DFS market share update for Week 1

Each week during the season, we’ll take a look at the changing landscape of usage in the NFL and fantasy football. Whether you’re looking for a waiver wire pickup, deciding on a tough start/sit decision or looking for a DFS play, understanding how players are being used is vital to success during the season.

There’s not much to update since the season hasn’t started yet, but luckily for us there’s a plethora of information in our FTN Fantasy market share tool. As we head into Week 1, we have to take last year’s data with a grain of salt. Personnel changes, scheme changes, young players emerging, older players turning into dust — these things can impact year over year changes for a player’s involvement in a given offense. 

Running backs with valuable touches

We want our running backs to score touchdowns and catch passes. Sounds simple, right? There are plenty of running backs that don’t get valuable touches near the goal line or aren’t used in the passing game. I used our market share tool to pull out which running backs had the most combined touches inside the 5 and overall targets. 

As you make your way through the top five, there are plenty of names you’d guess you’d find there … and then we get to Myles Gaskin. Gaskin is priced at $6,000 on the main slate this week. The Dolphins did essentially nothing to address the running back position in the offseason. That, hopefully, signals that Miami will continue to use him in these high-leverage situations. 

Some names are making an appearance on both lists here, and that shouldn’t be terribly shocking. One name that caught my eye here is James White. He’s all the way down at $4,400 on DraftKings and makes for an interesting RB2 play this weekend. 

A look at last year’s target share

Here’s a look at the top 10 wide receivers in target share last year. 

That said, simply looking at target share doesn’t tell you much, unfortunately. Marquise Brown saw 25% of Baltimore’s targets last year, just like Allen Robinson did. Robinson, however, saw 52 more targets. As the season goes on, we’ll take a look at target share, air yard share and raw targets to identify plays in DFS as well as waiver pickups for season-long.

On the main slate this week, Travis Kelce is in a tier of his own. He’s $2,000 more expensive than the next most expensive tight end. It will be interesting to see how the pricing goes moving forward with Darren Waller on the same slate as Kelce. There are always plenty of values in Week 1, so paying up for Kelce won’t be too difficult. 

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