Thursday night NFL lineup submissions are different from any other type of DFS lineup submission for several reasons. First, we don't have complete information on the other games that will play over the weekend. Who is injured and who is starting are often just a good estimates at this point. This uncertainty makes the players from the Thursday night game more appealing than their Sunday counterparts. But since the Thursday night game is nationally televised and is the only game on, the players in this game tend to be more highly owned than we would expect given their projected output.
These high ownership levels cause a ripple effect in how we should attack the players in this game. When creating GPP lineups, it is much more difficult to include these players in our lineups. This is because you should be taking a contrarian approach to GPPs and their high ownership levels don't allow you to do so. I wrote about why this is important in this article last year.
But if the players are owned more than what we would typically think we should break ties in favor of the highly owned players in cash games. This is because if the highly owned player has a big game you find yourself in a deficit right off the bat and could single handedly cost your lineup a win that week.
Based on these two key factors I will tend to recommend players from the Thursday night game for cash games more often than I will for GPPs which is in direct opposition of our normal strategy of diversifying in our GPPs. Because of these complexities the Thursday night game deserves a lot of our attention so each week I will be breaking the game down in detail. See this article for definitions of all DFS terms.
Game Script
This Thursday night pits the 5-8 Rams against the 6-7 Buccaneers. The odds makers see this game as a low scoring affair by putting the total of the game at a measly 41 which is the second lowest on this weekend's slates. While both teams technically still have an outside chance of making the playoffs the odds are pretty long and they may be ready to call it a season.
One thing to look out for when the season is basically over is you have to start thinking about the incentives of each team and there players. That could include seeing how unproven players play in real games, testing out rookies, resting veterans, or helping players get contract bonuses or team goals. This game might be a little early in the season for those types of incentives but you should be on the lookout for them over the next few weeks. In this game I think both teams play it fairly straight up since they aren't officially eliminated from the playoffs. Although you may argue starting Case Keenum already falls in this bucket. I think the odds makers have called this game fairly accurately as I see the Rams winning and likely eliminating both teams from the playoffs by the end of the weekend.
