The brag and bitch article is a look back to see how we did on last week’s slate of games. In DFS, much like in real football it is good to look back at the previous weeks performance, learn whatever lessons we can and move on.
This week was a stark contrast to week two for me. A couple of the themes I stick two shot me in the foot.
Fade The Thursday Game
First of all I always fade the Thursday games. If you look back any of my player pick columns you will not see players from the Thursday contests in there. That’s due to two main factors. First is that since the NFL began with Thursday contests, statistics show that fantasy points output is down by over 20% compared to Sunday or Monday games on average (the book we send as part of the eBook Promotion dedicates a full chapter to this topic) This in my opinion is due to the lack of preparation time by coaches for that particular game combined with an odd short week of recovery for the players in said game. The second factor is that an over sized number of participants in the Thursday contests grab players from that game because people generally want “a reason to watch” the Thursday game. This combination of factors makes entering Thursday lineups and fading the Thursday game a solid strategy for both HTH and GPP wins. This week it backfired. Matt Ryan, Julio Jones and Atlanta D all put up monster scores. Combine that with the out-sized number of participants that targeted players from the Thursday game and it all spelled disaster for me.
The Sunday Slate
For the Sunday-Monday slate of games I used the Vegas lines to target the Green Bay at Detroit game as the shootout of the week. That choice proved to be a poor one. I still don’t know exactly what happened in Detroit. A defensive battle featuring a 4 point fantasy output for Matt Stafford and duds from Nelson, Cobb, Megatron and Eddie Lacy were enough to sink anyone that targeted that game heavily. I had some shares of Garcon and Maclin but they weren’t enough to stem the bleeding. Another dud came from Patriots Defense at home facing the Raiders. It seemed like a sure thing with the high O/U and 14 point spread in favor of New England.
Saving Grace
I always stick to my 5-1 ratio of HTH vs GPP entries and that generally smooths out the bad weeks. This week was no exception. Even with most of my Fanduel lineups producing sub-par scores I was able to win approximately 30% of my HTH contests. I can’t stress this enough. HtH contests are the basis for long term success in DFS. You can win them even when your scores are bad. It helps smooth over the bad weeks and keep you in the game for when the good weeks come. Another saving grace for me was entering 6 lineups in the $25 FFFC steps tournament. All the lineups were awful one of which produced under 80 fantasy points. All of the lineups advanced to round two due to the overlay in the contest. It didn’t fill so every entry moved on to step 2!
Moving On
This is my 4th full season doing DFS and I’ve already learned that there will be good weeks and bad weeks. That’s just how it goes. The key is to take in the lessons learned in the bad weeks and move on. This week’s lesson for me is to remember to diversify more. In week two my ALL IN’s were so spot on that I was annoyed at myself for not going in more heavily. I generally try avoid having any one player in more then 50% of my lineups. I broke that rule this week with poor results. Next week I will not make that same mistake.
Speaking of next week I’ve already begun to look at what appears to be a juicy slate of games. I’ll be back on Wednesday with this week’s player picks. In addition we have a new writer coming on board, Hunter Sinclair that will be posting a late week strategy guide. More on that in Wednesdays Column.
How did you do this week? Sound off with the good, the bad, and the ugly in the comments section below!