DraftKings Week 15 High Stakes Ownership Report
Tags: Fantasy Football, NFL, Sports Analytics, Sports Betting, Fantasy Sports

Looking at the sharpest plays to learn from week 15

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.

This article series will analyze ownership numbers from a low stakes, large field DFS contest (the $10 Fantasy Football Millionaire) and compare them to the ownership in a high stakes contest (the $62,500 Fantasy Football World Championship). As many would expect, the Fantasy Football World Championship will have significantly sharper players than a $10 contest, making both the individual lineups and overall contest ownership quite valuable to study.

$62,500 Fantasy Football World Championship Leverage Leaders

With Drew Brees back, Alvin Kamara’s $7400 salary presented one of the top values on the slate, given the 26% target share Kamara saw with Brees under center in weeks 1–10. In what was a surprisingly low-scoring game, Kamara largely failed to generate many big plays and backup RB Latavius Murray scored on a 24-yard TD catch, making Kamara one of the more unlucky DFS plays in Week 15. If Brees continues to start, this season has shown us that Kamara is a solid value at any price point under $8000.

Sunday morning’s injury news contained a few surprises, namely the entire Dolphins receiving core being ruled out and Cowboys RB Ezekial Elliott also being declared inactive. Lynn Bowden had already been seeing his playing time increase over the last few weeks, and with no Devante Parker, Jakeem Grant, or Mike Gesicki, Bowden played 90% of the Dolphins snaps and added 8 targets and a carry. His final DraftKings score left a lot to be desired, but Bowden saw the playing time and the volume that many assumed he would given the inactives.

The Cowboys RB news opened up what can only be called the biggest leverage opportunity of the season for DFS players at all stakes. Since the vast majority of DFS players spend their Friday and Saturday evenings researching and making lineups, a consistent trend is that many players (especially at low stakes) are hesitant to adjust their teams based on late-breaking news. The Ezekial Elliott news proved this to be true, as Pollard went from completely unplayable to the best value on the slate, but was only 12% owned in the $10 millionaire. Pollard offered a 15-touch floor, has proven over the last two seasons he’s more efficient than Zeke, and had nobody else on the team in contention for RB work on Sunday. This was a layup, but the vast majority of DFS players completely missed it.

Similar to Alvin Kamara, both Tre’Quan Smith and Emmanuel Sanders offered great value with Drew Brees returning and star WR Michael Thomas inactive. Neither Tre’Quan nor Sanders came close to posting respectable scores, largely due to Brees’ abysmal passing performance, logging an 84.7 passer rating and a truly awful 46.0 PFF passing grade. Brees admitted postgame that he was playing hurt, and it certainly seems possible he could be rested these last two weeks to get healthy for the playoffs. Something for fantasy players to monitor these final couple of weeks.

Kyler Murray+DeAndre Hopkins both proved to be very popular in the Fantasy Football World Championship, and the sharps proved to be right in this case as the pair combined for 72.1 DraftKings points. With Murray running the ball 8–12 times per game and Hopkins seeing 25%+ of the Cardinals’ targets, this duo competes with Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams for the largest amount of offensive production we can get from a QB/WR combo.

$10 Fantasy Football Millionaire Ownership Leverage Leaders

Low stakes players drifted towards Derrick Henry more than their high stakes counterparts, and Henry posted a solid 28.2 DK points at a slate-high $9500 salary. At that score and price tag, you didn’t need Henry to win, but it certainly helped. Henry also massively exceeded his rushing expectation, scoring 11.8 more DraftKings points than his usage indicated he should have. Teams obviously don’t want to tackle Henry late in the season, but fantasy players can’t count on the big guy continuing to run this good, especially as one of the most expensive RBs on a week-to-week basis.

Cam Akers posted a depressing 7.2-points in the Rams stunning loss to the New York Jets. Underperforming like this in your team’s worst game of the season shouldn't cause too much concern going forward, as Akers still largely dominated the backfield touches and snaps. Coming off such a bad game, their could be a pretty solid edge in rostering Akers at low ownership in Week 16.

Russell Gage was a solid value without Julio Jones in the Falcons lineup, and he capitalized on the extra work, posting a 91% snap share, 10 targets, and 1 TD. Week 15 led to virtually the entire Falcons offense being underutilized by DFS players, and Gage was no exception. Even offenses that have struggled for a month straight can still pull it together and win us a GPP, and that’s something we all need to keep in mind when we submit our final lineups on Sunday.

TY Hilton and Jonathan Taylor were both popular options from the Colts, as both players were coming off recent great performances and facing a relatively soft HOU defense. Taylor posted a solid score, playing 70% of the snaps and seeing 16 carries, largely leading the backfield throughout the game. Hilton, on the other hand, fell victim to Phillip Rivers spreading the ball out. Rivers’ targetted 8 different Colts’ pass catchers, and Hilton saw just 6 targets, which tied with Zach Pascal for the team lead. Taylor could certainly consistently get 20+ touches if he can securely take over the IND backfield, Hilton’s touches will, unfortunately, be much more sporadic with Rivers under center.

Last but certainly not least, we once again see the week’s most expensive defense (Los Angelos Rams) as the most popular D/ST play among low stakes players. If there is one thing high stakes pros have shown us this season, it’s that it’s almost always a mistake paying up for defense. A D/ST like the Rams, against an offense like the Jets, may seem like a sure thing, but defensive scoring is so volatile that it’s almost always best to roll the dice with a cheaper D/ST. In Week 15, the Cowboys D/ST was nearly $2000 cheaper than the Rams and outscored them by 11-points. Don’t pay up for defense.