Sunday Morning Update
Sunday Morning Update: 10:38 AM EST:
No change to the primary cash lineup this morning. Barring any surprise injury news, there are not any impactful game-time injuries that would impact the lineup this week.
SITUATIONS THAT STAND OUT TO THIS WEEK ON THE MAIN SLATE.
For the first time in writing this article, not a single team is projected to score over 25 points on the Main Slate this week.
Week 8 Recap
We are going to call last week a draw. The Primary Cash Lineup cashed in about 80% of 50/50’s that we track, but I know a lot of you play in other contests such as double-ups (please do not play in these), head-to-heads, and other contests. The average 50/50 cash line was 96.5 and we finished with 99.48. This brings us to 5-2-1 on the season. We’ll reflect more on what’s been changing within cash games as success has been harder to come by based on recent weeks.
Honestly, the thing that kills me, is the Jalen Hurts fumble on the 6 inch line on the Brotherly Shove quarterback sneak. That has been converted nearly flawlessly all season and if he converts that, we easily are 6-2 on the year instead of 5-2-1.
Total points scored- 99.48
- QB Jalen Hurts, PHI, $9,200- 27.36
- RB Breece Hall, NYJ, $7,200- 18.3
- RB Tony Pollard, DAL, $7,600- 6.0
- WR Jordan Addison, MIN, $7,300- 17.9
- WR Zay Flowers, BAL, $6,500- 4.4
- WR Tank Dell, HOU, $6,000- 4.6
- TE Jake Ferguson, DAL, $4,900- 12.7
- Flex RB Isiah Pacheco, KC, $7,400- 5.2
- TD Atlanta Falcons, $3,900- 3.0
What went right:
- The choice of Jalen Hurts over Lamar Jackson was the right one. We saw Jackson struggle last week, where Hurts even in an awful start to the game finished with 27.36 points.
- Breece Hall has struggled as a runner, but as a receiver has been tremendous as he has 50 yards or more in each of his last two games. Receiving yards are a little more volatile each week going forward, so he’s likely a difficult one to trust at only 12 carries per game, especially when he doesn’t have a track record of an elite receiving back.
What went wrong:
- Trey McBride was a tough one. If you told me that Jake Ferguson was going to score 12.7 points, I would have wagered a significant amount of money that it was extremely likely that he outscored Trey McBride. However, McBride had 16.5 points as he had 15 targets. What’s even more surprising is that he was only rostered by about 20% of cash game rosters while Jake Ferguson was rostered by about 40%. This was a scenario where I simply over thought it based on trying to predict what the crowd was going to do.
- There was just a lot of mediocre to bad performances this week. Both Isiah Pacheco and Tony Pollard were atrocious as Pacheco only had 8 carries against the Broncos which is difficult to wrap your head around as he had no had that few of carries since Week 1. At wide receiver both Tank Dell and Zay Flowers had less than 5 points each which just isn’t good enough.
Injuries Create Opportunity:
This is quickly turning into the year of the backup quarterback. As of now, there are 7 quarterbacks looking like they will start who did not originally start with the team. On a slate where there are only 10 games, this drastically shrinks the player pool as the problem with backup quarterbacks is often the price does not adjust accordingly fast enough making the running backs and wide receivers very difficult to trust in cash games.
We are just going to list the backup starting quarterbacks quickly to get them out of the way. If there are notable things to discuss, they’ll be in the bullet point below. Clayton Tune, Brett Rypien, Tyson Bagent, Jaren Hall, Gardner Minshew, Taylor Heinicke, and Aidan O’Connell will all start this week.
- Drake London will miss this week with a groin injury. This is interesting, because the Falcons’ wide receivers are abysmal as they have Van Jefferson, Mack Hollins, KhaDeral Hodge, and Scotty Miller as the only four receivers on their roster. This likely means that we will see heavy usage of Bijan Robinson and potentially Kyle Pitts who are both cheap enough to use this week.
- Darren Waller is out this week with a hamstring injury. Similar to the Falcons, the Giants do not have any receivers who are viable this week for cash games. However, Saquon Barkley could be intriguing this week at $8,600. The price is high, but with Daniel Jones returning, it should help Barkley’s upside in the passing game.
- Deshaun Watson will start this week for the Browns after dealing with the shoulder injury for the last five weeks. The big question this week is whether Watson is fully healthy, as we saw him enter into the Colts game two weeks ago only to be quickly removed after an inability to throw the ball. If he’s fully healthy this is a massive upgrade for Amari Cooper this week.
- The Patriots are incredibly thin at wide receiver as Kendrick Bourne tore his ACL, while Devante Parker and JuJu Smith-Schuster have been ineffective. This likely leaves only Hunter Henry and Demario Douglas as the two plays in New England in what should be a favorable matchup for the Patriots this week.
- Dameon Pierce is out for the Texans. This should make Devin Singletary see a vast majority of the carries in a strong matchup against Carolina.
- Curtis Samuel is out with a toe injury. This should help Terry McLaurin as well as potentially Jahan Dotson see some additional targets.
Week 9 Thoughts:
For two weeks in a row, we’ve seen it where cash game lineups are basically everyone having the same or similar lineups with very small differences. Every position has had players 40%+ rostered and sometimes 80%+ as we saw with Breece Hall last week. It’s really difficult to find an edge when everyone is on the same pool of players and gravitates towards groupthink. Obviously, it’s great when you’re outside of that groupthink and that groupthink is wrong, but when players are 60-80% it typically means that the pricing is just awful.
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