Cracking DraftKings Thanksgiving

Photo: Timothy T. Ludwig, USA Today Sports

In honor of John Lee having written this article for years, I’m going to take his format and repeat his Tips and Picks from 2020 to start the article as he said it far better than I could.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!

“TIPS...

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.

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

This is an ugly slate of quarterbacks as four of the six quarterbacks are Jared Goff, Trevor Siemian, Andy Dalton and Derek Carr. In GPP’s a vast majority of roster percentages are going to funnel towards Josh Allen and Dak Prescott. Josh Allen takes on a funnel defense in New Orleans who are going to force Buffalo to throw the ball. New Orleans has allowed four quarterbacks this season to throw for over 300 yards. Outside of a weird Week 1 game in which the Saints blew out the Packers, the Saints have faced one of the easiest schedules in the NFL against the pass with the only top tier quarterback they faced being Tom Brady who had 375 yards and 4 touchdowns.

Derek Carr makes for a secondary option on this slate as the Raiders are 7.5 point underdogs, but this should be the highest scoring game of the week. Most people are going to be drawn towards Dak Prescott and the Cowboys passing offense, but Carr could provide leverage off of that particularly if the Cowboys get out to an early lead and rely on Ezekiel Elliott and Tony Pollard in this game. At just $5,900, Carr makes for a great play this week as he has shown upside this season throwing for over 300 yards in five games on the year.

RUNNING BACKS

This is a week in which the first decision you have to make is what you believe in Ezekiel Elliott. He’s the most expensive non-quarterback but dealing with a knee injury that has limited him to an average of just 11 carries per game. At $8,000 this is a decision that you will likely need to make as if Elliott is healthy and gets around 20 total touches, he’s likely going to be a no-brainer pick. However, if he’s not, then fading him can pay tremendous dividends. I’m recommending the fade here this week, as this is a week in which the Cowboys can likely once again have Tony Pollard have a role in this offense and with Elliott’s roster percentage being as high as it will be it makes sense to fade him. In cash games, it is almost impossible to take him with how good DAndre Swift has looked against two good run defenses over the last two weeks in Pittsburgh and Cleveland topping 130 yards in each of those games. By taking Elliott, you also lose out on one of David Montgomery and Mark Ingram. Montgomery looks has had issues with volume since returning from injury as he has just 15 touches in each of the two games, but the good news here is that Khalil Herbert had just one carry last week. This is David Montgomery’s offense facing one of the worst run defenses in the NFL. Mark Ingram is a cheap Alvin Kamara with Kamara once again ruled out. What has been the most surprising for Ingram is that he has averaged 5 receptions over the last three games which is not something historically Ingram has been known for.

WIDE RECEIVERS

This is a week where there are no slam dunk options at the wide receiver position. Both Stefon Diggs and CeeDee Lamb are going to see a high amount of ownership this week, but the question that you have to ask yourself is whether you want to go above the ownership or if you want to fade those players and try to build a roster with the middle ground. There are a number of cheap options this week who are possession type receivers such as Hunter Renfrow, Cole Beasley, TreQuan Smith, along with upside receivers in Darnell Mooney and Marquise Goodwin. Of the two, Lamb is more intriguing simply because he is significantly cheaper and in a better matchup as the Saints take away your elite receiver as evidenced by A.J. Brown, Mike Evans, and DK Metcalf (one long catch that should have been called offensive pass interference). Expect the Saints to try to take Diggs out of this game this week. Both Lamb and Gallup make for great pivots off of Ezekiel Elliott if you want to have a Dak Prescott stack and believe that the Cowboys will put up a lot of points this week.

TIGHT ENDS

If you’ve made it this far into the article, you’re probably sensing a trend which is to fade the Cowboys this week. They are going to be the highest rostered at almost every position and the tight end is no different. While the vast majority of the roster percentage is going to go to Darren Waller on this slate, Dalton Schultz is probably not too far behind him in the 20-25% range. Finding a player such as T.J. Hockenson who love to hate due to his perceived low upside, has 8 or more targets in four of his last five games. Regarding Darren Waller, there’s not much to say negatively about him other than he is going to be highly rostered on this slate. He’s a great cash game option, although he has not shown the upside that he has shown in prior years as he has just two touchdowns on the season and only two games above 65 yards.

TEAM DEFENSES