DFS success boils down to finding the highest-scoring fantasy football players at each position in a given week. With close to 20 playable options at the quarterback and tight end positions, along with even more at the running back and wide receiver positions, it is a feat in itself to identify one position correctly.
Click here for more PFF tools:
Rankings & Projections | WR/CB Matchup Chart | NFL & NCAA Betting Dashboards | NFL Player Props tool | NFL & NCAA Power Rankings
To finish at the top of a DFS contest, you must hit on basically all skill positions and circumvent the randomness associated with selecting defenses. Doing all of this while also fitting under the confines of a salary cap makes DFS one of the most difficult setups to beat consistently, especially for large-field tournaments.
SALARY-ADJUSTED FANTASY PERFORMANCE
One of the best ways to find value opportunities on a given slate is to start with the salary-adjusted expectation for all players. DraftKings has been around for over six years, so we have a worthwhile dataset of player salaries and their resulting fantasy performances. By figuring out the expectation based on each player’s salary and position, we can compare their salary-expected fantasy performance to PFF’s fantasy projections in order to highlight the best value plays based on salary.
| Player | Position | Team | DK Salary | Salary Expectation | Proj. Fantasy Pts | Proj. Above Salary Expectation |
| Sony Michel | HB | LA | 6000 | 13.30 | 20.18 | 6.88 |
| Allen Robinson II | WR | CHI | 4000 | 6.96 | 12.18 | 5.22 |
| Marquez Valdes-Scantling | WR | GB | 4500 | 8.53 | 13.20 | 4.67 |
| Allen Lazard | WR | GB | 4600 | 8.85 | 13.44 | 4.59 |
| Brandin Cooks | WR | HST | 6300 | 14.21 | 18.46 | 4.25 |
| Ricky Seals-Jones | TE | WAS | 2800 | 3.86 | 8.01 | 4.15 |
| D.J. Moore | WR | CAR | 5800 | 12.63 | 16.71 | 4.08 |
| KhaDarel Hodge | WR | DET | 3200 | 4.44 | 8.40 | 3.96 |
| Cole Kmet | TE | CHI | 3400 | 5.75 | 9.51 | 3.76 |
| Marvin Jones Jr. | WR | JAX | 4300 | 7.90 | 11.63 | 3.73 |
| Olamide Zaccheaus | WR | ATL | 3600 | 5.70 | 9.36 | 3.66 |
PASS-CATCHING BLOWUP MODEL
Utilizing specific variables, we can build a model tuned to predict performances where a pass-catcher goes over a certain site-specific scoring threshold. For DraftKings, this is set at 25 fantasy points.
This model provides the percentage chance each receiver will meet or exceed our fantasy-point threshold for the site given their historical opportunity. The model won’t be right on every player, but it is useful in identifying the blow-up performances we want to unearth in our DFS lineups.
© 2024 PFF - all rights reserved.