Today, I drifted off into I’m thinking about things land, and my girlfriend asked what I was thinking about. “How to accurately predict defenses in football” came out of my mouth. She immediately got out of bed.

I don’t blame her either. I’m not sure which is more difficult, understanding women or predicting defensive touchdowns.

Yesterday I planned on just dipping my toes into MLB because I had more important things to do like wrap my head around football while simultaneously packing for a 21 night rafting trip down The Grand Canyon. Then I saw lots of edges and I couldn’t help myself. I am always seeking edges in everything I gamble on and I must otherwise I won’t be a professional gambler for much longer. I loved Tanaka yesterday and got really excited when he was unpopular. I knew the Blue Jays/Boston game would be popular, and I did’t really like them either. I found 9 stacks that I liked that all would go lowly owned. And just like that I’ve got almost 20 lineups spread out across three sites.

That’s not going to happen today. I start my evaluations at the pitcher spot. I usually gravitate to a cluster of guys and need to know if I have a cheap option to consider before I start looking at bats. Pitcher is easy to me today, I have Shields and Teheran in cupcake matchups with great prices. I don’t want deGOAT at Washington and I don’t want Strasburg from the other dugout either at 10.1k.

Ohhh, but it might rain in Philly. And the wind’s blowing out. That means we might not be able to use Teheran. At least we have Shields in San Diego, where it never rains, except I’m seeing a 30% chance of thunderstorms through the game. That means we can’t use Shields unless the weather clears. I’ll worry about this later.

At catcher, nobody stands out. When nobody stands out, it kinda doesn’t really matter who anybody plays from an equity standpoint. Posey should score the most points, but he is expensive. McCann is a bad play tonight, but he shouldn’t be popular, nor will d’Arnaud. Everybody else is a fine option, Lucroy, AJ, Wellington, Gomes, Norris, Vogt, Perez, Flowers, and Avila. Hell even Bryan Pena is a fine play tonight. No edge at catcher.

At first, it’s the same story down to Travis Shaw, but we don’t really need to punt tonight with no expensive pitching options we need. Neil Walker might be the best play of the day with like 10% separation in value from his other second basemen. Donaldson at third stands out as a fine play, but everybody’s going to be on him too, so he isn’t an edge either.

I guess I’m fading tonight?

Probably not. I won’t be able to help myself, some cute lineup will come out, weather will change, overlay will happen… I might fire a quick lineup. But my analysis today has ceased with unregister-pre. There aren’t enough edges to overcome the rake tonight the way things look to me this morning.

So you want to talk some football? Good, because I do too.

I’m at the point where I feel like I have wrapped my head around some things but don’t know what to do with it all. I pondered Green Bay @ Chicago for a while. It seems like Aaron Rodgers will be very popular and with good reason. Green Bay has one of the highest team totals on the board and faces Chicago who fielded the worst defense against the pass last year. Green Bay and Chicago have a long history of hating each other and we can expect this game to be competitive.

When others get greedy I get wary. I am always thinking about daily fantasy football from a game theory perspective. I think football is most like poker of the DFS games. If I know that a large percentage of my opponents will be on a certain player, then it is usually correct from a game theory perspective to fade these players in large field GPPs, like DraftKings‘ Millionaire Maker, open to over 572,000 lineups. If you can give me reasons to fade these guys from a football perspective too, then I become excited about a fade.

The Bears are not as bad of a defense as they were. They added OLB Pernell McPhee who apparently is a sicko pass rusher. He will play opposite Jared Allen, and even I know that name. They added strong safety Antrel Rolle who has been a staple for the Giants the last 5 years. The Bears shouldn’t be as bad at D as they once were.

Meanwhile the Packers lost Jordy Nelson. Even the season long gamers know this. Randall Cobb is the number one guy now, and Davante Adams who is basically free on DraftKings moves into the number two role. They still haven’t nailed down who their number 3 guys is, although they just signed James Jones, who was cut by the Raiders at the start of the summer, and then lost a camp battle in New York to somebody I’ve never heard of. The Packers must have signed him because he is an upgrade to Jeff Janis and Ty Montgomery, guys already on their roster. Cobb and Adams are going to be 1 and 2 even more than Nelson and Cobb were last year.

But wait, there’s more! Randall Cobb sprained the AC joint in his shoulder August 29th – two weeks before game time. “I don’t plan on missing a game. I’m doing everything in my power to get back before then.” So he’ll be ready to go, but according to physioworks.com, “Most patients with acromioclavicular joint injury start to feel better within a few days or a week of the injury. However, full ligament healing will take at least six weeks. During this time it is important to protect your AC joint ligaments from overstretching.”

All that said I’m off Aaron Rodgers. It makes sense to fade him from a game theory perspective in massive GPPs. I think there are guys with better value and floors than him for cash games.

But what about Davante Adams? He’s 4.4k on DraftKings and possibly the most qualified receiver of Aaron Rodgers passes and is dancing through the worst pass defense in football last year. I guess he’s just a plug and play in cash games? But from a game theory perspective, I think he’s a fade in GPPs, however it depends on his ownership percentage. If he is 30% owned, is there a 30% chance that he outscores everybody else at his price point?

I don’t think so. First, I think John Brown is a better play than Davante Adams straight up – IF Michael Floyd is forced to miss the game Sunday. He missed practice yesterday, but is scheduled to practice today and was listed as starter on the official depth chart today. I like Doug Baldwin, 4.6k, at St. Louis. He’s going to go way overlooked, and I’d rather have Doug Baldwin at 1% ownership than Davante Adams at 50%. Obviously Davante is the better play, but Davante is not 50 times more likely to outscore Doug.

My personal favorite is Greg Jennings at 4.3k facing Washington. With Landry attracting all the attention in DFS and from Washington’s front 7, Greg Jennings might have the highest ceiling of any mid 4k WR this week with the freedom to make big plays in a weak secondary. Washington was worst in the NFL last year in total defense, scoring defense, and fantasy defense. They were 24th in Pass D, 12th in Rush D. They made fewer additions than the Bears did.

How about the runners? I like Eddie Lacy from a game flow perspective, but the Bears were already better at defending the run and got gooder at it this off season.

Meanwhile the Packers D, mediocre from a football perspective last year, just got a year older. I think Matt Forte, the guy who was the most expensive running back for most of last year, is going very overlooked this week and might be my favorite play in the entire game (from a game theory perspective… Davante Adams is still obviously the best value play).

I have been thinking about this Thursday night game. Typically my strategy with Thursdays is to play GPPs only and fade the game entirely because ownership percentages are much higher than they should be. I don’t like playing Thursday cash games unless I don’t like the Thursday game, because I don’t like it when my plays overlap so much with opponents. I really like Antonio Brown this Thursday and have crushes on Heath Miller, Marcus Wheaton, Julian Edelman, and Danny Amendola. Problem is that other people are going to take them more often since they play on Thursday, reducing my edge when using that player.

Alright I’ve rambled on enough. This is going to be the biggest weekend in DFS history, and there might be a lot of overlay across the industry. Go out there and get you some.

Devo