“…[P]opularity is the hallmark of mediocrity.’” – Niles Crane, Frasier
My best friend, Charlie, is a gigantic hipster. Like a walking cliché of hipsterdom. His name is ‘Charlie’, we’ve always called him ‘Charlie’, but for an entire year in college he insisted that everyone call him ‘Charl’. He's a vegetarian who only eats organic produce but smokes Newport cigarettes. I’ve seen him read Marx in a Starbucks.
I once asked him what band he was listening to. He said, “Oh, they don’t have a name.” and then argued that bands with names lack a certain level of artistic integrity. He played me a song. It was 12 minutes. The genre is called ‘noisecore’ which I can only describe as a cross between feral cats fighting and six children simultaneously attempting to play an instrument for the first time. My 1998 NetZero dial-up connection had more rhythm.
But you know what, Charlie would probably be amazing as DFS. “Who are you starting this week?”, I could have asked him last Sunday. “Yeah, I’ll probably go with Derek Carr. Yeah, everyone hates him, but I like his style. At running back, I’m going with an obscure player on the Steelers, DeAngelo Williams. You’ve probably never heard of him.” He’s not afraid to go against the mainstream. In fact, he’s loathes popularity – and that’s what would make him great at it.
Travis Benjamin was the Neutral Milk Hotel of hipster plays last week, winning one player two million dollars. Dion Lewis at only one percent owned was the star of last week’s column and helped win Johnathan Bales a seat to the $15 million DraftKings Championship. This week, we'll be fading guys projected to be highly owned in tournaments, like Tom Brady, Le'Veon Bell, Dion Lewis, Adrian Peterson, Julian Edelman, Larry Fitzgerald, and Rob Gronkowski, while looking at the following players projected to be under five percent owned that could have a big week.
Andrew Luck – Luck has been terrible to start the season. He's currently tied with Derek Carr for 18th among quarterbacks in fantasy points. His PFF QB Rating ranks last in the NFL behind every quarterback to play a snap outside of Jimmy Clausen. Yes, even Ryan Mallett and Brian Hoyer sport a higher PFF QB Rating. DFS players are sick of getting burned by one of the more expensive options across each site. Understandably, he had only a 1.5 percentage of ownership on FanDuel's Thursday slate of GPP games.
The NFL is a high variance sport and I get that things can change drastically year-to-year, but the first two games of a new season rarely mean as much to me as a 17-game sample of the year prior. The Colts haven't lost too many players on offense and most of the changes seem to be an improvement (Moncrief over Nicks, Gore over Herron).
Last year, Luck finished as the QB1 in fantasy. Three weeks ago you were drafting him as the de facto number one quarterback in season-long leagues. He's had two tough matchups to start this season. This week he goes up against a Titans defense that gave up the third most points last year. Vegas projects the Colts to score the sixth most points this weekend. Andrew Luck scored 30 fantasy points or more 43 percent of the time last season. No other quarterback came close to that. When you have the chance at returning that kind of upside at a below five percent ownership percentage, it's a no-brainer.
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