DraftKings Week 1: Comparing ADP to Salaries to Find Inefficiencies
Although there are some clear differences between season-long fantasy football and weekly fantasy football, there are lots of ways that your season-long knowledge can translate over to winning on DraftKings, too.
One such way is understanding and identifying general player value. When we analyze players for season-long fantasy football, it’s with their overall worth in mind. We want to know how many points they’ll score over the course of a season and, for the most part, the matchups don’t matter an incredible amount because they even out over the course of 16 games.
The matchups matter a lot in the weekly realm, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use season-long data to help you win early in the season. Here’s how.
ADP—average draft position—is the average slot in which each player is drafted in season-long leagues. There are some inefficiencies in ADP—it isn’t perfect—but for the most part, it corrects itself pretty well heading into the season.
When you’re drafting your season-long team, for example, you can generally find value by comparing expert ADP—or even expert consensus rankings—to your draft board and simply selecting the outliers who weren’t yet drafted.
You know the saying “All those people can’t be wrong”? Well that’s the idea here; when a player who is being drafted 20th overall, on average, is still available with the 30th selection, that’s evidence enough that he’s probably being undervalued in that particular draft.
Again, ADP isn’t infallible, but it’s fairly accurate by this point in the preseason.
ADP vs. Salaries
One very quick way to create a pool of potentially undervalued players on DraftKings is to simply compare their ADP to their salaries on the site. When a player is ranked much lower in salary than in ADP, we can and should take another look at him, regardless of the matchup.
Analyziing average draft position as part of weekly DraftKings strategy.
So why does this work? Again, the matchups matter, but perhaps not as much as you think, especially early in the season. That’s because the correlation between defensive quality one year to the next isn’t very strong.
Run defense has historically been the most likely aspect of defensive play to carry over from one season to the next, but it’s not a very strong effect.
Simply put, team defensive quality is very fluid, changing quickly from season to season. Yet in the beginning of the year, everyone pretty much treats those defenses as if they’ll be the same as they were in the prior season. That means that those players who appear to be in semi-poor matchups might not be in such bad spots, yet they’ll be priced as if they are.
So we have players who are already underpriced relative to their ADP and also potentially in matchups that probably appear to be worse than they are, which adds up to value.
Week 1 Value?
Looking at DraftKings’ Week 1 salaries, I’ve identified one player at each position whose ADP in season-long leagues suggests he could be undervalued.
QB: Tony Romo vs SF (15th in salary, 11th in ADP)
In Romo, you’re getting a high-ceiling quarterback in a seemingly poor matchup. The Niners’ defense isn’t the same as last year, though, and you’re getting an obvious discount on Romo because of the matchup. He’s probably best used as a GPP play instead of a head-to-head option.
RB: Bernard Pierce vs CIN (33rd in salary, 39th in ADP)
Pierce’s presence on this list doesn’t fit with the other players since his salary is higher than his ADP. It’s only a few spots higher, though, and Pierce’s season-long ADP reflects the fact that starter Ray Rice is set to return in Week 3.
In Pierce, you’re getting an obvious starter this week who could see 20 touches for the price of a backup. Think of it like this: if Rice weren’t even a factor in Baltimore, where would Pierce get selected in season-long drafts? Certainly higher than the 33rd running back, right? In this case, we’re using the fact that DraftKings at least partially considers ADP to create their salaries to find value on a player whose one-week value greatly exceeds his season-long worth.
WR: Jordy Nelson @ SEA (11th in salary, 7th in ADP)
This one is a really tough call because we know the Seahawks’ defense is truly an elite unit. However, we’re getting a nice discount on a potential two-touchdown player in Nelson. Also remember that Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman doesn’t shadow wide receivers, so Nelson is going to see plenty of work opposite the league’s top cornerback. There will be plenty of chances for Nelson to see favorable matchups.
Like Romo, Nelson is probably best used as a tournament play. That’s particularly true since he figures to see pretty low usage.
TE: Ladarius Green @ ARI (31st in salary, 14th in ADP)
There’s arguably no better value in Week 1 than Ladarius Green. Despite being drafted as the No. 14 tight end in season-long leagues, he’s just the 31st-most expensive tight end on DraftKings. Green is emerging as one of San Diego’s go-to receivers, and he has a juicy matchup against a Cardinals’ defense that struggles mightily versus the tight end.
This is a situation you just don’t want to overthink. Very obvious value, great matchup, must-play.
Now go use this knowledge to grab a piece of the $5 million in guaranteed cash payouts that DraftKings has for Week 1!
