Fantasy Football RPV Breakdown: NFL Week 1 QB

And so it begins! Week 1 of the NFL season is closing in and that means it’s time to start evaluating the DFS landscape one position at a time. There’s no better place to begin than under center at the quarterback position, and there’s no better tool to evaluate that talent than The Fantasy Black Book’s  Relative Position Value per Dollar (RPVPD). Relative Position Value compares a player’s value against his peers based on his production with a simple percentage. However, in the daily fantasy game we must take this method a step further because it’s simply not enough to know how much better one player is a position than another. We must quantify the rate of that production in accordance with the player’s salary.

What RPVPD allows us to focus on is the best “return on investments” each week. Sometimes the elite players are priced appropriately and are actually strong values. Other times they can be albatrosses on your budget. Conversely, just because a player is underpriced doesn’t make him automatically a hidden gem. DFS is a balance of price and productivity, and as you’ll see from the Week 1 RPVPD it’s a tight rope that will either keep you above the pay lines or falling to your doom in the standings.

Here’s the RPVPD for FanDuel QB Week 1: 

Now, unfortunately we must use last year’s Fantasy Points per Game average because the season has yet to begin. This is not ideal obviously because we’re fielding a team for 2015 not 2016, but it’s enough to give us a jumping off point. For players like Trevor Siemian who have no average established, I’ve used moderate projected points. With Week 1 pricing being released before starting positions are settled or without knowledge of suspensions or injuries, there can be plenty of opportunities to exploit the system.

Dak Prescott is the first glaring QB misprice at $5K. However, he’s basically at the break even line of return on investment barring a huge game. The national media exposure the Cowboys receive will without question inflate his ownership rates, but you can do better even in tournament plays. The other glaring wolf in sheep’s clothing is Aaron Rodgers who’s priced at the top of the salary scale but is actually a -11% RPVPD based on the field. Andrew Luck and Ben Roethlisberger also fall into this category. Big names don’t always equal smart buys.

The best of Week 1 for cash games is still Cam Newton who’s rushing TD upside makes him a DFS darling. Tyrod Taylor is the generic version of Newton but with far less upside, He does, however, have plenty of return on investment appeal at $7.2K for GPP use. At the same price, you can also have Eli Manning who offers more of a ceiling from a passing standpoint against a Cowboys’ defense notorious for giving up big plays. Ryan Fitzpatrick, Matthew Stafford and Philip Rivers are also top values. Of that group the edge for me goes to Stafford playing indoors against a Colts secondary decimated by injuries.

RPVPD allows you to automatically thin the heard and focus on a select few. These targets can then be sorted and chosen based on matchup, conditions etc. making for a more efficient way of researching and constructing your lineup. Who will be your DFS signal caller be in Week 1?

Joe Pisapia (@JoePisapia17) is the eight-time best-selling author of the Fantasy Black Book Series for baseball and football. He hosts Fantasy Sports Tonight on Sirius/XM Fantasy Sports Radio and The Fantasy Black Book/Sunday GameDay on FNTSY Network Radio.