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Know Your Opposition

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.

Key Injuries for Week 9

Of the 20 quarterbacks on this slate this week, 7 of them are replacement players who did not start at the beginning of the season for their team. 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. Expect Robinson to be one of the highest-rostered players of the 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 $7,900. 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 a 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. Douglas should be one of the more popular value plays this week as at $4,000, he has seen six or more targets over the last two games even before the Bourne injury.
• 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. At $4,300, expect Singletary to be popular this week, but he is a low-upside type of player, so tread cautiously here.
• Curtis Samuel is out with a toe injury. This should help Terry McLaurin as well as potentially Jahan Dotson see some additional targets.

Slate Overview- Week 9 Thoughts- Correlation

This is my 9th-year with Footballguys, and honestly, I cannot remember a week where not a single team was projected to score over 25 points. It may have happened in the final week of the season when teams are resting players, but it’s just not something that frequently happens as we typically have anywhere between three and six teams that are projected to eclipse that mark. So what does this mean? Ultimately, it means that there is going to be high variance this week, and looking to find the team that can score 30+ points is going to be critical. Many are going to look at some of the obvious teams such as the Eagles, Cowboys, and Ravens, so the opportunity is with these other teams that may be more under the radar when it comes to upside.

Correlation is going to be critical this week. On high-scoring weeks, you can get away with not correlating your players because there are so many touchdowns that the optimal lineup may not have to be correlated. On weeks where there are far fewer touchdowns, you’re going to need to find the one or two outlier games that could go well above the total. For example, if there are 20% fewer touchdowns on a slate than normal, then ensuring that you get as many correlated touchdowns is going to be crucial especially when it comes to stacking as those are worth at minimum 11.14 points. (4 pt passing touchdown + 6 point receiving touchdown + 1 point reception + .1 for one receiving yard +.04 for one passing yard).

Stacks

Top Stacks

Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, A.J. Brown

Most people are going to look towards Jalen Hurts who is projected to be rostered in 16% of rosters. However, he’s dealing with a bone bruise in his knee that caused him to only run the ball four times for six yards last week. If the Cowboys have any chance of keeping up with the Eagles, it is going to be through the arm of Dak Prescott who is projected to be 10% rostered and provides a $1,500 savings compared to Hurts. The Eagles are a funnel defense as their pass defense is one of the weakest in the NFL, while they may have the best run defense in the NFL this season. CeeDee Lamb is coming off of back-to-back weeks of 115 yards or more as last week he had 12 receptions for 158 yards and 2 touchdowns. The Cowboys have played in several weird games this season where most of their games have been blowouts. This week should be a close one which should mean four quarters of targets to Lamb.

For Brown, it’s relatively simple he has six consecutive games with 125 yards receiving or more. The only concern here is now that he has set the record, the Eagles will move away from force-feeding him and getting back to distributing the ball more evenly between Brown, Devonta Smith, and Dallas Goedert. The matchup is a difficult one for this Eagles passing attack as Dallas has one of the top pass defenses in the NFL, but we saw that Brown is matchup-proof with his 130 yards against the Jets earlier this season.