Week 15 NFL DFS Ownership Review

The best ownership projections create a massive advantage in NFL DFS. If you’ve ever thought to yourself “If I had known he’d be so popular, I never would have 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 projections that can help you make key decisions on specific players each and every week.

This week, I want to talk about what I believe to be both the reason ownership projections are so difficult this season, and the reason our ownership has separated from the rest of the industry. Simply put, ownership projections now have to go a step further, to predicting how people will react to the ownership projections themselves.

Terry McLaurin, WR, Washington Commanders

Terry McLaurin is a wonderful example of this concept. Early in the week, before Brian Robinson was ruled out, McLaurin was the obvious bring-back to all of the Rams’ chalk (Matthew Stafford, Kyren Williams, Cooper Kupp, Puka Nacua, Demarcus Robinson).

At this point in the week, the industry had him around 15%, we had him around 20%. However, once Robinson was ruled out, Antonio Gibson became the clear bring-back. We moved McLaurin down to around 12.5%, the industry left him at 15%. 

Finally, late in the week, the industry still hadn’t lowered McLaurin, so we moved him down to his final number, knowing people would look at the 15% industry-wide projection and conclude there was no point in trying to pivot off Gibson to McLaurin if McLaurin was still that popular.

The result was as predicted and as hoped — McLaurin came in at much lower ownership than others expected and helped break the slate.

Finding Equilibrium

Think of it this way — imagine a hypothetical player that you believe has a risky/low floor, but an immensely high ceiling. You may say to yourself “he’s a great play if contrarian, but a bad play if chalk.” Now suppose he’s projected around the industry for 30% ownership. 

What if most people had the same thought you did? 30% of people want to play him if he’s contrarian, but he’s projected for 30%, so only 10% end up playing him. Conversely, if he’s projected for 10%, he will be 30% owned. In both cases, the ownership is incorrect because it fails to go that extra step of anticipating how people will react to the ownership projection itself.

You might think that finding equilibrium here means splitting the difference, but what if the 30% that want to play him if he’s low owned all still view 20% as too chalky? The takeaway here should be that not only is projecting ownership tricky, but there’s probably a ceiling to just how good it can possibly be since our ownership projections have a larger effect on the field’s decision making than ever before.

Trey McBride (projected above 20% by the field and as high as 25% by us) may have been this hypothetical player. He ended up just 10%.

Demarcus Robinson closed the week projected for the highest ownership among Rams WRs by the industry — we correctly saw this flipping, as it actually turned out to be Kupp first, Nacua second, and Robinson third… the exact opposite of the industry’s expectation. 

The difficulty of projecting ownership isn’t a bad thing, though — the harder it is to project ownership, the larger the advantage for those that do it well (as you’ll once again see below).

Accuracy Analysis

We can compare accuracy by looking at r-squared and RMSE. For those unfamiliar with these metrics, you can focus on just r-squared. If we were exactly right about every single player’s ownership, to the exact decimal point, our r-squared would be 100%. The closer to 100%, the better. The lower the RMSE, the better.

One other key point here — a lot of people have blamed contest sims for the difficulty projecting ownership, but I don’t think that’s it. It’s not hard to say “sims will like McLaurin as a pivot off Gibson” and project accordingly. If that were all that’s going on, MME ownership would be better across the board and there’d be a chance for more separation from those that are anticipating what the sims will spit out.

The fact that we’re separating so much from the field in single-entry contests (especially from everyone not named ETR) lends me to believe that it’s more about the human element. Ownership is difficult because the projections themselves affect the actual results. Consequently, we’re projecting a moving target.