This will be a weekly blog entry on how the previous week went for me in NFL DFS. If you missed my week 1 recap, read it here.
A disappointing 50k week?!?!?
After the first set of games on Sunday, I was poised for the biggest win of my NFL DFS career. Cam Newton was my quarterback in cash games on every site and he threw for over 350 yards and 4 touchdowns. I was light on Antonio Brown who had one of his worst games ever. At tight end I chose Delanie Walker, Greg Olsen, and Jesse James on sites where each was cheap and all scored touchdowns. I had DeAngelo Williams on Fanduel and Fantasyaces and he exceeded value again. Will Fuller had over 100 yards receiving at a low price point. I had Patriots defense almost everywhere and they reached value too. The only player I owned from the early games that didn’t reach value was Tajae Sharpe, who almost everyone had due to pricing so a down performance didn’t adversely affect me. I mostly avoided the popular duds and hit on the big scorers.
Early snapshots (taken roughly 130PM PST on Sunday):
Draftkings:
Fanduel:
Yahoo:
Fantasyaces:
Fantasydraft (roughly $4500 in buyins):
I was up roughly $75,000 going into the afternoon games, and I had many players remaining — CJ Anderson, David Johnson, Travis Benjamin, Jeremy Langford, Jordan Matthews, and a few others. I was expecting to win at least that much and maybe even eclipse $100k for the weekend.
Unfortunately one of my highest owned remaining players was Danny Woodhead, who suffered a first quarter injury and was not highly owned by my opponents. They opted instead for TJ Yeldon, who was a good play, but I thought clearly inferior to Woodhead. Yeldon didn’t crush, but given 4 quarters he did far better than Woodhead, so the injury brought my results down a lot.
Injuries happen all the time in football and crush the dreams of fantasy players everywhere: it’s a dangerous sport and DFS is high variance. I remember last season having lots of Jamaal Charles, Devonta Freeman, LeVeon Bell, and a few other expensive players that went down in consecutive weeks and I suffered big losses.
I found these screenshots from the past year when I had devastating injuries hit my lineups in both basketball and football:
Derrick Rose was a late scratch and led to my worst losing day of NBA ever back in February.
Devonta Freeman went down early in a game and I had a very bad NFL week last year.
Injuries happen to everyone and highlights the need for safe bankroll management: if Cam Newton was injured in the first quarter I lose a lot of money. I need to be able to sustain any injury that happens and bounce back seamlessly from any possible loss I suffer in a week.
With the exception of my gaff on Thursday night where I lit $900 on fire, I basically played perfect the rest of the weekend and set to the best of my ability on each site. Although it’s not as big as I hoped or expected after the early games, I still probably exceeded my expected ROI for NFL (guessing it's 15-20%) and have nothing to be angry about.
Final Snapshots of Each Site Week 2
Draftkings: +$22749.20
Fanduel: +$16180.43
Yahoo: +$9896.00
Slates ending Sunday: +$3022.30
Other slates: +$6873.70
FantasyAces: -$2081.81
FantasyDraft: +$3174.36
Overall Results: +$49918.18
Didn’t win on every site this week. I had mostly Cam Newton on fantasyaces as well, but I guess I had enough buyins without him and my receivers did really poorly so it ended up a losing week. I won a lot on the early and sunday slates on each site and was lucky that the late slates were much smaller volume wise because I lost on those.
To be honest, I’m a little uncomfortable with the amount of buyins I’m playing. It’s well spread out between different sites and slates, and I’m often running multiple cash game lineups on one slate, so I never have more than 20k on a lineup, but still….uncomfortable. As I said above, if Cam Newton was injured early in the game, I lose heaps.
I’ve had two great weeks, but a truly terrible week would be much worse than these were good. I’ll consider lowering my buyins slightly going forward, and maybe I’ll put more money towards tournament lineups that can achieve high returns on a small number of buyins while diversifying my player portfolio a bit more.
Year to Date Results: +$93104.01
A 35% ROI is not sustainable in cash games. Maybe it’s possible to sustain that if I win big tournaments consistently, but I’ve never won anything of note in a 2 year DFS career, so I expect regression over the season. Regardless, very happy with my results so far and looking forward to week 3 and beyond.
My name is Ryan Daut and I'd love to have you as a follower. Click here to go to my page, then click 
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I am a professional gambler, and my interests include poker, fantasy sports, football, basketball, MMA, health and fitness, rock climbing, mathematics, astrophysics, cryptocurrency, and computer gaming.
I used your tips and I had a really good week!
I won all my 50/50s but I now I can't play the beginners ones anymore. So I expect my cash rate to go down also.
Starting the work for week 3! Keep up the great content!
I love DFS. I had Woodhead at 80% owned this past week and likely would have been a killer week had he produced. I lost $100 though.
Finances are tight so I probably won't get to play much this year, but I'd love to get results like you. Just don't have enough money to make money. Following though!
Wow congrats again! Is it more nerve-racking watching games or are you calm and just wait for the results?
Anyways. Impressive run you're on! Keep rollin'!
It's a bit of both. For instance, I stated in the blog that after the first set of games I was expecting a huge week. What I didn't add was that after the first quarter of the first set of games I was expecting a big loss.
Cam Newton had negative points after the first quarter, and Josh McCown (the best cheap qb alternative) was crushing with 2 touchdown passes. Instead of panicking or focusing on it, I turned the games off, worked on my lineups for the next slate for 30-60 minutes, ate, walked my dog, and managed to compartmentalize.
On the other hand, when I have the games on the emotions are much higher. In week 1 I was on perpetual tilt watching everyone but Martellus Bennett do stuff for the Patriots. I was at a comedy show (I left after the last game started since I had been at it for 12 hour) and updating stuff on my phone and sitting there frustrated.
Watching the games does help. You see things that you can use later on. But in general, I prefer to not watch too many games, be happier throughout the day, watch highlights and read analysis from journalists I trust afterwards.
wow crushing! bad beat on danny, coulda been a hell of a day!