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Before we get into the details, I just wanted to extend a big “THANKS” to all of you who are not only Footballguys, but also supporters of the content that I produce every week. As I fire up another Thanksgiving Day edition of “Tips and Picks,” I feel obliged to thank you for all of the sincere support you provide over the NFL season each year.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!

TIPS...

*These tips are taken from last year's edition of Tips and Picks because they still hold true for this Thanksgiving Day slate. They have been modified slightly, but the general advice remains the same this year.*

GAME STRATEGY: As I said on the Thanksgiving Edition of the PowerGrid, you will need to employ game strategy and combine it with a bit of luck to find yourself at the top of the leaderboards when the tryptophan starts to settle in on Thursday evening. There are three pieces of game strategy that you can think about employing:

Should you fade Ezekiel Elliott and/or Alvin Kamara at ~ 70% ownership? Any time a player is rostered in 70% of lineups, there is a case to be made to avoid putting that player into your tournament lineup. If the player is injured, gets vultured at the goalline, or just has a generally disappointing performance, you can jump 70% of the field by not having that individual on your respective roster. This year, both Ezekiel Elliott and Alvin Kamara are looking like they will appear in close to 70% of lineups on DraftKings on Thanksgiving. So...should you fade them or just roll with the masses and try to beat them elsewhere? The answer is contingent on how many lineups you plan on playing--if you are a single-entry player, my recommendation is to pick your favorite of the two and build around that player. The reason I don't think you want to roster both is because doing so will force you to gravitate towards the same low-dollar options at other positions, which will make your roster too similar to thousands of other lineups; when you spend 33% of your entire salary on two running backs, there is only so much you can do at the other positions. By rostering your favorite, your lineup will immediately be different than 50% of your opponents because I would approximate that 50% of tournament lineups on Thursday will have the combination of these players (70% x 70% = 49%). And because GPPs are so top-heavy, you are shooting for the top 1% of lineups, not the top 20%...the goal is to win, not simply cash. This is a reality that too many players often forget when playing in DFS tournaments.

Now, if you are entering multiple lineups, you can do a little bit of everything (i.e., fade both, roster both, one-in/one-out) and hope that you hit on the correct combination.

Pick your poison. In order to win a GPP on Thanksgiving, you are going to need at least one, possibly two, players who do well, but are also less than 10% owned. Because of the limited player pool, there will be a dozen players or more who are owned in the double-digit levels, which means that the overlap is going to be immense; the only way to differentiate your roster from the masses is to take a chance on a player you believe to be low-owned and in a situation to perform well. A few of my favorite options can be found in the “Picks” section below--they are highlighted in each of the tables. Please note that you need only one, possibly two, of these players to differentiate your rosters. Do not feel compelled to play more than one or two in any given roster.

Do not spend all of your salary. Part of the above advice (“Pick your poison”) is to purposefully build diversity into your lineups using players with perceived low ownership. Another way to achieve this goal is to leave a bit of salary on the table; do not be afraid to leave ~ 10-15% ($5,000 to $7,500) of your allocated salary unspent if you like your roster enough. Doing so will ensure that you have a unique roster that is capable of finishing atop a GPP roster. This bit of advice, of course, assumes that the rosters we are describing have enough upside to actually finish at the top of a tournament--do not leave money on the table just to start players who are seeing < 50% of the teams’ offensive snaps.

...AND PICKS

>On a limited slate such as this, you are probably not going to like your resultant rosters because there just are not enough quality options in the player pool to build out a solid team. Instead, you should be thinking about building a core of key players and then supplementing around those players with secondary options, who you perceive to be in plus situations. For GPP lineups, you might drop to a tertiary threshold, whereby you add an element of consideration to ownership for those players who have upside relative to their respective salaries. The following section will briefly summarize those situations for the most relevant players on Thursday, which is followed up by a table that outlines those takes in a concise fashion. Best of luck!

Quarterbacks

First things first: Jeff Driskel is not in the player pool above because he is nursing a hamstring injury and his best attributes as a quarterback are afforded by his ability to scramble to open up bigger plays. Combine that reality with the fact that the Bears allow the 3rd-fewest points per game to wide receivers and it becomes difficult to justify the Lions' passing game on a slate where Vegas projects them as the lowest team total on the board. On the other side of the field, however, Mitchell Trubisky is interesting GPP fodder against a Lions defense that allows the 8th-most fantasy points per game to the quarterback position. Trubisky looked improved against the Giants' porous secondary last week and we might expect a similar performance against the Lions, whose secondary drops off dramatically after Darius Slay. At half the ownership of Drew Brees and Dak Prescott, Trubisky also provides a competitive advantage against the 50% of lineups that will contain those more popular options. Speaking of Brees, he's certainly in play against the Falcons, a team that surprisingly stifled the Saints just under three weeks ago, holding them to a trio of field goals in that contest. Since then, the Falcons shut down the Panthers before regressing last week against the Bucs, allowing 35 points to Jameis Winston and company. The world expects Sean Payton to be more prepared for this contest and we should expect Brees to lead the charge against the league's 29th-ranked DVOA pass defense en route to their slate-high 27.8 implied Vegas team total. Elsewhere, Dak Prescott projects to be the best cash game option at his position because he appears to be ~ $500 underpriced. Dak is averaging nearly 24 DK points per game this season and, despite a tough matchup against the Bills' 5th-ranked DVOA pass defense, should be able to deliver 3x value on his modest salary at home. Closing things out, Matt Ryan is interesting as a tournament option in an implied gamescript that has him passing for most of the game; the caveat with Ryan is that he has been dealing with an ankle injury and Julio Jones has a shoulder issue that is keeping him out of practice through Tuesday, both of which are concerning against an above-average Saints defense. Josh Allen is a long-shot GPP flyer against Dallas, who we can expect to try to control gameflow by running Ezekiel Elliott as much as the score will allow.

Running Backs

Let's start at the top with Ezekiel Elliott and Alvin Kamara. Elliott started the season with rushing touchdowns in six of the Cowboys' first seven contests, but has only one rushing touchdown over their most recent four games. His usage has not dwindled over that time, nor have the Cowboys done anything dramatically different in their approach. Instead, game flow and defensive scheming with "eight in the box" has held Elliott at bay over the past month, but as touchdown home favorites, game flow should support plenty of Zeke throughout; likewise, the Bills rarely stack the box, which should also open up holes for Elliott to exploit against the Bills' 26th-ranked DVOA rush defense. In the late game, Kamara is still getting ~70% of the Saints' offensive snaps and has 19 receptions over his previous pair of games, basically making him a WR1 who also carries the ball a dozen times each game. Despite this heavy usage, Kamara has not scored since Week #3, which could indicate that he is primed for some positive touchdown regression in the near future. In Detroit, Tarik Cohen is a strong GPP candidate coming off back-to-back games with at least five receptions in each. Cohen could see additional action on Thursday with Taylor Gabriel sidelined with a concussion--he has extensive experience lining up as a receiver in the past. Elsewhere, do not sleep on Frank Gore at a sub-$4K price point and < 5% ownership against the Cowboys. Yes, Devin Singletary will see the most snaps in the backfield, but Gore is still commanding a relatively equal marketshare, including the redzone, and is offered at a $2K discount from his rookie counterpart. Lastly, Devonta Freeman will be popular amongst the masses looking for name recognition, but monitor his health status on Thursday morning to ensure that he's a full-go; anything less than 100% and he becomes a substandard play against an otherwise underrated Saints defensive front seven.

Wide Receivers