DFS Roundtable: Embrace the Unknown

Miami and Washington look like bad teams in bad spots. There is too much value on this Week 1 slate to for me to take a big risk in these spots where the upside looks pretty minimal.

Arizona is a different story. This offense possesses the type of uncertainty that we typically love to target in GPPs. There is certainly upside and a wide range of realistic outcomes for this wide receiver group. It isn’t hard to envision someone like Christian Kirk showing out in Week 1, for example. The problem is that this offense isn’t sneaking up on anyone and the top options are going to come with heavy ownership, especially since we project Kyler Murray to be one of the highest-owned quarterbacks on the slate. In short, it makes sense to target Arizona wide receivers but the ownership is going to be so high that it probably won’t be the sharpest way to try to gain an edge on the field.

This is a thin play but I do want to throw a quick plugin for Damion Willis as a long shot GPP option at the minimum salary. Willis is a freaky size-speed athlete who has made plays on a consistent basis throughout camp for the Bengals. He has already been named the starter at the X-receiver spot in place of A.J. Green and looks like the second option in the Bengals passing game behind only Tyler Boyd heading into the season. If Cincinnati falls behind and is forced to throw aggressively, Willis has a realistic path to a big fantasy day.

I’m not interested in the 49ers passing game outside of the quarterback, and won’t be touching Washington’s offense until they show us they can produce. There are too many great looking situations to target in Week 1 to be taking risks on these offenses.

In GPPs, the answer to this probably comes down to your volume. If you max enter the big GPPs and are therefore looking at lots of different builds with a handful of high-variance outliers, then I think you can exploit most of these situations. While I'm far less optimistic about the Cardinals offense than my peers, I do acknowledge there's potential. I wouldn't focus on Kirk exclusively, I would have lineups with Trent Sherfield and KeeSean Johnson, who are cheaper but a) got a ton of work with the 1st all preseason, b) were praised universally by beat writers, and c) are listed as starters on the Cardinals updated depth chart (along with Kirk and Fitzgerald).

If you only play a handful of GPP lineups, I'm less interested in these situations because I'm not excited about the quarterback play.

JAMES BRIMACOMBE

Tyler Boyd is absolutely in play this week as his volume and price are both perfect along with his situation. I think for GPPs it is worth taking a Dalton, Mixon, and Boyd stack and possibly run it back with Tyler Lockett on the Seattle side. I won't be touching Miami or Washington players this week but I will be playing Baltimore and Philadelphia defenses against them. Arizona is an interesting team to target this week but I believe their ownership numbers will be inflated with all the talk of the Air Raid offense this offseason so if I was going to target them I might look at going with Kyler Murray and David Johnson stack to be different.

WILL GRANT

The thing that stops me going heavy on Boyd is the thing that had me cool off on Joe Mixon as the summer wore on - their offensive line. The Bengals have one of the worst offensive lines in the league, and while Boyd will be the #1 target, I don't know if Andy Dalton is going to have the time to throw to him. The Vegas projected line at just 17 points for Cinci this week, I'll have some of Boyd in a couple of GPPs but not a lot.

All the hype in Arizona has you thinking 'someone should go off' - but the question is who? Like others have said, I'd rather go with 'known' guys like Larry Fitzgerald or Christian Kirk and hope they score a couple of times rather than throwing a dart at Michael Crabtree or KeeSean Johnson. Consider those guys extremely low ownership plays rather than guys you expect to do well.