A Look Back at Week 13
It is amazing how fast the NFL season has moved along. We are already heading into week 14. For full season leagues this represents playoff time. For DFS players this is when a lot of the big DFS destination finals start to take place. Last week was the last and best chance to get into Fanduel’s FFFC finals as they offered a $200 entry which gave out 20 seats. Typically I don’t play in a lot of the top heavy satellites like this since they are so volatile to your bankroll but as my bankroll has grown this year I may start to take more and more chances in the future. But because there were 20 chances to win a ticket plus some additional good payouts in this event I thought I would give it a shot and wanted to walk through my thought process.
Here is the lineup I ended up with.
As you can see it did pretty well but not quite good enough for one of the big seats. It was in contention going into the final few games but a couple of players let me down in the end.
The first two players I started out with were both from my article last week, Tre Mason and Kenny Stills. Both of them were key players in nearly all of my lineups last week. Stills was in all but one of my GPP lineups and every one of cash lineups.
Mason was in the same boat. However, I became a little worried about him when the Vegas prop bets came out on Sunday morning and had his totals extremely low. I decided to leave him in the majority of my lineups, including this one but did pull him out of one lineup.
If you don’t currently look at the Vegas prop bets on Sunday morning I would highly recommend it. While their prop bets are a lot softer than their team level bets they do help as a reasonableness check to see if the players that you liked all week are truly in the right ball park. I just wouldn’t go over board making mass changes based on them.
My toughest decision was to go with Ryan Fitzpatrick, who I wrote up in last week’s article as well, or Ben Roethlisberger as my quarterback. As we all know Fitzpatrick ended up being the correct choice but I decided on Roethlisberger because Antonio Brown was my favorite high end wide receiver for the week. By pairing Roethlisberger with Antonio Brown I felt like I had a combination that could blow up as I didn’t feel like the Saints had a corner back that could keep up with Brown and the game had one of the highest over/unders on the slate. I actually did have another high stakes lineup with Fitzpatrick as well that performed very well also but it wouldn’t have quite finished in the top 20 anyway either.
My next must have was actually the Rams defense. A lot of people will wait on their defense and kicker until the end but that isn’t always the best option when there is a team that is set up as good as the Rams defense was. As I mentioned earlier this season there are three things I really like to look at when I am selecting a defense.
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Point spread – I want a big favorite because this means the opposing teams quarterback will be required to take chances with the ball which could lead to sacks, interceptions, and ultimately defensive touchdowns.
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An inaccurate opposing quarterback
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A good sack rate
The Rams defense qualified for all of these and then some. The Rams were the biggest favorite they had been all year. Their defense had been playing well and getting after the quarterback against solid teams like the Broncos and Seahawks. Finally, we all know that Derek Carr isn’t the most accurate quarterback. The Rams were one of my favorite defensive matchups all year and I got them in all my GPP’s and were my most highly owned in cash games as well.
The next guy I wanted to get was Harry Douglas. Early Sunday morning Jene Bramel was doing a great job of keeping us updated on the Roddy White situation on Twitter. As we neared kickoff it was looking very doubtful that Roddy White would play and even if he would he would be very limited. It also seemed like there was no buzz on getting Harry Douglas into your lineups so I thought he would be very under owned which would give me the chance to make up ground on others if he really did well, as I expected. Finally, Julio Jones was going to have what I thought was going to be a tough matchup with Patrick Peterson.
Everything went exactly as planned since Douglas was a target hog as I expected and had a huge receiving game of 9 catches for 116 yards. Unfortunately for me he didn’t find his way into the end zone. If I had been on the lucky end of a couple of those touchdowns things would be looking a lot different.
By paying down on Douglas I was able to pay up on Rob Gronkowski who I thought would have an excellent chance to score a touchdown in what was the highest over under on the entire season. It was quite disappointing as both Gronkowski and Douglas were my only late game players going and both were performing so well but couldn’t find the end zone despite many attempts to get them there.
My last two guys were Arian Foster and Shayne Graham. I wanted to go with Foster because I felt like he had one of the best matchups on the week but he was also high risk coming off an injury. As such I didn’t feel comfortable that he was a good cash game play but an excellent GPP play. He underperformed my expectations but did at least get into the end zone. I really liked the idea of using Le’veon Bell here despite already having Antonio Brown and Ben Roethlisberger because of how high scoring I thought this game would be and actually paired all three in another GPP that did fairly well. This isn’t a habit I would make but I thought it was the perfect storm to go all in on that game.
Fanduel GPP plays
Below are my weekly GPP plays at Fanduel. Throughout the season I will be employing strategies mentioned in Week 1 about contrarian plays. My goal will be to highlight players owned less than 10% to give you a contrarian option unless the player is such a good value that you should play him anyway. But remember that if you think a player will score three times their salary at a higher rate than their ownership level they are still a good buy. It is also important to remember you don’t need to go contrarian on everyone one of your positions. Additionally I will take the approach outlined in my preseason article about the best approach to allocating money in my lineups. In this article, I showed that in general it was best to spend on studs at wide receiver and to a lesser extent quarterback and save your money at running back and tight end.
Russell Wilson $8,500 (3%) – Wilson has nearly singlehandedly won several large GPP’s this year with two scores north of 34 on season and rushing for over a hundred yards twice. As such Wilson should always be on your GPP radar. This week Wilson gets a favorable matchup with the Eagles. The Eagles pass defense is actually relatively decent on a per play basis. However, they have faced 154 drives so far this year when the league average is 134. At an extra drive and a half per game Wilson will have extra opportunities to score. Finally, the Eagles have been beat by running quarterbacks this season allowing 8.3 yards per carry which is bottom 5 in that category. This looks to be a game where Wilson could easily throw for 250 yards and 2 touchdowns but more importantly add another 50 yards and a touchdown on the ground. Even better yet his passing yards could be limited and he could run for 100 yards again and have the upside for another 30 point game.
C.J. Anderson $7,800 (13%) – Anderson was my second favorite play on Thursday night after Demarco Murray but he isn’t sticking out like it to others as he is only being owned at 13%. In the last four weeks, since his workload has increased due to injuries, he has scored 24, 16, 28, and 26 and exceeded the 23.4 points that he needs to hit GPP value in 3 of the 4 games. Over the last two weeks in particular Anderson is averaging nearly 30 carries a game and is heavily involved in the passing game. On top of this, Anderson is fresh as the Broncos wasted their rushing attempts on Montee Ball and Ronnie Hillman for a good part of the year. The matchup against the Bills is not favorable as they have a stifling run defense playing 7% better than the average team but other than the Chiefs Anderson has faced relatively solid run defenses in the other three games and it didn’t slow him down a lot. Finally, the Broncos are expected to score 29 points this week and win by 10 points. This means they should score plenty of touchdowns and with Julius Thomas unlikely to play there should be ample scoring opportunities for Anderson as well as plenty of carries to go around to ice out the game.
Josh Gordon $8,000 (12%) – Josh Gordon was my favorite play at WR on Thursday as Vontae Davis was unlikely to play but Gordon was still not getting the attention one would expect from this news. Now that Davis is officially listed as out I will expect his ownership to rise significantly but I think he still makes for a solid play. Davis has been one of the best corners all year long but the Colts pass defense is beatable when he is out as we saw against the Steelers earlier this year when Antonio Brown caught 10 passes for 133 yards and 2 TDs with nearly all those stats coming after Davis left the game. Gordon played 77% of the snaps last week after playing 69% during his first game back. With the Browns playoff lives on the line I expect Gordon’s playing time to increase even more this week and for them to force the ball to him in the red zone, especially if Isaiah Crowell is out. We saw how Gordon could explode down the stretch last year make sure he is in your lineup this year when he does.
Delanie Walker - $5,400 (9%) - Walker has been a quiet, but pleasant, surprise all season long especially when you consider how consistent his receptions, targets, and yards have been. This week though he get the opportunity to shine as the Titans two most heavily targeted players Justin Hunter and Kendall Wright are both unlikely to suit up. Hunter has already been placed on the injured reserve and Wright has all but been officially listed as out. As such I would expect Walker to be a target hog this week as the best option for the passing game, especially in the red zone where Walker has been disappointing so far this year. With how tight the player pricing is this week on Fanduel Walker makes for a good salary relief.
As always please send any questions to Buzzard@footballguys.com or follow me on Twitter Follow @SteveBuzzard