Projecting Ownership Percentage: Week 3

Ownership percentage -- as it applies to constructing tournament lineups -- is one of the most misunderstood concepts in DFS. Projecting Ownership Percentage will explain the best strategy for factoring ownership percentage into your DFS decision making, and highlight this week's top tournament plays at each ownership tier. 

Here's a small sample of the strategy insight:

“If a guy is 30% owned at $5000 on DraftKings, you have to ask yourself if you think he could get 20 points (4x value for GPP) at least 30% of the time. If the answer is ‘yes,’ then you roster him and forget about the percent owned."

And the player insight:

DeMaryius Thomas - $8,000 @ DET (6%-10% Projected Ownership)

Many entrants will be looking to pay up for Antonio Brown and Julio Jones, or choose from the mid-priced wide receivers coming off big games (Larry Fitzgerald, Brandon Marshall, Allen Robinson), leaving Thomas fairly low-owned. Thomas has started a bit slow by his standards, currently ranking as the cumulative WR15 by DraftKings scoring. The problem hasn’t been his involvement -- Thomas has received the fourth most targets in the league. Besides Peyton Manning’s Week 1 struggles, it’s been a curious lack of red zone opportunities holding Thomas back. As I began researching the contrast between Thomas’ 2014 red zone target share and his results thus far this season, I came across a timely tweet from Rotoworld’s Graham Barfield:

Demaryius Thomas saw 39 RZ targets (2.45 per-game) in '14. He hasn't seen a single RZ target through two games in '15. Regression is coming.

— Graham Barfield (@GrahamBarfield) September 21, 2015

As long as Gary Kubiak stops stubbornly trying to force his scheme on Peyton Manning, Graham’s takeaway is spot on - progression towards the norm is coming for Thomas in the red zone. We should see it begin this week against a Detroit defense allowing a league high 6.5 red zone scoring attempts per game.