DraftKings Week 10 High Stakes Ownership Report
Tags: Sports Betting, Sports Analytics, NFL, Fantasy Football, Fantasy Sports

DraftKings Week 10 High Stakes Ownership Report Jaketribbey Follow Nov 17 · 5 min read

Looking at the sharpest plays to learn from week 10

In daily fantasy sports, ownership is a key consideration in tournament lineup building. Reviewing lineup construction and player ownership at the highest stakes reveals valuable information regarding trends that we can take advantage of in the future.

Typically, high stakes players focus on the optimal lineup, or, simply put, the team they believe projects for the most points. With this in mind, we can infer that the popular players in high stakes contests likely had the strongest overall value when measuring cost against projected fantasy points.

In this article series, we will analyze ownership numbers from a low stakes, large field DFS contest (the $9 NFL Slant), and compare them to the ownership in a high stakes contest (the $3,000 Luxury Box). As many would expect, a contest with a $3,000 entry fee tends to have significantly sharper players, so it’s important to review high stakes ownership to see where the pros invested in a given week.

$3,000 Luxury Box Ownership Leverage Leaders

Week 10 was one of the worst weeks for high stakes players this season, as many of the top ‘value’ plays failed miserably. Only high stakes players who avoided the chalk managed to succeed.

At the minimum RB price of $4,000, Mike Davis was by far the top play of the slate, regardless of position. Thanks to salaries being released on Monday mornings, there are always a few weeks a year where a massive value opens up due to mid-week injury news. In Week 10, Mike Davis was a ‘free square’ but he burned nearly 3/4ths of Luxury Box teams with an 8.4-point performance. Davis had his worst starting display of the year in a blowout loss to Tampa Bay, earning just 11 total touches for 44 total yards and 0 TDs. However, the Panthers ran just 48 plays (NFL average is around 65), so very few Carolina players had any opportunity to succeed given the limited opportunities. If this game gets played 10 times, Davis would exceed value at his price in 9 of them. Unfortunately for most high stakes players, this was the 1.

Duke Johnson and Aaron Jones both figured to see more touches than normal in Week 10 thanks to playing in severe weather, forcing their respective teams to turn to the run game. Jones saw 18 total touches but couldn’t find the endzone for just the 2nd time this season, posting a mediocre score for his salary. Johnson saw 14 carries, but his usual role in the passing game was nonexistent, resulting in 0 catches for the first time since Week 1. Both players were solid options at the RB position, but variance was not on their side in Week 10.

No defense has allowed more fantasy points to opposing WRs than the Seattle Seahawks. The trio of Rams WRs, Cooper Kupp, Robert Woods, and Josh Reynolds all figured to benefit as a result. The Rams ran 70 total plays and attempted 43 passes, but only Josh Reynolds managed to put up a decent score relative to his salary. Reynolds’ 29% target share was certainly surprising, and it limited the output of both Woods and Kupp, who only saw 6 targets apiece.

$9 NFL Slant Ownership Leverage Leaders

This is the first time all season we’ve seen sharp players fade Alvin Kamara, and the league’s top RB made them pay with a 3 TD performance. Given the other value available at RB, it’s no surprise high stakes players decided to go another route, but Kamara is simply too good to be entirely counted out, regardless of his price or his opponent.

D’Andre Swift was certainly the most polarizing play of Week 10, as a Sunday morning report suggested he was in for more work than usual as the announced starter for Detroit. Swift was just $100 more than popular high stakes play Duke Johnson, but since Johnson was projected for 2–4 more points on every major site, players across the industry sided with Duke. Swift was the worse play on paper, but a nearly 30% difference in ownership between the two showcases why pivoting off the consensus top plays can oftentimes be very beneficial, especially when the difference between players is just a few projected points.

This is now the second week in a row we’ve seen Tyler Lockett’s popularity exceed that of DK Metcalf, due to the $1100 difference between the similarly projected players. Surprisingly, neither Seahawks WR had a big game for the first time all season, largely due to the poor performance of MVP-candidate Russell Wilson, who logged his worst PFF grade of the season while throwing 2 interceptions and 0 TDs.

Individual Lineup Breakdown

In this segment, we will take a look at some of the specific lineups that notable high stakes players entered in the week 9 Luxury Box. Studying top players is one of the best ways to improve in DFS, as reverse-engineering their process can assist our own in the future.

jayk123x

Total Entries: 3 ($9,000)

ROI: -33%

Currently ranked as the 12th overall NFL DFS player, jayk123x is a former Millionaire Maker winner and typically very contrarian, and this week was no different.

With George Kittle out, Jordan Reed was somehow completely left out of the TE discussion, likely due to his moderate price of $3,500. While most major projection sites didn’t list Reed as a top value, he certainly could have seen the volume needed for a 20-point outing, which would have been a huge edge for jayk123x at just 1.7% ownership.

Jayk123x was 1 of just 3 Luxury Box players to run the game stack of Alex Smith+D’Andre Swift+Terry McLaurin. Smith isn’t typically regarded as a tournament winner due to his incredibly low average depth of target, but as Week 10’s cheapest QB at 3% ownership, a 25+ point performance would have made that stack incredibly profitable. Risky, of course, but that kind of thinking showcases how sharp players find edges over other sharp players.