Week 10 NFL DFS Ownership Review

The best ownership projections create a massive advantage in NFL DFS. If you have ever thought to yourself “If I had known he would be so popular, I would have never played him,” or the opposite, you already know this to be true. 

At FTN, we have exactly that — not just the industry’s most accurate ownership, but ownership that can help you make key decisions on specific players each and every week.

Week 10 presented the biggest challenge of the season in terms of projecting rostership, largely due to the health uncertainty of Ja’Marr Chase. How this uncertainty was handled by the field was dramatically different in various contest types, so we’ll take a look at polar opposite contests this week — the $3 20-max Play Action (396.3k entries) and the $200 Single Entry Double Spy (277 entries). 

Week 10 NFL DFS Ownership Review

Keenan Allen, WR, Los Angeles Chargers

The entire industry had Chase projected as the most popular stud receiver for most of the week, until his status was (at least officially) uncertain as late as Saturday night. At that point, people began looking elsewhere. We were under the industry’s projection on Keenan Allen all week, but that became especially true when we gave some of Chase’s ownership to CeeDee Lamb and Amon-Ra St. Brown, but not Keenan Allen. 

The result (from the $3 Play Action):

Once again, the key of all keys to a GPP takedown this week would have been much easier to land on if using FTN’s ownership projections.

Joe Mixon, RB, Cincinnati Bengals

Joe Mixon is interesting for a couple reasons. First, from the $200 SE:

At 40% projected ownership, fading Mixon became quite enticing. Now, you may be thinking “sure, but everyone knows that ownership concentrates in small field contests”. This is often the case, but it’s just as often not. For example, in the $3 Play Action, Mixon was 27.8% rostered. Tank Dell (26.4%) and the Dallas defense (31.2%) were close by.

While Mixon jumped to 38.3% in the small-field SE, the Cowboys only went to 31.8% and Dell actually dropped to 22.7% (likely because the Chase/Dell ministack was no longer in play for anyone scared away from Chase). For anyone playing both MME and SE in a given week, knowing which players will concentrate and which won’t is particularly important. 

This begs an interesting question — was Mixon a worse play in single entries than in the gigantic tournaments since he was so much more rostered? Single entry contests often get lumped in with cash contests around the industry. For example, we often see answers like “he’s a tough fade in cash or single entry, but I’m fine fading him in MMEs” to good chalk/bad chalk questions, but what if this is backward? What if we actually want to be more aggressive in single entries to combat the concentrating ownership? After all, the single entry payout structures are often just as top-heavy.