touches, and even 80 yards from scrimmage and an 80% chance of a touchdown would have given him decent value in Week 2. The fact that he got 193 yards and three touchdowns made him a crazy good value in hindsight, but you didn't have to see that coming in order to play him that week.
Some other players who I think are decent values already and have the chance to start putting up pretty big numbers in the near future are Todd Gurley and Ameer Abdullah. You might be able to put Melvin Gordon in that category in a few weeks, but he's not there yet.
AM: Boobie Dixon! Just kidding. How about Jamison Crowder? He's won the starting slot job in Washington, and DeSean Jackson should be out another week. The Atlanta Falcons are going to be focused on stopping Pierre Garcon -- presumably with Desmond Trufant -- and Crowder could find himself with double-digit targets in garbage time.
Now that we’ve officially hit everybody’s favorite time of year—bye weeks—do you change your overall strategy? Especially when you have the top players out?
JB: I apply the same strategy each week. Try to identify the most talented players likely to see the most opportunity. It's okay to recognize that both of those things are relative. Accept that the pool of talent may be more shallow and the floor of the players you've identified may not be as high during the bye weeks, but the thought process remains the same.
AG: The advantage to bye weeks in daily fantasy over season long fantasy is you can almost ignore them. The relative value of a player will fluctuate, as will their price, so it’s always changing anyway. Generally I am looking for the best combination of value and potential production anyway, so my strategy doesn’t change.
The only time I really think about tacking it a little bit is in weeks when we have a ton of teams out and the player pool shrinks. We have four off this week and the same between now and Week 8. In a league with 32 teams, that’s manageable on a weekly basis.
Week 9’s six team bye week is harder but the amount of heavy fantasy players isn’t too bad. Really Week 7 is trickiest because you have Bengals, Broncos and Packers all gone, plus the Bears who have some definite players for a team which sucks.
In those cases, I am doing a little extra research on upside plays. Not because I’m going to go nuts with them, but I want an edge (particularly in GPP) in finding the guy who will produce that fewer people are looking at.
But that’s a tiny thing in overall strategy, while the macro strategy really doesn’t change.
MT: My strategy with players on bye is very similar to my strategy with players who've been ruled out due to injury: don't play them. Other than that, bye weeks don't affect my weekly DFS routine or analysis at all.
AM: Everything gets tighter during bye weeks, and you especially feel the squeeze as pricing tightens up naturally after the first few weeks of the season. I tend to take deeper shots and play fewer GPPs when the slates get smaller, but my cash game strategy remains the same -- maximize my floor and stay safe.