Sunday Update:
Isiah Pacheco will start for the Kansas City Chiefs. The matchup is a difficult one going up against the 49ers, but at $4,700, he's going to be somewhat popular given the lack of cheap options on this slate. He's a player who you should not go crazy with and could outright fade. We don't know what "start" means. Will Jerick McKinnon still see a role, will Clyde Edwards-Helaire still play a backup role? It's very uncertain against too good of a defense to confidently play Pacheco this week.
KNOW YOUR ENEMIES
If you want to finish at the top of the standings in a mid-to-large field GPP, your roster has to stand out from the crowd. Studying a list of projected roster percentages is a helpful first step, but it lacks the context of how the most popular players fit together under the salary cap.
To gain some insight into how the majority of entrants will allocate their cap space, so you can spend yours differently, let’s think about how the public is most likely to attack roster construction at each position.
Slate Overview- Wide Open Slate
This is a slate in which understanding the roster percentages is going to be vital for your success this week. Taking a purely game theory approach of targeting players that are lower rostered is likely going to work out. The reasoning for this is fairly simple, four of the best offenses are not on this slate and the Chiefs are facing one of the best defenses in the NFL in the 49ers. In any given week, players such as Cooper Kupp, Justin Jefferson, Stefon Diggs, Dalvin Cook, Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, Patrick Mahomes II, Travis Kelce are players you’re going to want to consider having in your player pool regardless of roster percentage simply because of their upside. Without those players, it is a wide-open week. This is also a week where there are not many value plays based on a lack of injuries to critical players, so taking a more balanced approach could be the way to go.
The one exception to this is Josh Jacobs, which we will talk a little bit more about him later on this slate. This was just a grossly underpricing by DraftKings that have been good this season. Jacobs is likely going to be in 35-40% of rosters this week, and in reality, he probably should be near 100%. At $6,500, he’s far and away the best player in that price range and the way you should approach him this week is he should be in all of your lineups or none of the lineups to completely differentiate yourself from the field.